HIFLD · USFA/NFIRS · registry 2026
Fire department and incident rankings from the live federal corpus
Scale tables for 32,253 registered departments across 55 states and DC. Rankings measure size and reported incident volume, not quality.
Registry by staffing band
Exclusive HIFLD type_normalized partition of the 32,253 listed departments. Parts sum to the registry total.
Registry by EMS flag
Exclusive has_ems partition of the same 32,253 departments (blank stays unstated).
Download the fire-department landscape extract cited on this page: fire-department-landscape.csv (HIFLD / USFA / FEMA public records).
Answer first
California currently leads reported annual fires at 168,000 incidents among 51 NFIRS-reporting states; the HIFLD registry behind these tables covers 32,253 departments (60% volunteer).
- Lead state
- CA
- Lead fires/yr
- 168,000
- Volunteer share
- 60%
- Career share
- 9%
Scale measures only - not safety or performance grades. NFIRS participation varies by state.
PlainFireData rankings cover largest departments by HIFLD personnel, state fire incidents from NFIRS/USFA, and departments-per-capita using Census Vintage population denominators. The registry spans 32,253 departments across 55 states and DC. Among states with reported annual fires, California currently leads at 168,000 fires/year. Rankings are scale measures, not quality verdicts.
- Highest reported annual fires: California
- Sources: USFA registry, NFIRS, FEMA AFG, Census pop
- Registry refreshed quarterly; NFIRS lags ~18 months
States by annual fire incidents
Largest departments by personnel
How These Rankings Are Built
Every ranking on PlainFireData is built from federal source data, not editorial speculation. Department-level rankings come from the National Fire Department Registry maintained by the U.S. Fire Administration, which lists every department that has reported staffing, equipment, and service-area information through the U.S. Fire Administration registration process. State-level incident rankings come from the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS), the standard reporting system used by participating fire departments to capture each fire and non-fire incident response in a uniform format.
Departments that have not updated their registry profile within the last reporting cycle are flagged with the year of their most recent submission. Departments are not removed from the registry until administrative status confirms closure; many small volunteer departments register infrequently but remain operational. State-level NFIRS reporting coverage varies; states with fewer than 80 percent of incidents reported are noted on the ranking page and treated as estimates rather than full counts.
How to Read a Ranking
Rankings are not value judgments. A department with more personnel is not better than a smaller department; it is simply larger. A state with more incidents is not less safe than a state with fewer; it may simply have a larger population, more wildland-urban interface, more industrial fire exposure, or a more complete reporting culture. Use the ranking pages as a starting point for further inquiry.
Browse Rankings
Largest Fire Departments
Top 50 fire departments by total personnel, career, volunteer, and combination departments nationwide.
States by Fire Incidents
States ranked by annual fire incidents, fire deaths, injuries, and property loss. NFIRS reporting data.
Departments per Capita
States ranked by fire-department density, departments per 100,000 residents, using HIFLD counts and 2023 US Census population.
Grant Award Changes
States ranked by year-over-year change in FEMA AFG/SAFER fire-department grant awards.