USFA conducting study on FD pandemic response

By Laura French

EMMITSBURG, Md. — The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) is using the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) to conduct a national-level special study on fire department responses to COVID-19 pandemic.

The goal of the study is to help fire departments consistently document fire department calls to suspected or confirmed incidents involving COVID-19, according to a USFA statement.

This study will collect, aggregate and quantify the number of fire department responses to incidents in which COVID-19 was a factor. The data will be used by the USFA at the national level and it will be available in the NFIRS Data Warehouse for registered NFIRS users. Data will not be made available to the public.

This national-level special study seeks to ensure that data is collected uniformly by the 24,300 reporting fire departments in NFIRS. These departments responded to more than 28.7 million incidents in 2018.

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