What NERIS Requires for Fire Incidents
Any incident classified as a fire type in NERIS activates the Fire Module. This includes structure fires, vehicle fires, brush and wildland fires, dumpster fires, and other incidents involving ignition and combustion. The Fire Module adds fields that require officer-level knowledge to complete accurately — they cannot be reliably derived from CAD data alone.
The most frequently incomplete Fire Module fields are area of origin, detector performance, and fire spread — all of which require the officer to know what they found on arrival and what the fire did before suppression.
Where Officers Struggle
NERIS code sets differ from NFIRS
Officers trained on NFIRS apply familiar codes that do not map correctly to NERIS definitions.
Area of origin terminology has changed
NERIS uses different origin location codes than NFIRS. Officers enter codes that were correct in NFIRS but mis-code in NERIS.
Detector performance is skipped when there are no detectors
Officers leave the field blank rather than selecting the correct "none present" indicator.
Fire spread codes require arrival-condition knowledge
If the officer who writes the report was not on-scene at arrival, fire spread data is often inaccurate.
How Station Draft Helps
The officer writes a short narrative — what they found on arrival, what they did, what the fire did. Station Draft maps that narrative to Fire Module fields and flags each one: High confidence means the field was clearly stated. Review means it was implied but should be verified. Missing means the narrative did not contain enough information to populate the field.
The officer sees exactly which fields need attention before opening their RMS. Missing flags on area of origin or detector performance prompt the officer to add that information before submitting — instead of finding out at QA review or audit.
Current Coverage
Station Draft v0.1 includes focused coverage of structure fires and building fires — the highest-volume fire incident types for most departments. Vehicle fire and wildland coverage is expanding through the pilot. HazMat incidents involving fire are not yet fully covered.