NFIRS Data Warehouse Reports Tool 

Local Fire Department User 

Quick Start Guide

Valid as of June 12, 2023

Mission Statement

We support and strengthen fi re and emergency medical 

services and stakeholders to prepare for, prevent, mitigate 

and respond to all hazards.

Local Fire Department User Quick Start Guide 1

The National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) Data Warehouse (DW) is a free 

reports tool accessible with an active eNFIRS account with the appropriate permissions. 

It allows the user to create summary reports based on incident data entered in the 

NFIRS database, and users can look at all data from their own fire department and 

released data only from other departments from around the country. The reports 

offered in the DW include reports from the Summary Output Reports Tool that many 

users are familiar with and contain additional reports that can be used to better 

assist fire departments, from the areas of data quality and fire causes to summaries 

to analysis and more. Data in the NFIRS DW is refreshed nightly.

Before you begin

ĵ Use Windows as your operating system and Microsoft Edge as your browser.

ĵ Ask your NFIRS State Program Manager to give you EDW – Read Only

permissions in your NFIRS user account profile.

ĵ If you need assistance, reach out to your NFIRS State Program Manager. You 

may find your NFIRS State Program Manager’s contact information at https://

www.usfa.fema.gov/pocs/.

1. Log into eNFIRS at https://www.nfirs.fema.gov. Click the Access NFIRS Data 

Warehouse button at the bottom left of the page. If you do not see the DW button, 

your account does not have the correct permissions. Please contact your NFIRS 

State Program Manager for assistance.
2 NFIRS Data Warehouse Reports Tool

2. When prompted, click Continue.

3. A new tab in your browser will open and you will land on the BI Launch Pad. Click 

the Folders tile.

4. On the left-hand menu, click the arrows to expand the folders in the following 

order: Public Folders > NFIRS > Standard Reports.
Local Fire Department User Quick Start Guide 3

5. In this example, we are going to run the Summary By Incident Type report for 

a fire department. Locate and click on the folder Incident Type. Then find the 

report, Summary By Incident Type, in the main section pane.

6. Right-click the report name. Then click Schedule in the drop-down menu.

7. Under the General tab, rename the Title to easily find the report later. In this 

example, we will title it “Summary By Incident Type - Bamberg FD 2022.”

8. Under the General tab, click Add under the subheading Delivery Destinations.
4 NFIRS Data Warehouse Reports Tool

9. In the pop-up window, uncheck Default Enterprise Location and select BI Inbox 

as the destination. When the report is done processing, retrieve it on the DW 

homepage under BI Inbox.

10. Select the checkbox for Use default settings. Click Confirm at the bottom right 

of the window.

 

11. Click the Report Features tab. Click Edit Prompt Values on the right-hand side 

of the screen.
Local Fire Department User Quick Start Guide 5

12. All the prompts with an icon to the left need to have at least 1 value selected. Click 

Enter Value(s) for State. You can view all possible fields by clicking the clockwise 

arrow icon (Refresh) and selecting the appropriate checkbox. Select only your state.

13. For the Enter From Date field, manually type the date in the lookup field and click 

Search or Manual Entry to select, or select the calendar icon near the top right 

of the window. The time portion is not used. Leave “12:00:00 AM” as the default 

time. To do the entire calendar year for 2022, select 1/1/2022 as the From Date.
6 NFIRS Data Warehouse Reports Tool

14. Repeat Step 13 for Enter To Date but change the date to 12/31/2022. To see each 

year individually, you must run separate reports for each year, otherwise, you 

will get the total for all the years in the timespan for which the report is 

retrieving data.

15. Select Enter value(s) for Fire Department ID. Use the Search to find your fire 

department ID (FDID) or Fire Department name. To search for your FDID, enter 

your FDID in the search window, then underscore and your state abbreviation (e.g., 

05301_SC), or you can search by name.
Local Fire Department User Quick Start Guide 7

16. All prompts should be reviewed and updated as needed. To edit prompts and 

remove selected values, select the prompt, click the checkbox icon and click the 

X’s for values that you want to remove from the selected prompts.

17. Click Apply.

18. Click Schedule on the bottom right of the window.
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19. The next screen that loads is the History page, which includes a list of scheduled 

report instances. While the report is running, a blue half-circle icon will appear. 

When the report is complete, a green check mark will appear next to the name of 

the report and the status will show Success. To view the report later, you can find a 

copy in the BI Inbox tile on the Data Warehouse’s Launch Pad. View the History

page anytime by going back to the report in the Standard Reports folders, then 

right-clicking on the report and selecting History.

20. After the green check mark appears, click the report to open. You can also click 

the 3 dots to the right of the title and select View.

21. You will see your report with multiple tabs. The first tab, in this example, is Report, 

which contains the summary report. The second tab, Parameters, contains the 

parameters used to run the query. While not all standard reports have multiple 

tabs, they will have at least 2: the main report and the parameters.
Local Fire Department User Quick Start Guide 9

22. To export your report, click the icon that looks like a down arrow over a horizontal 

line. A pop-up window appears (see Step 22 and Step 23).

23. You can export the report in PDF format with the same look as what is currently 

on the screen by clicking PDF and Reports. See the image below.
10 NFIRS Data Warehouse Reports Tool

24. For situations when you would like the data in an easy-to-use Excel format, you 

can export to Excel by clicking on Excel, the radio button for Reports and then 

All Reports. See the image below.

25. To rerun a completed report with different prompts, go to the History page by 

going to the report in the Standard Reports folder, right-clicking the report name 

and selecting History. Then, right-click on a report instance and click Reschedule. 

Review and update the report options/prompts as needed and click Schedule.
Local Fire Department User Quick Start Guide 11

Helpful tips

ĵ For best performance, do not attempt to run a large data set. You will run into 

errors and must start over! If you keep running into errors, close your browser 

and start a new DW session. If the errors continue, contact your NFIRS State 

Program Manager.

ĵ Until you are comfortable using DW, we recommend against using the features 

not described in this Quick Guide. Keep practicing scheduling, viewing and 

downloading reports so you can learn the skills with scheduling a report.

ĵ You can see your data whether it is released or unreleased. You can see data 

outside of your fire department or state only if the data is released. Released 

data, which includes valid and no activity data only, is typically ready by July 1 

of the following calendar year. 

ĵ Reminder: Data in the NFIRS DW is refreshed nightly. Incidents entered or 

imported will not show up in the DW until the next day. Also, account information 

with new users with DW permissions is refreshed nightly. Please allow 1 day 

for new accounts to be refreshed in the DW.

ĵ If you need assistance, reach out to your NFIRS State Program Manager. You 

may find your NFIRS State Program Manager’s contact information at https://

www.usfa.fema.gov/pocs/.
16825 South Seton Ave.

Emmitsburg, MD 21727

usfa.fema.gov

Valid as of June 12, 2023