Ohio · NERIS

Ohio's fire departments, and who ends up filing NERIS reports

Ohio runs 1,215 fire departments, the fifth-most of any state in this snapshot, and 86% of the ones that report a type lean volunteer. NERIS asks the same set of questions whether you're one of a thousand small departments or one of a few large ones.

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Fire departments in Ohio

Departments in the directory: 1,215
Volunteer departments: 60%
Volunteer or combination: 86%
Stations: 1,622

Across the 981 Ohio departments that report staffing, the directory holds 14,081 volunteer firefighters and 16,637 career firefighters; 46% 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.

Fifth on the list, not first

Line Ohio up against every other state and territory in this snapshot, sorted by department count, and it lands in fifth place: 1,215, trailing only Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, and North Carolina, and sitting just ahead of Alabama’s 1,123. Of the 1,132 Ohio departments that answered what type they are, 675 came back volunteer, 296 combination, and 161 career. Fifth place isn’t a small-state footnote: it means well over a thousand separate departments, each one on the hook for its own set of NERIS filings, with nobody upstream consolidating that work for them.

The roster looks volunteer; the headcount doesn’t

Type alone, and Ohio leans volunteer by a wide margin: 86% of the 1,132 departments that report a type are volunteer or combination. Staff it instead, and the balance moves — the 981 departments that reported firefighter counts put 16,637 people on the career side against 14,081 volunteers, a narrow career majority. Those are two separate fields with two separate sets of departments behind them, not one department switching columns, but together they say Ohio’s career departments carry more staffing weight than their share of the roster would suggest. Two smaller numbers round out the picture: 1,622 stations sit across 1,029 departments that answered that question, a little over one and a half apiece, and only 112 of the 1,215 departments, about 9%, have filled in a population-protected figure, too sparse to add into a state total.

One more task after the call, for somebody

None of the numbers above change what happens after a truck gets back to quarters. A career department schedules someone for the desk; the report is part of a shift, not an extra one. Most of Ohio’s list isn’t built that way; a volunteer or combination department finishes the call, then finishes the paperwork separately, usually later, usually alone. Fifth place in a national count just means there’s a lot of that particular arrangement in one state.

Worth knowing about Ohio

Ohio's 1,215 fire departments rank fifth among all states and territories in this snapshot by department count — behind Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, and North Carolina, and just ahead of Alabama's 1,123.
Source: snapshot: OH.department_count = 1,215, compared against department_count for every state/territory entry in state-department-snapshot.json
Of the 1,132 Ohio departments that report a department type, 675 are volunteer, 296 are combination, and 161 are career — 86% run on volunteer staffing in some form.
Source: snapshot: OH.by_department_type, OH.departments_with_type_data
Across the 981 Ohio departments that report firefighter staffing, the directory counts 16,637 career firefighters against 14,081 volunteers — a narrow career majority even though volunteer and combination departments make up 86% of the typed roster.
Source: snapshot: OH.firefighters_career_sum, OH.firefighters_volunteer_sum, OH.departments_with_staffing_data
1,622 stations are reported across 1,029 of Ohio's 1,215 departments — a little over one and a half stations for every department that answered.
Source: snapshot: OH.station_count_sum, OH.departments_with_station_data, OH.department_count
Only 112 of Ohio's 1,215 departments have entered a population-protected figure — about 9% — far behind how completely the type, station, and staffing fields are answered.
Source: snapshot: OH.departments_with_population_data, OH.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

Ohio's 1,215 departments do not apply for federal grants as a block — each one that goes after Assistance to Firefighters Grant funding describes its own calls and its own operations, on its own timeline. We are not going to tell you NERIS reporting is a condition of that application; nothing in this repository establishes that one way or the other, and a vendor is the wrong source for what a federal grant program actually asks for — read the program's own guidance instead. What we can say factually: an application is easier to fill out from incident reports that are already filed than from a stretch of calls that still has to be reconstructed after the fact.

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 Ohio 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.