Oregon · NERIS

NERIS reporting in Oregon

In Oregon, the most common kind of fire department isn't purely volunteer or purely career; it's both at once, and the statewide firefighter headcount splits about as close to even between the two as this dataset shows anywhere.

Try it free

Fire departments in Oregon

Departments in the directory: 355
Volunteer departments: 36%
Volunteer or combination: 92%
Stations: 901

Across the 259 Oregon departments that report staffing, the directory holds 4,483 volunteer firefighters and 4,430 career firefighters; 50% 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.

Most Oregon departments are already both

Oregon doesn’t split neatly into volunteer towns and career cities the way plenty of states in this directory do. COMBINATION accounts for 141 of the 249 departments that report a type, 57% and an outright majority on its own. Volunteer-only departments account for 89 (36%), and career-only for just 19 (8%). Combine volunteer and combination and 92% of typed departments carry some volunteer staffing, a share this dataset sees in other states too. What’s different in Oregon is that the single largest group isn’t mostly-volunteer or mostly-career. It’s departments running both at once.

A firefighter roster split almost down the middle

That blending holds up once you count people instead of departments. Across the 259 Oregon departments that report staffing, the directory holds 4,483 volunteer firefighters against 4,430 career firefighters — 50% volunteer, about as close to even as a statewide total gets in this dataset. The department-type field and the headcount aren’t telling two different stories here; both describe the same mixed staffing model, one from the organization’s side and one from the roster’s side.

One department, two schedules, one report

A combination department usually means a paid officer covering business hours and volunteers covering nights and weekends, sometimes out of the same station on the same roster. The person who ran a call at two in the morning and the person who would normally sit down and finish the paperwork on a weekday aren’t always the same one, even though the report belongs to a single department either way. Only 23 of the state’s 355 departments have filled in the population-protected field, too thin to add up here, but the staffing split says enough on its own about who might be answering, and reporting, at any given hour.

Whichever shift ran the call, the same test applies

That’s as true for the paid half of a combination roster as the volunteer half. Pick one report you already have in mind, talk through it out loud, and look at what the review screen hands back before deciding whether it beats however that report gets filed today. Nothing about that first look requires your department’s NERIS enrollment or a roster pulled in ahead of time.

Worth knowing about Oregon

Oregon has 355 fire departments in the NERIS public directory, and 249 of them report a department type.
Source: snapshot: OR.department_count, OR.departments_with_type_data
Of those 249 typed departments, 141 — 57% — are COMBINATION, the largest single type on its own; 89 are VOLUNTEER and 19 are CAREER.
Source: snapshot: OR.by_department_type, OR.departments_with_type_data
Across the 259 Oregon departments that report firefighter staffing, the directory counts 4,483 volunteer firefighters against 4,430 career firefighters — a near-even 50% volunteer share.
Source: snapshot: OR.firefighters_volunteer_sum, OR.firefighters_career_sum, OR.departments_with_staffing_data
901 stations are reported across 298 of Oregon's 355 departments, about three stations for every department that answered.
Source: snapshot: OR.station_count_sum, OR.departments_with_station_data
Only 23 of Oregon's 355 departments have filled in the population-protected field, too thin a sample to total into a statewide coverage figure here.
Source: snapshot: OR.departments_with_population_data, OR.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

Assistance to Firefighters Grant applications ask a department to describe its calls and how it staffs them — a question that can mean describing two different rosters at once for a combination department, rather than one. We are not going to tell you that NERIS reporting changes how that application is scored; nothing we have reviewed says so, and the program's own notice of funding opportunity is where to check, not a vendor's page. What holds regardless: a report that is already filed is less work to summarize than one that still needs to be reconstructed.

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 Oregon call

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

Try it free

FireMic is a private company. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or recommended by any Oregon 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.