Vermont · NERIS
NERIS reporting in Vermont
Vermont's fire service runs almost entirely on volunteers, spread across small towns where one department usually means one station and one person who ends up doing the paperwork. NERIS didn't add staff to help with that; it changed what the report itself looks like.
Fire departments in Vermont
- Departments in the directory
- 230
- Volunteer departments
- 87%
- Volunteer or combination
- 95%
- Stations
- 285
175 of 202 departments that report a department type
192 of 202 departments that report a department type
reported by 206 departments
Across the 194 Vermont departments that report staffing, the directory holds 3,976 volunteer firefighters and 536 career firefighters; 88% 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.
Coverage that runs through one station, not a records office
Vermont’s directory lists 230 fire departments. Of the 206 that report a station count, the state totals 285 stations, 1.4 for every department that answered, which in practice means most of these departments run out of a single house rather than a network of them. There’s no records office down the hall and no shift commander whose job for the day is paperwork. The 194 departments that report staffing count 3,976 volunteer firefighters against 536 career. That’s an average of 23 people per department, officers included. When a department that size runs a call, the same person who was on the rig is usually the one who has to write it up.
A module-based form lands differently when nobody’s job is data entry
NERIS didn’t add a data-entry position to a Vermont volunteer company. It replaced a flat NFIRS form with a set of modules and a longer incident-type hierarchy, filed through an API instead of uploaded as a file — more structure to fill in, from the same person, in the same short window after a call. That’s the specific shape of the problem here: not fifty separate agencies coordinating with each other, but small crews where the entire reporting job already sat with one or two volunteers, and now sits with them inside a bigger form.
Where the extra ten minutes has to come from
There’s no realistic version of catching up that starts with hiring, or with turning a volunteer officer into a full-time records clerk. The version that actually fits a department this size is one where filing a report takes about as long as calling the incident in: talk through what happened, check what came back, fix what’s wrong, file it. Vermont’s fire service already runs lean on the calls themselves; the paperwork has to run just as lean, or it doesn’t get finished between one shift and the next.
Worth knowing about Vermont
Vermont's directory lists 230 fire departments, and 202 of them report a department type — 175 volunteer, 17 combination, and 10 career.
Source: snapshot: VT.department_count, VT.by_department_type, VT.departments_with_type_data
Of the 202 Vermont departments that report a type, 192 — 95% — are volunteer or combination, leaving 10 typed as fully career.
Source: snapshot: VT.by_department_type, VT.departments_with_type_data
Vermont has 285 stations reported by 206 of its 230 departments.
Source: snapshot: VT.station_count_sum, VT.departments_with_station_data
Across the 194 Vermont departments that report staffing, the directory counts 3,976 volunteer firefighters against 536 career — 88% of those counted are volunteers.
Source: snapshot: VT.firefighters_volunteer_sum, VT.firefighters_career_sum, VT.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
Some Vermont departments apply for Assistance to Firefighters Grant funding, and that application asks about call volume, staffing, and how the department operates day to day. We're not going to tell you NERIS reporting is a condition of that funding — we don't have that in writing, and a vendor is the wrong place to learn what a federal grant program actually asks for. What we can say is narrower and true regardless: those application questions are easier to answer from reports you already filed than from a stack of runs nobody wrote up.
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 Vermont 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 Vermont 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.