Minnesota · NERIS

NERIS reporting for Minnesota's fire departments

Minnesota's directory lists 767 fire departments. Nearly all of them answered how many stations they run; barely a third said what type of department they are. NERIS is going to ask every one of them the same set of questions regardless.

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Fire departments in Minnesota

Departments in the directory: 767
Volunteer departments: 70%
Volunteer or combination: 93%
Stations: 1,030

Across the 246 Minnesota departments that report staffing, the directory holds 4,838 volunteer firefighters and 2,545 career firefighters; 66% of those counted are volunteers.

Source: the NERIS public department directory, as mirrored in our departments table on July 28, 2026. Percentages are stated against the number of departments that actually reported the field, which is always shown next to them. Departments that reported nothing are not counted as zero and no figure here is estimated.

One field nearly everyone answered, two fields most didn’t

Minnesota’s own department directory doesn’t get filled in evenly. Of the state’s 767 fire departments, 737 (96%) reported how many stations they run, totaling 1,030 stations, or about 1.4 for every department that answered. Far fewer answered two other basic questions: only 240, or 31%, said whether they’re volunteer, combination, or career, and only 246 (32%) reported firefighter staffing. In most states in this directory, those three fields move together: a large majority answers all three, or a large majority skips all three. Minnesota clearly answered the first one and mostly skipped the other two.

What the fraction that answered actually shows

Read only the 240 departments that reported a type, and Minnesota looks heavily volunteer: 168 volunteer, 55 combination, and 17 career, with volunteer and combination together accounting for 93% of that group. The 246 departments that reported staffing tell a compatible story — 4,838 volunteer firefighters against 2,545 career, 66% volunteer — but neither number describes all 767 departments. Both describe whichever ones happened to answer that particular question, and there’s no way to tell from the directory alone whether the 527 departments that skipped the type field, or the 521 that skipped staffing, look anything like the ones that didn’t.

The same modules regardless

None of that changes what NERIS itself asks for. A station count, a department type, and a staffing breakdown are three separate questions that Minnesota’s fire departments answer at three very different rates: 96%, 31%, and 32%. A single incident report doesn’t get to pick and choose the way a directory listing does. Every module NERIS assigns to a call applies whether the department behind it has circled back to finish the rest of its own profile or not, and whoever ends up writing the report is the one who finds that out.

Worth knowing about Minnesota

Minnesota has 767 fire departments in the NERIS public directory, but only 240 of them — 31% — have reported what type of department they are.
Source: snapshot: MN.department_count, MN.departments_with_type_data
Of the 240 Minnesota departments that did report a type, 168 are volunteer, 55 are combination, and 17 are career — volunteer and combination together make up 93% of that group.
Source: snapshot: MN.by_department_type, MN.departments_with_type_data
737 of Minnesota's 767 departments — 96% — report a station count, totaling 1,030 stations between them, or about 1.4 for every department that answered.
Source: snapshot: MN.station_count_sum, MN.departments_with_station_data, MN.department_count
Across the 246 Minnesota departments that report staffing, the directory counts 4,838 volunteer firefighters against 2,545 career firefighters — 66% of everyone counted is a volunteer.
Source: snapshot: MN.firefighters_volunteer_sum, MN.firefighters_career_sum, MN.departments_with_staffing_data
Only 47 of Minnesota's 767 departments — 6% — report a population-protected figure, summing to 1,112,113; that is the thinnest of the four fields in the state's own directory.
Source: snapshot: MN.population_protected_sum, MN.departments_with_population_data, MN.department_count

What changed

NERIS replaced NFIRS as the federal fire incident reporting standard onFebruary 1, 2026. It is a different shape of report, not a renamed one: modules instead of flat forms, a three-level text hierarchy instead of numeric incident codes, and an API instead of a file you upload.

What actually changed, in detail · NERIS onboarding (FSRI) · Department sign-up

About grant applications

An Assistance to Firefighters Grant application for a Minnesota department includes questions about call volume and day-to-day operations, the same categories every applicant nationwide answers. Whether NERIS reporting factors into AFG eligibility or scoring isn't something this page can settle — that determination belongs to the program's own guidance, not to a company selling reporting software. The plain, narrower point: a department pulling those answers from incident reports already filed has less to reconstruct than one working from a season of runs nobody wrote up.

We are a vendor, not a grant advisor. Do not take our word for what any grant program requires. Read the current notice of funding opportunity or ask your state's grant coordinator.

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Record one incident, read the report it produces, and decide from there. No account, no card, no call with anyone.

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FireMic is a private company. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or recommended by any Minnesota state agency, USFA, FSRI, or FEMA. State fire officials do not endorse vendors, and nothing on this page should be read as suggesting otherwise.

Department figures: FireMic Supabase departments table (mirror of the NERIS public department directory, ArcGIS layer 0). Snapshot taken July 28, 2026.