GlossaryFire and EMS reporting
Civilian fire casualty
A civilian fire casualty is a person outside the fire department who is injured or killed as a result of a fire under the applicable reporting rules.
A civilian fire casualty is a person outside the fire department who is injured or killed as a result of a fire under the applicable reporting rules. “Casualty” includes injuries as well as deaths. It is a person-based measure and should not be read as the number of fires or all medical patients at a scene.
Reading historical fire records
The U.S. Fire Administration's NFIRS guidance explains that civilians include emergency personnel who are not members of the fire department. Its fire-related scope includes specified injuries while escaping, attempting rescue, or controlling a fire. This page uses that historical National Fire Incident Reporting System context, rather than presenting NFIRS as the system for 2026 incident submissions.
A table needs separate injury and death columns and an identified reporting system. An incident can have several casualties; many incidents have none. Counting incidents with casualties differs from counting injured or deceased people.
Example
Hypothetical example: One apartment fire results in two civilian injuries and no civilian deaths. Another fire has no casualties. A monthly table therefore shows two fires and two civilian injuries.
The identical totals are coincidental: they measure events and people. Saying “two fatal fires” would be incorrect because no deaths were recorded. Likewise, medical assistance to an unrelated bystander would need its own reporting assessment.
Common confusion
“Civilian” in this context does not simply mean “not an emergency worker.” A police officer can be a civilian for fire-casualty reporting while a firefighter is recorded in a different category.
A casualty total without a severity split cannot be relabeled a fatality total.
Source differences
Check the source's injury threshold, fire-related requirement, aid-reporting rules, and revision practices. For NERIS or a local dashboard, use that system's definitions rather than assume every historical NFIRS rule transfers unchanged.