In 2025, fire departments serving Hillsdale responded to 12 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 92% of all calls.
Oct peaks. Mar dips. Watch for the typical fall climb starting in October.
44 incidents 2021–2025. Peak year was 2023.
| Year | Incidents | YoY | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021* | 0 | — | |
| 2022* | 1 | — | |
| 2023 | 16 | — | |
| 2024 | 15 | -6.2% | |
| 2025 | 12 | -20.0% |
* Well below Hillsdale'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 4 building fires Hillsdale departments responded to in 2025, here's how they were classified once investigators were finished.
Per-capita rates let us compare apples to apples. Hillsdale sits below the national average for incidents per resident.
Top 25 wildfires (1992+) in the FPA-FOD ignitions database, scaled by acres. 13,519 acres burned in this 50-mile radius. Each dot is a fire — bigger dots burned more land.
| Year | Cause | Acres | Distance | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Debris and open burning | 2,759 | 46.6 mi | |
| 2016 | Arson/incendiarism | 2,028 | 48.8 mi | |
| 1999 | Smoking | 700 | 24.4 mi | |
| 2016 | Recreation and ceremony | 641 | 11.8 mi | |
| 2016 | Recreation and ceremony | 552 | 16.1 mi | |
| 1994 | Smoking | 500 | 39.8 mi | |
| 2001 | Arson/incendiarism | 485 | 16.9 mi | |
| 2012 | Smoking | 481 | 18.7 mi | |
| 2010 | Firearms and explosives use | 475 | 39.0 mi | |
| 1999 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 468 | 24.4 mi | |
| 2006 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 450 | 49.9 mi | |
| 1999 | Recreation and ceremony | 410 | 17.5 mi |
Top 5 ZIP codes by NFIRS incident count across 2021–2025. Each ZIP has its own fire profile — dive in for neighborhood-level context.
Six New Jersey cities with population within ±25% of Hillsdale. Useful comparison targets — same state, similar size, different fire profile.
1 departments report to NFIRS for incidents in Hillsdale.
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.