New York · NERIS
New York's fire departments and the move to NERIS
New York's fire service runs on volunteers more than any other state in this directory does by raw headcount, and NERIS asks the same thing of a one-truck volunteer company that it asks of a full-time city department.
Fire departments in New York
- Departments in the directory
- 1,790
- Volunteer departments
- 90%
- Volunteer or combination
- 95%
- Stations
- 2,962
1,478 of 1,638 departments that report a department type
1,555 of 1,638 departments that report a department type
reported by 1,673 departments
Across the 1,692 New York departments that report staffing, the directory holds 81,185 volunteer firefighters and 17,726 career firefighters; 82% 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.
More volunteer firefighters than anywhere else in this file
New York counts 81,185 volunteer firefighters across the 1,692 departments that report staffing — the largest volunteer firefighter headcount of any state or territory in this snapshot, ahead of Pennsylvania’s 60,569, the next-highest entry in the file. That headcount isn’t concentrated inside a handful of oversized companies, either: New York’s directory lists 1,790 fire departments, itself among the largest department counts in the file, so the volunteer total is spread across a lot of separate organizations, each one filing its own reports into NERIS rather than one filed on everyone’s behalf.
A department type that’s almost unanimous
Of the 1,638 New York departments that report a department type, 1,478, or 90%, are volunteer outright, not combination and not career, with only 83 typed as career. That’s a cleaner number than it looks at first: across most states in this file, the volunteer share by department type and the volunteer share by headcount pull apart from each other. Here they stay close: 90% by department type and 82% by headcount, with 81,185 volunteer firefighters against 17,726 career, which suggests New York’s volunteer departments aren’t unusually small relative to its career ones.
The two fields New York answers less completely
Not every field in the directory is filled in as fully. 2,962 stations are reported across 1,673 of New York’s 1,790 departments, and the population-protected figure, summing to just over 12 million, comes from only 736 of them, a minority of the roster. None of that changes what a filed report looks like once it’s done. Try FireMic on the next call your department runs: narrate it once, read back the structured version, and decide from there whether it’s worth changing how the report gets written. No account is needed to see that part.
Worth knowing about New York
New York's directory lists 1,790 fire departments, and the 81,185 volunteer firefighters counted across the departments that report staffing is the largest volunteer firefighter headcount of any state or territory in this snapshot — ahead of Pennsylvania's 60,569, the next-highest entry.
Source: snapshot: NY.department_count, NY.firefighters_volunteer_sum, NY.departments_with_staffing_data, compared against firefighters_volunteer_sum for every state/territory entry in state-department-snapshot.json
Of the 1,638 New York departments that report a department type, 1,478 are volunteer, 77 are combination, and 83 are career — 90% of the departments that answered are pure volunteer, not combination and not career.
Source: snapshot: NY.by_department_type, NY.departments_with_type_data
Across the 1,692 New York departments that report staffing, the directory counts 81,185 volunteer firefighters against 17,726 career firefighters — 82% of everyone counted is a volunteer, eight points below the 90% volunteer share by department type.
Source: snapshot: NY.firefighters_volunteer_sum, NY.firefighters_career_sum, NY.departments_with_staffing_data, NY.by_department_type, NY.departments_with_type_data
2,962 stations are reported across 1,673 of New York's 1,790 departments — 117 departments in the directory haven't answered the station question at all.
Source: snapshot: NY.station_count_sum, NY.departments_with_station_data, NY.department_count
Only 736 of New York's 1,790 departments have entered a population-protected figure, summing to 12,115,804 — a large number, but from a minority of the roster, not a statewide count.
Source: snapshot: NY.population_protected_sum, NY.departments_with_population_data, NY.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
Grant applications don't get easier just because a department is small — the Assistance to Firefighters Grant application asks a one-truck volunteer company for the same detail about call activity and operations that it asks a career department for. Whether NERIS reporting factors into how that application gets scored isn't something this page can answer, and we'd rather say nothing than guess at a federal program's own rules — the notice of funding opportunity is the place to check that, not a reporting vendor's website. Where we can actually help is narrower: pulling a season's worth of already-filed reports together takes less time than reconstructing one from a paper log or somebody's memory of the year.
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 York 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 York 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.