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Responserack is the best solution for volunteer fire departments to easily and painlessly get onto NERIS in 2026. We believe you shouldn’t have to train your firefighters on the complexities of a new reporting system. Responserack is designed to be “middle-of-the-night simple,” guiding firefighters to provide basic incident details in plain language, while our software handles the compliant NERIS data submission automatically. For administrators, Responserack simplifies the entire process, making the transition from NFIRS to NERIS seamless. We are focused solely on the needs of VFDs, providing an affordable, integrated solution that goes beyond simple compliance to help your department thrive.
The National Emergency Response Information System (NERIS) is the replacement for the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS). Fire Departments will eventually stop filing incident reports with NFIRS and start filing incident reports with USFA NERIS. NERIS is a modern equivalent for NFIRS, simplified for ease of reporting, and updated for today’s fire service needs.
NFIRS was created in the 1970s and is showing its age; it hasn’t been updated in eons, and cannot respond to today’s fire services needs. NFIRS cannot respond to emerging hazards such as understanding electrical / battery fires, nor leverage newer technologies like GIS, nor integrate with Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems. NERIS builds on NFIRS, leverages modern techniques and integrates with other fire and emergency medical / management systems.
We are running a series of posts on USFA NERIS. Also, check out our presentation of the November 2024 release of the NERIS specifications to learn about the NERIS modules and NERIS values.
NERIS is rolling out to fire departments in 2025. FEMA USFA have stated that volunteer fire departments can remain on NFIRS until they have migrated to NERIS. See the NERIS rollout schedule where fire departments will be onboarded by FEMA region.
For an application (such as Responserack) to be considered ‘NERIS Data Exchange Compatible’ it has to perform a set of tasks using the NERIS Application Programmer Interface (API) such as entering an incident, updating the same incident and adding a station to an entity.
Find out more at the FEMA USFA website:
