When a fire chief starts evaluating response technology, the first question isn't usually about features — it's about fit. Will this work for a department like mine? Does it solve the problems I'm actually dealing with? Can my budget handle it? Will my people use it?

Those are fair questions, and they deserve straight answers. StreetWise is a suite of response, command, preplanning, and station alerting tools built specifically for fire and EMS operations. But "specifically for fire and EMS" covers a lot of ground — from large combination departments running thousands of calls a year to volunteer stations staffed by a handful of dedicated members responding off their personal phones.

Not every department needs every product, and the right starting point depends on your size, your budget, your operational challenges, and the technology you already have in place. This guide is designed to help you figure out where you fit and what makes sense for your department.

TL;DR: StreetWise serves fire and EMS departments of all sizes — from volunteer stations to large combination departments — with a modular product suite that supports tiered adoption. Whether your biggest challenge is EMS data accuracy, volunteer coordination, NERIS compliance, mutual aid interoperability, or accreditation documentation, there's a practical entry point that fits your budget and grows with your operation.

The volunteer firefighter shortage isn't new, but it's getting worse. The numbers tell a stark story:

• 897,750 volunteer firefighters in the U.S. in 1984 — the first year the NFPA began tracking
• 676,900 volunteer firefighters by 2020 — the lowest number ever recorded, a 25% decline over four decades (NFPA U.S. Fire Department Profile)
• 40% U.S. population growth during that same period, meaning far more people are depending on far fewer volunteers
• Tripled call volume, driven largely by the increase in emergency medical calls (National Volunteer Fire Council Fact Sheet)

The scale of the crisis is hard to overstate. Volunteers comprise 65% of all firefighters in the United States. More than 80% of fire departments are all-volunteer or mostly-volunteer. The time donated by volunteer firefighters saves communities an estimated $46.9 billion per year (NVFC Fact Sheet). When those volunteers disappear, communities don't just lose fire protection — they lose a service that most municipal budgets simply cannot afford to replace with career staff.

Here's a number that should reshape how every fire chief thinks about technology: 64% of all fire department runs in the United States are EMS and rescue calls. Only 4% are actual fires (U.S. Fire Administration, Fire Department Overall Run Profile). For combination departments — the departments most likely to be weighing technology investments right now — the ratio is often even more lopsided.

Spokane County Fire Protection District 8, for example, responds to approximately 4,500 calls annually, with EMS comprising the majority of their responses. They're not unusual. Across the country, the fire service has evolved into a predominantly medical response service that also fights fires.

It has been just over a year since the National Emergency Response Information System (NERIS) began its phased rollout across the United States. In that time, fire departments from coast to coast have navigated one of the most significant operational transitions the fire service has seen in decades — the shift from the legacy National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS), which had served as the foundation for fire incident data collection since 1975, to a modern, cloud-based reporting and analytics platform built for today's all-hazards environment.