New Jersey · NERIS
NERIS reporting in New Jersey
New Jersey runs on volunteer fire departments: hundreds of them, packed close together, most with nobody whose job is paperwork. NERIS did not change that; it changed the form.
Fire departments in New Jersey
- Departments in the directory
- 730
- Volunteer departments
- 77%
- Volunteer or combination
- 91%
- Stations
- 1,691
530 of 688 departments that report a department type
623 of 688 departments that report a department type
reported by 700 departments
Across the 696 New Jersey departments that report staffing, the directory holds 26,589 volunteer firefighters and 8,072 career firefighters; 77% 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.
Why this lands harder in New Jersey than in most places
Look at the two numbers together: 730 departments, and 91% of the ones that report a type run on volunteers. That is a lot of separate organisations, each of which now needs its own answer to NERIS, and very few of which have anyone whose actual job is data entry. In a career department the reporting burden lands on someone who is being paid to be at a desk. In a volunteer company it lands on whoever is willing — usually the same person, usually after they have already gone home.
The density matters too. With that many departments in one state, the box alarm that brings three companies is ordinary, not exceptional. NERIS records aid given and aid received per incident, which means a single call can generate a report from each department that turned out. Multiply that across a busy month and the difference between “reporting takes fifteen minutes” and “reporting takes an hour” stops being a preference and starts being whether the reports get filed at all.
The realistic version of catching up
Nobody catches up on a backlog by finding new discipline. They catch up when the task gets small enough to do in the time they actually have: the ten minutes after picking up, not a Sunday afternoon.
That is the entire design goal here: tell the call out loud, read what came back, fix the two things that are wrong, file it. It is not a claim that reporting becomes fun. It is a claim that it becomes short enough to finish.
What still has to happen once
Filing into NERIS needs someone with the Admin role at your department to authorize FireMic’s Client ID inside NERIS, under Account, then Enrollments. It is about two minutes and it is reversible from their side. If you signed yourself up, an officer at your department also approves your account once. Recording and reviewing a report needs none of that, which is why the trial does not ask for either.
Worth knowing about New Jersey
New Jersey has 730 fire departments in the NERIS public directory, and 1,691 stations reported across 700 of them — a lot of separate organisations each filing their own reports.
Source: snapshot: NJ.department_count, NJ.station_count_sum, NJ.departments_with_station_data
Of the 688 New Jersey departments that report a department type, 530 are volunteer and 93 are combination — 91% of them run on volunteers to some degree.
Source: snapshot: NJ.by_department_type, NJ.departments_with_type_data
The directory counts 26,589 volunteer firefighters against 8,072 career firefighters across the 696 New Jersey departments that report staffing.
Source: snapshot: NJ.firefighters_volunteer_sum, NJ.firefighters_career_sum, NJ.departments_with_staffing_data
New Jersey is the one state where FireMic's local street and place-name vocabulary is already loaded, so the transcriber has seen the road names before you say them.
Source: repo: docs/specs/STACK-REPORT.md §3, NJ is the only state with local vocabulary activated
FireMic was built with a working New Jersey volunteer department, and the firefighter co-founder still runs calls there.
Source: decisions: D13 (Collingswood Fire Department, the beachhead department) + repo: docs/specs/STACK-REPORT.md §9
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
If your department applies for an Assistance to Firefighters Grant, the application will ask you to describe your operations and your call activity. We are not going to tell you that NERIS reporting is an eligibility requirement — that is not something we can show you in writing, and you should not take a vendor's word for what a federal grant program requires. What we will say is narrower: whatever the application asks about your calls, it is easier to answer from reports that are filed and current than from a year you have to reconstruct.
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 New Jersey 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 New Jersey 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.