Articles & Resources

Written for volunteer departments

Articles and reference material on NERIS, ISO ratings, accountability, and the parts of running a department that nobody warns you about. Written by people who run calls.

Crew Accountability at Volunteer Fire Departments

At most volunteer departments accountability runs on the honor system, and it has holes. Who responded, who rode where, and why you can miss in both directions when you cannot see your own ...

NERIS Speaks a Different Language Than Your Department Does

NFIRS took codes. NERIS takes exact strings, and a mismatch rejects the whole run report. What changed, why the vocabulary does not match how departments talk, and why validation has to ...

A Pre-Plan You Cannot Reach Is Not a Pre-Plan

A pre-plan is only useful if responders can reach it when the tones drop. Why information collected on a site visit ends up stranded in a folder, and why availability at 2am is the ...

Fire Department Records Are Scattered by Default

Volunteer department records live in filing cabinets, on old computers, and in people's memory. What that costs, where it hurts the most, and why the fix is about how information gets entered, not ...