Montana · NERIS
NERIS reporting in Montana
Montana's fire departments are mostly one thing or the other, volunteer or in a few places fully career, with very little of the blended combination departments common elsewhere. NERIS asks the same report from all of them regardless.
Fire departments in Montana
- Departments in the directory
- 334
- Volunteer departments
- 84%
- Volunteer or combination
- 95%
- Stations
- 468
235 of 280 departments that report a department type
266 of 280 departments that report a department type
reported by 271 departments
Across the 281 Montana departments that report staffing, the directory holds 5,687 volunteer firefighters and 1,016 career firefighters; 85% 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.
Volunteer, not blended, in most places
Of Montana’s 334 fire departments, 280 have reported what kind they are: 235 volunteer, 31 combination, 14 career. Combination departments (the kind built around a paid core with volunteers filling out the roster) are only 11% of that group. The rest of the state’s fire service isn’t organized as a blend. A department here is almost always one thing all the way through: either everyone on the roster is a volunteer, or, in a small number of places, the whole department is career staff.
That distinction isn’t academic. In a department that mixes paid and volunteer staff, an overnight incident report can wait for whoever is on the paid shift the next morning. Montana mostly doesn’t have that option. The volunteer who answered the call is usually also the one who sits down and writes it up, because there’s no second tier of staff to hand it to.
More building than department
271 of Montana’s 334 departments reported a station count, and between them they run 468 stations — roughly one and three-quarters houses for every department that answered, not one apiece. Running that many buildings off a volunteer roster means whoever files the report also has to keep straight which station’s crew actually responded, on top of everything else NERIS now asks for, module by module.
One more form, same short list of people
None of that changes with the switch to NERIS. It’s a different report, with modules instead of a flat form and an API filing instead of a file upload, but it still lands on the same one or two people who ran the call. Talking through what happened right after, in plain language, and fixing whatever the system gets wrong is the version of this that a department that size can actually keep up with. No account is needed to try it on one real call first.
Worth knowing about Montana
Montana's directory lists 334 fire departments, and 280 of them report a department type: 235 volunteer, 31 combination, and 14 career.
Source: snapshot: MT.department_count, MT.by_department_type, MT.departments_with_type_data
Volunteer-only departments are 84% of the 280 that report a type (235 of 280); combination departments, which blend paid and volunteer staff on one roster, are just 11% (31 of 280).
Source: snapshot: MT.by_department_type, MT.departments_with_type_data
Across the 281 Montana departments that report firefighter staffing, the directory counts 5,687 volunteer firefighters against 1,016 career firefighters.
Source: snapshot: MT.firefighters_volunteer_sum, MT.firefighters_career_sum, MT.departments_with_staffing_data
468 stations are reported across 271 of Montana's 334 departments — roughly one and three-quarters stations for every department that answered, not one apiece.
Source: snapshot: MT.station_count_sum, MT.departments_with_station_data, MT.department_count
Only 44 of Montana's 334 departments report the population they protect, summing to 617,050 — too small a share of the roster to total into a statewide coverage figure.
Source: snapshot: MT.population_protected_sum, MT.departments_with_population_data, MT.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
AFG stands for Assistance to Firefighters Grant, and a Montana department applying for one gets asked to describe its calls and its operation, not just an equipment wish list. We won't tell you a completed NERIS report changes how that application scores — nothing we've reviewed says so, and taking a vendor's word over the program's own notice of funding opportunity would be a bad trade. The one thing worth saying plainly: describing a season of calls is faster when those calls are already written up somewhere than when the description has to start with remembering what happened first.
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.
Try it on a real Montana call
Record one incident, read the report it produces, and decide from there. No account, no card, no call with anyone.
FireMic is a private company. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or recommended by any Montana 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.