Fire departments across America are overwhelmed with paperwork.
While firefighters have trained to save lives and protect property, they're spending countless hours hunched over computers, manually transcribing incident details from memory or fragmented notes.
With almost a quarter billion 911 calls nationwide every year, that averages out to around 27,400 calls per hour, or 456 calls every single minute. Fire emergency calls are a significant percentage of 911 calls, averaging around one every 30 seconds. Documenting these incidents has reached a breaking point.
Yet the current manual reporting system, designed decades ago, hasn't kept pace with this explosive growth in service demands.
Fortunately, modern artificial technology has plenty of benefits that can bring fire departments back into the contemporary world, finally providing a real, tangible solution to one of the fire service's most persistent challenges.
Today's fire departments operate under crushing administrative demands that extend far beyond the firehouse.
Every structure fire, medical emergency, vehicle accident, and hazmat incident requires detailed documentation for multiple stakeholders: the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS), state reporting agencies, insurance companies, legal departments, and billing systems for EMS services.
"Documentation is just a necessary evil," says Brady Robinette, lieutenant with Lubbock Fire Rescue. “And, so, if we could leverage AI to complete like 90% of the documentation, and we would just have to go in there to put the finishing touches on it and make a few corrections, I think it would be a huge improvement. I think it would lend to better patient care.”
Truth is, people who are trained in emergency medicine do that because they want to help people.
Yet firefighters (and other emergency services like paramedics and police) can spend up to 30% of their time drafting reports manually, often hours after incidents when details have faded and memories have been clouded by subsequent calls.
Plus many departments in major cities also work 24-hour shifts, and report writing burdens can add to sleep deprivation and stress.
The challenge intensifies with complex incidents.
A single structure fire might require:
Each module demands precise coding using NFIRS classification systems, with hundreds of data elements that must be accurately completed to ensure compliance and avoid grant funding complications.
The National Fire Incident Reporting System isn't just bureaucratic busy work—it's the foundation for data-driven fire service decision-making across America. NFIRS data enables departments to:
Over 22,000 U.S. fire departments currently participate in NFIRS, making it the world's largest fire incident database.
But there's urgency building: NFIRS will sunset in February 2026, transitioning to the new National Emergency Response Information System (NERIS). This transition creates both challenges and opportunities for departments to modernize their reporting workflows.
This means all NFIRS data is due before January 31st, 2026. Is your department ready?
NFIRS compliance directly impacts federal funding access.
While participation isn't mandatory for Assistance to Firefighters Grant applications, recipients must maintain continuous NFIRS reporting throughout their grant performance periods or risk award modification.
With millions in annual AFG appropriations at stake, accurate and timely reporting becomes mission-critical.
Current manual reporting systems create cascading problems that extend far beyond administrative inconvenience:
Manual transcription of audio recordings, handwritten notes, or memory recall introduces significant variability.
Officer A might describe a "two-story wood frame residence with light smoke showing from Side Alpha," while Officer B calls the same structure a "residential building with visible smoke."
These inconsistencies complicate trend analysis and statistical reporting.
Paper-based or basic digital systems offer little ability to analyze incident data for patterns, training opportunities, or prevention initiatives. Fire departments collect massive amounts of operational data but lack tools to transform information into actionable insights.
During busy periods, reports pile up as personnel respond to subsequent calls. The longer the delay between the incident and documentation, the less accurate and detailed the reports become. Some departments report backlogs of weeks or months, creating compliance risks and operational blind spots.
Poor documentation quality hampers grant applications, budget justifications, and strategic planning. Departments struggle to demonstrate operational effectiveness or community impact without comprehensive, accurate incident data.
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing fire department operations, with incident report automation leading the charge.
Modern AI systems can process dispatch audio, on-scene communications, and structured data inputs to generate comprehensive first-draft reports that meet NFIRS compliance standards.
While reducing documentation time by 50% or more provides immediate operational benefits, AI-driven reporting creates transformational improvements across fire department operations:
As Lieutenant Robinette puts it: "If we could leverage AI to complete like 90% of the documentation and we would just have to go in there to put the finishing touches on it and make a few corrections, I think it would be a huge improvement."
This is the future: AI handles routine documentation while firefighters focus on what matters most—saving lives and protecting property. With the 2026 NERIS transition approaching, AI-powered systems offer immediate benefits while ensuring seamless compliance.
Ready to cut reporting time in half?
CLIPr's AI transforms dispatch and fireground audio into NFIRS-compliant reports in minutes. Our system understands fire service terminology, integrates with your CAD system, and delivers the accuracy modern departments demand.
Your firefighters are trained to save lives—let AI handle the paperwork.
