In 2025, fire departments serving Hempstead responded to 484 fire and hazmat incidents . Here's the full picture.
Cooking fire, confined to container lead by count. Building fires lead by dollars. Together the top five categories make up about 86% of all calls.
Jan peaks. Mar dips. Watch for the typical fall climb starting in October.
1,812 incidents 2021–2025. Peak year was 2024. $200K cumulative property loss.
| Year | Incidents | YoY | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021* | 167 | — | |
| 2022 | 305 | — | |
| 2023 | 368 | +20.7% | |
| 2024 | 488 | +32.6% | |
| 2025 | 484 | -0.8% |
* Well below Hempstead'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 12 building fires Hempstead departments responded to in 2025, here's how they were classified once investigators were finished.
NFIRS Area of Origin (AREA_ORIG) for the 19 building fires investigators classified across 2021–2025. The room or location where ignition occurred — kitchens, bedrooms, exterior, vehicle areas — tells you where to focus prevention.
| # | Area of origin | Count | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Undetermined | 12 | 63.2% | |
| 2 | Bedroom - < 5 persons; included are jail or prison | 2 | 10.5% | |
| 3 | Corridor, mall | 1 | 5.3% | |
| 4 | Cooking area, kitchen | 1 | 5.3% | |
| 5 | Storage room, area, tank, or bin | 1 | 5.3% | |
| 6 | Ceiling & floor assembly, crawl space b/t stories | 1 | 5.3% | |
| 7 | Wall surface: exterior | 1 | 5.3% |
NFIRS Heat Source (HEAT_SOURC) — the physical thing that started it. Spark or ember from operating equipment, an open flame, smoking materials, or hot embers from a fireplace are the leading culprits nationwide. Here's the Hempstead mix.
| # | Heat source | Count | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Undetermined | 17 | 89.5% | |
| 2 | Heat from powered equipment, other | 1 | 5.3% | |
| 3 | Spark, ember or flame from operating equipment | 1 | 5.3% |
Per-capita rates let us compare apples to apples. Hempstead sits below the national average for incidents per resident.
Top 25 wildfires (1992+) in the FPA-FOD ignitions database, scaled by acres. 8,770 acres burned in this 50-mile radius. Each dot is a fire — bigger dots burned more land.
| Year | Cause | Acres | Distance | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Equipment and vehicle use | 1,000 | 36.3 mi | |
| 2012 | Arson/incendiarism | 992 | 43.1 mi | |
| 2016 | Recreation and ceremony | 641 | 43.5 mi | |
| 2016 | Recreation and ceremony | 552 | 47.9 mi | |
| 2001 | Arson/incendiarism | 485 | 49.2 mi | |
| 2012 | Smoking | 481 | 47.5 mi | |
| 2010 | Firearms and explosives use | 475 | 40.0 mi | |
| 2006 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 450 | 40.7 mi | |
| 1999 | Recreation and ceremony | 410 | 46.2 mi | |
| 2013 | Recreation and ceremony | 363 | 32.0 mi | |
| 1997 | Arson/incendiarism | 350 | 42.3 mi | |
| 1999 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 295 | 49.7 mi |
Top 10 ZIP codes by NFIRS incident count across 2021–2025. Each ZIP has its own fire profile — dive in for neighborhood-level context.
1 departments report to NFIRS for incidents in Hempstead.
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.