As director of the U.S. Fire Administration's National Fire Data Center since 1995, Alexandra H. Furr has managed the National Fire Incident Reporting System, the world's largest annual national collection of fire incident data, as well as special assessments and data collections, such as the National Fire Department Census.

Before becoming NFDC director, Furr was the National Fire Academy's assistant superintendent for curriculum development. She previously managed adult education for the U.S. Army Continuing Education System in Europe.

The Assistance to Firefighters Program has required participation in NFIRS for an award. Has this increased the number of departments reporting to NFIRS?

We are unable to tell how much the FIRE Grants have affected NFIRS participation. Most departments contact their states directly to begin participating in NFIRS.…

We do know that the NFIRS Support Center has received 1,600 inquiries since January 2000 regarding how to participate in NFIRS to qualify for a grant. As of May 1, 2005, the number of participating departments for 2003 was 17,761. This is more than a 13% increase over the prior year. There have been similar annual increases each year since 2000. As we are still receiving 2003 incidents from some states, the final number of departments participating for 2003 is likely to be even greater.

Does the FIRE Grants Office verify departments' participation in NFIRS?

Grants Office personnel confirm NFIRS participation status with the individual fire departments at several points throughout the application, award and closeout stages of the process. When questions arise, they work with state NFIRS program managers to verify reporting status.

What is the most commonly cited obstacle to reporting to NFIRS?

Lack of resources: … people to manage the system, time to do the reporting and management, and money for associated staff, software and hardware. This is particularly true in many small communities.

It's often said that law enforcement seems to be able to produce data on crimes much faster than we can report data on fire department activities. Is this true? And if so, what can be done to speed fire data reporting?

The FBI's summary-based Uniform Crime Reporting System is most commonly referenced in such statements. However, UCR is not a parallel to NFIRS. UCR is limited to summary data, and as such it is probably more appropriately compared to the annual fire survey of the National Fire Protection Association. The results of the NFPA survey are available in the fall of the year after the one they describe.

The law enforcement version of NFIRS is the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System. In terms of incident-based reporting, the fire service is ahead of law enforcement in many ways. All 50 states and the District of Columbia participate in NFIRS, with more than 50% of the nation's fire departments reporting. NBIRS has 26 certified state programs and agency participation is estimated at about 30%.

One advantage of the law enforcement reporting system is the funding provided by the Department of Justice for program implementation. Significant amounts have been distributed to state agencies responsible for crime data collection. Such funding is not available to support NFIRS implementation. Given the voluntary nature of NFIRS, the fire service can be rightfully proud of what is accomplished annually in the documentation of more than 7 million incidents of all types annually (of which 800,000 are fire incidents).

The single best way to improve the timeliness of NFIRS is for states to release their data to USFA more quickly. However, their ability to do this is in large part dependent on the resources they have available to process the data they receive from individual fire departments.

How does NFIRS work with the NFPA in data collection?

There is a long-standing cooperative relationship between the NFDC and NFPA. The primary databases are the NFPA annual survey and NFIRS. The NFPA survey and NFIRS are complementary databases; alone, neither tells the complete story of the U.S. fire problem.

The NFPA survey asks big-picture questions, such as, “How many structure fires did you have last year?” and “How many people died in residential fires last year?” By using a probability sample, they are able to produce solid estimates of the fire problem in the United States.

Continuing the fatal residential fire example, NFIRS provides detailed information including what caused the fire, what time it happened, the ages of the victims, whether there were any firefighter casualties, where the fire started, and … other incident-specific information.

The NFPA survey provides high-level numbers. NFIRS provides details. Together, they provide a meaningful picture of the fire problem.