FireVerge is built entirely on public data. Here is every dataset we use, what it provides, and who publishes it, so you can check our work at the source.
Published by: FEMA / U.S. Fire Administration (USFA)
Our primary dataset: standardized incident records reported by fire departments — fire type, ignition cause, area of origin, property loss, and casualties. FireVerge uses the five most recent reporting years (2021–2025).
Published by: National Interagency Fire Center
Current active wildfire incidents and the historical interagency fire-perimeter record used for state and regional wildfire pages and maps.
Published by: FEMA
County-level wildfire risk scores (0–100) and ratings, shown on county and ZIP pages. We use the December 2025 release, pulled from FEMA's public NRI feature service.
Published by: U.S. Census Bureau
Official place and county geography plus population figures — the basis for our per-capita rate normalization.
Published by: SimpleMaps
Reference geography linking cities, ZIP codes, counties, and coordinates, used to resolve places and build the URL structure.
These are not on the site yet. Where a page mentions them today, it links to the agency directly.
Published by: USDA Forest Service (K. Short, RDS-2013-0009.6)
Planned use: A quality-controlled record of U.S. wildfire ignitions from 1992–2020 with location, size, and cause — powering our wildfire cause breakdowns.
Published by: National Weather Service (NOAA)
Planned use: Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches that indicate conditions where fires can ignite and spread rapidly.
Published by: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Planned use: Ground-level air-quality (AQI) readings and forecasts used for wildfire-smoke and air-quality features.
Published by: NASA
Planned use: Satellite thermal-anomaly (hotspot) detections from the VIIRS and MODIS sensors, used to show recent fire activity.
Our methodology page explains how these datasets are parsed, joined, normalized, and validated to produce the pages on FireVerge. Spot an issue with how a source is represented? Email data@fireverge.com.