In 2025, fire departments serving Rush responded to 10 fire and hazmat incidents — from cooking fires to gas leaks to a single $1 building blaze. Here's the full picture.
Building fires lead by count. Building fires lead by dollars. Together the top five categories make up about 100% of all calls.
Feb peaks. Jan dips. Watch for the typical fall climb starting in October.
74 incidents 2021–2025. Peak year was 2022. $490K cumulative property loss.
| Year | Incidents | YoY | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 20 | — | |
| 2022 | 27 | +35.0% | |
| 2023 | 15 | -44.4% | |
| 2024* | 2 | — | |
| 2025 | 10 | — |
* Well below Rush'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 8 building fires Rush departments responded to in 2025, here's how they were classified once investigators were finished.
Largest single-incident property losses reported by Rush departments in 2025. These 1 fires alone account for 100% of the city's annual total.
| # | Property loss | Type | Severity | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $1 | Building fires | Significant | Investigated |
Per-capita rates let us compare apples to apples. Rush sits below the national average for incidents per resident.
Top 25 wildfires (1992+) in the FPA-FOD ignitions database, scaled by acres. 1,616 acres burned in this 50-mile radius. Each dot is a fire — bigger dots burned more land.
| Year | Cause | Acres | Distance | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 694 | 45.7 mi | |
| 2011 | Smoking | 145 | 21.1 mi | |
| 1999 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 130 | 46.2 mi | |
| 2006 | Debris and open burning | 88 | 15.3 mi | |
| 2020 | Equipment and vehicle use | 48 | 34.3 mi | |
| 2006 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 44 | 24.5 mi | |
| 2020 | Debris and open burning | 42 | 17.3 mi | |
| 2010 | Debris and open burning | 40 | 7.9 mi | |
| 2008 | Equipment and vehicle use | 40 | 28.1 mi | |
| 2001 | Recreation and ceremony | 33 | 25.1 mi | |
| 1993 | Debris and open burning | 31 | 27.7 mi | |
| 2009 | Smoking | 30 | 32.0 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 Rush. Useful comparison targets — same state, similar size, different fire profile.
1 departments report to NFIRS for incidents in Rush.
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.