What is NFIRS / NIFFERS?

NFIRS is the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) that is a database of fire department incidents from all across the United States, and is run by FEMA United States Fire Administration (USFA). NFIRS has decades of data from thousands of fire departments, and from all states / territories.

NFIRS is often pronounced (perhaps colloquially or even humorously) as "Niffers".

NFIRS is run by the USFA but is typically managed at the state or territory level; a state fire marshal might control access and some require the fire departments to enter incidents. NFIRS is a voluntary system, at the federal level, however it is regularly mandatory at the state or territory level.

Many fire departments benefit from reporting their incidents to NFIRS when applying for grants. Federal grants applications include reviewing the department's data within NFIRS, as do many other grant review processes.

Incident reports in NFIRS allow states, territories and the USFA to learn from the experience in the field of tens of thousands of fire departments and set policy from those learnings.