Pennsylvania · NERIS
NERIS reporting in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania runs more fire departments than any other state in this directory, and nearly all of them lean volunteer. NERIS did not shrink that list, it just changed what filing a report looks like.
Fire departments in Pennsylvania
- Departments in the directory
- 2,172
- Volunteer departments
- 89%
- Volunteer or combination
- 97%
- Stations
- 3,004
1,619 of 1,814 departments that report a department type
1,763 of 1,814 departments that report a department type
reported by 1,848 departments
Across the 1,862 Pennsylvania departments that report staffing, the directory holds 60,569 volunteer firefighters and 4,540 career firefighters; 93% 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 departments than any other state in the directory
Pennsylvania carries 2,172 fire departments in the NERIS public directory — more than Texas, more than New York, more than any other state or territory this snapshot covers. That scale is almost entirely a volunteer story: of the 1,814 Pennsylvania departments that report a type, 1,619 are VOLUNTEER and only 51 are CAREER, with 144 more COMBINATION. Career departments are outnumbered something like 32 to 1. The departments themselves also run small: 1,848 of them report a station count, adding up to 3,004 stations, just over 1.6 per department reporting one. A single station covering its own patch of township is closer to the norm here than a multi-station department is.
Who actually writes up the call
Across the 1,862 Pennsylvania departments that report staffing, the directory holds 60,569 volunteer firefighters against 4,540 career, which makes volunteers 93% of everyone counted. Divide the two staffing sums by the departments that reported them and the average comes to 35 firefighters per department, spread across more separate departments than any other state in this dataset. Only 51 of those departments are pure career. Everywhere else, whoever ends up filling out the incident report is doing it on top of their actual job, not instead of it.
What that means for the report itself
NERIS asks the same questions of a one-station volunteer company as it does of a career department that keeps a records clerk on staff; the module list and the incident hierarchy do not change by department size. What changes is how much room there is to fall behind. A state built out of this many small departments, most of them without anyone whose job is data entry, is exactly the shape of problem a report you can finish by talking through the call, on the spot, is built to fit.
Worth knowing about Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania has 2,172 fire departments in the NERIS public directory — the highest department count of any state or territory in this snapshot, ahead of Texas (1,883) and New York (1,790).
Source: snapshot: PA.department_count = 2,172, compared against department_count for every state/territory entry in state-department-snapshot.json
Of the 1,814 Pennsylvania departments that report a department type, 1,619 are VOLUNTEER (89%), 144 are COMBINATION, and only 51 are CAREER.
Source: snapshot: PA.by_department_type, PA.departments_with_type_data
3,004 stations are reported across 1,848 Pennsylvania departments — just over 1.6 stations for every department that reports one.
Source: snapshot: PA.station_count_sum, PA.departments_with_station_data
Across the 1,862 Pennsylvania departments that report staffing, the directory counts 60,569 volunteer firefighters and 4,540 career firefighters — 93% of everyone counted is a volunteer.
Source: snapshot: PA.firefighters_volunteer_sum, PA.firefighters_career_sum, PA.departments_with_staffing_data
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 a Pennsylvania department applies for an Assistance to Firefighters Grant, the application asks about your operations and your call activity. We are a records vendor, not a grant office, and nothing we have found says NERIS reporting is a condition of AFG funding, so we are not going to tell you it is. What we can say plainly: a clean, current set of incident reports is faster to pull numbers from than a stack of calls nobody wrote up yet.
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 Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania 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.