In 2025, fire departments serving Hillcrest responded to 10 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 90% of all calls.
Dec peaks. Jan dips. Watch for the typical fall climb starting in October.
70 incidents 2021–2025. Peak year was 2023.
| Year | Incidents | YoY | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021* | 3 | — | |
| 2022 | 11 | — | |
| 2023 | 35 | +218.2% | |
| 2024 | 11 | -68.6% | |
| 2025 | 10 | -9.1% |
* Well below Hillcrest'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 0 building fires Hillcrest departments responded to in 2025, here's how they were classified once investigators were finished.
Per-capita rates let us compare apples to apples. Hillcrest sits below the national average for incidents per resident.
Top 25 wildfires (1992+) in the FPA-FOD ignitions database, scaled by acres. 17,745 acres burned in this 50-mile radius. Each dot is a fire — bigger dots burned more land.
| Year | Cause | Acres | Distance | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Smoking | 2,855 | 48.5 mi | |
| 2015 | Debris and open burning | 2,759 | 39.4 mi | |
| 2016 | Arson/incendiarism | 2,028 | 41.0 mi | |
| 2006 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 998 | 48.5 mi | |
| 2001 | Smoking | 866 | 48.9 mi | |
| 1999 | Smoking | 700 | 16.0 mi | |
| 2016 | Recreation and ceremony | 641 | 4.5 mi | |
| 2016 | Recreation and ceremony | 552 | 8.7 mi | |
| 2001 | Smoking | 550 | 45.1 mi | |
| 1994 | Smoking | 500 | 38.5 mi | |
| 2001 | Arson/incendiarism | 485 | 10.2 mi | |
| 2012 | Smoking | 481 | 10.2 mi |
Top 3 ZIP codes by NFIRS incident count across 2021–2025. Each ZIP has its own fire profile — dive in for neighborhood-level context.
Six New York cities with population within ±25% of Hillcrest. 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.