In 2025, fire departments serving Columbia responded to 11 fire and hazmat incidents . Here's the full picture.
Building fires lead by count. Building fires lead by dollars. Together the top five categories make up about 91% of all calls.
Mar peaks. Jun dips. Watch for the typical fall climb starting in October.
36 incidents 2021–2025. Peak year was 2024.
| Year | Incidents | YoY | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021* | 0 | — | |
| 2022* | 3 | — | |
| 2023 | 8 | — | |
| 2024 | 14 | +75.0% | |
| 2025 | 11 | -21.4% |
* Well below Columbia's usual volume. That almost always means one or more departments didn't submit a full year to NFIRS, not that fires dropped, so no year-over-year change is shown for it.
For the 3 building fires Columbia departments responded to in 2025, here's how they were classified once investigators were finished.
Per-capita rates let us compare apples to apples. Columbia sits above the national average for incidents per resident.
Top 25 wildfires (1992+) in the FPA-FOD ignitions database, scaled by acres. 5,407 acres burned in this 50-mile radius. Each dot is a fire — bigger dots burned more land.
| Year | Cause | Acres | Distance | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Equipment and vehicle use | 770 | 8.2 mi | |
| 1998 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 657 | 8.8 mi | |
| 1994 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 515 | 9.1 mi | |
| 2001 | Debris and open burning | 495 | 10.1 mi | |
| 1993 | Arson/incendiarism | 250 | 12.1 mi | |
| 1995 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 215 | 3.3 mi | |
| 2015 | Arson/incendiarism | 206 | 40.2 mi | |
| 1999 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 205 | 15.6 mi | |
| 2013 | Arson/incendiarism | 200 | 5.2 mi | |
| 1998 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 195 | 38.7 mi | |
| 1992 | Arson/incendiarism | 177 | 10.0 mi | |
| 2004 | Arson/incendiarism | 161 | 10.7 mi |
Top 1 ZIP codes by NFIRS incident count across 2021–2025. Each ZIP has its own fire profile — dive in for neighborhood-level context.
| # | ZIP | 5-yr incidents | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 04623 | 36 |
Six Maine cities with population within ±25% of Columbia. Useful comparison targets — same state, similar size, different fire profile.
A 30-minute weekend can cut your home's exposure substantially. These four checklists are a good starting point.
Numbers reflect incidents reported by participating fire departments to the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) Public Data Release for calendar year 2025. NFIRS is voluntary — about 23,000 of roughly 30,000 US fire departments report — so totals are a strong indicator, not a complete census. Per-capita comparisons use 2023 ACS population estimates. Wildland fire data complements NFIRS with NIFC and USFS perimeters. Active-fire counts come from a dated NIFC snapshot, not a live feed.