Volunteer & combination departments
NERIS reporting for volunteer fire departments
The NERIS public directory lists 30,740 fire departments across 53 states and territories, and of the 25,620 that report a department type, 89% are volunteer or combination (as of July 28, 2026). Those are counts of departments in the country, not users of this product. The point of the numbers: the typical American fire department that owes a NERIS report tonight has no records clerk to hand it to.
What the reporting change means when nobody is paid to type
In a career department, reporting time is on the clock. In a volunteer house, the report competes with the job, the family, and the reason you volunteered — which was not data entry. The report gets written at the kitchen table after work, or it waits for the weekend, and every day it waits, the details get softer.
NERIS did not make that easier by itself. Reports are modular, incident types are a three-level hierarchy, responses are tracked per unit, and the narrative is split in two. It is a better national dataset and a longer evening — unless the typing itself goes away. (What changed from NFIRS is laid out in our free explainer, and your state's numbers are on its own page.)
How FireMic fits a volunteer house
- The report happens where you are. Phone in the bay, tablet in the truck, laptop at home — talk through the call, review the filled-in report, file it to NERIS through the federal API.
- Shared devices are normal here. On a common tablet you tap your name off the roster; officers and admins add a PIN. No one-login-per-seat gymnastics.
- An officer can still have the last word. Reports can route through review, with send-back comments, if that is how your house runs.
- It does not replace what you already have. If the department runs an RMS, this sits alongside it and does one job — the report. Details in choosing NERIS software.
- Trying it costs nothing and needs no meeting. The trial runs in the browser with no account, and pricing is public — no sales call to find out.