By Doug Nelson, State Fire Marshal
Happy New Year! I’m sure many of you have New Year’s resolutions and goals. This year, one of our top priorities will be ensuring that all fire departments and districts transition successfully to NERIS. We will work with all who want any assistance to try to keep everyone reporting and continue to build on our reporting numbers. Please contact us with any questions and look for our end-of-the-month NERIS transition blog, where we will focus on updates from NERIS.
With the looming fire reporting transition, NFIRS will also be closing down in the coming year. NFIRS will be shut off effective December 31, 2025. This means that all 2024 data needs to be entered, completed, and released to NFIRS (or our office) by April 1st, 2025. Please check your incident information for 2024 and let us know if you need verification of your incidents showing up in NFIRS.
Fire school is right around the corner. To register, please visit the North Dakota Firefighters Association. This is a great opportunity to get some great training, work with many other ND firefighters, and learn from some of the great resources! Please check out our courses, which will include a Fire Investigation Introduction course and a Fire Inspections with the State Fire Marshals Office course.
If you haven’t finished your certificate of existence yet, please visit our website here and log in to get it completed and submitted. We are down to approximately 30 fire departments left. Remember, the fire insurance distribution funds are not mailed out to your fire department until this certificate is submitted and approved. To be approved, your fire department must meet the minimum requirements of a Public Protection Classification level 9 (NDCC 18-04) and report fires to the State Fire Marshal’s Office in compliance with 18-01-06.
We are here to help, so please reach out if there is anything we can do or if you have any questions that we can help with. I hope to see you all in the New Year!