Increase In Fires Across LI: 'Our Fire Departments Are In Desperate Need Of Volunteers'

NASSAU COUNTY, NY — Nassau County fire marshals are urging residents to volunteer – the County has seen nine structure fires this past weekend alone, with Fire Communications handling more than 400 calls for service.

Patch spoke with Assistant Chief Fire Marshal James F. Hickman at the Nassau County Fire Marshal's Office.

Of these nine structure fires, the NCFM's Office said:

• 4 were caused by accidental electrical
• 1 was caused by careless smoking,
• 1 was caused by burning debris,
• 3 remain under investigation

"There certainly has been an uptick in fires lately; however, there is no particular reason," Hickman said.

He explained that historically, calls tend to uptick on Valentine's Day based on a national statistic, but they did not see anything related to that. Forty-five fire departments and nearly 500 firefighters were involved in the nine fires this weekend, whether it was at the scene battling the fires, or standing by to cover the involved fire district, Hickman said.

If there is one thing to get across, he said, it's that "smoke detectors save lives," adding that residents should have at least one working smoke detector in their home.

"They absolutely save lives every day," Hickman said. "Not one with dead batteries, not one with no batteries. A working smoke detector."

The Nassau County Fire Service is urging Long Islanders to apply and support their fellow residents – they need firefighters. Hickman said Nassau County is almost completely served by volunteers.

"Our fire departments are in desperate need of volunteers," he said.

A LI fire company recently disbanded, with the New Hyde Park Fire Department absorbing the extra coverage area. The NHPFD Department shared a message to its community via Instagram, stating that as of Dec. 31 at 11:59 p.m., it would be providing all fire and EMS services to the Floral Park Centre community.

Floral Park Centre Fire Company disbanded on New Year's Eve in 2025 after serving its community for more than 100 years. The fire department sent a letter to residents stating that low volunteer rates, combined with state and federal regulations requiring new equipment and training standards, played a role in its closure, News12 reported.

The NCFM's Office conducts a lot of training amongst themselves and attends an incredible amount of training and classes in the county. Some of these include hazmat training, specialized fire suppression training, fire investigation training, law enforcement training, and more.

"We're like a force multiplier," he said. "We are probably the most highly-cross-trained agency in this county."

They cover hazmat material emergencies, fire investigations, inspections in general assemblies, public assemblies, industrial locations, special facilities like hospitals, colleges, and more.

"We're the only fire marshals in the county," he said.

The following statistics were provided by the NCFM Office. Working fires are what fire marshals call a Signal 10, and most likely refer to a structure fire, meaning a house, garage, factory, store – any structure, other than a car, that is actively involved in fire.

As a recap of 2025, the NCFM staff responded to a total of:

• 966 hazmat responses
• 400 fire investigations
• 13,884 complaints, tests, and inspections

Hazmat responses could include propane leaks, oil leaks, transformer oil leaks, carbon monoxide events, chemical events, etc. The NCFM Hazardous Materials Division responded to over 970 hazardous materials incidents, including 61 propane leaks or fires, and 43 incidents involving lithium-ion batteries. Nine of these lithium-ion battery incidents occurred in schools, according to fire marshals.

Over the past year, Firecom handled 72,210 calls for service. Of those thousands of calls:

• 85 were working fires
• 28 rose to a 2nd alarm
• 4 rose to a 3rd alarm
• 2 rose to a 5th alarm

The other thousands of calls could be from ambulance calls, vehicle crashes, automatic alarms that did not turn into working fires, reports of fires that did not turn into anything, hazardous material incidents, Goodwill calls, brush fires, etc. These 72,210 calls came into Nassau County Fire Communications. FireCom takes in calls for the entire County.

Not all of Nassau County's fire departments utilize FireCom, but it has been available to the County since 1973. FireCom handles somewhere between 30 and 40 fire departments full-time, and there are 70 fire departments in the County – some of those have their own dispatch agencies.

In 2024, Nassau County fire departments responded to 231 working fires, with Hempstead FD and Westbury FD tied for the most with 14 working fires each. Long Beach FD came in 3rd with responding to 11 working fires. Field Communications was deployed to 17 emergencies, as well as several planned events.

Ten new fire marshal trainees have joined the NCFM's Office and will most likely finish their training in 2027, as it's about a 2-year training period for a new fire marshal. They will be assigned to any of several divisions in the Office, including helping with hazmat, general inspections, industrial inspections, etc.

To take the Civil Service Test to be a NC Fire Marshal, a person has to have three years of service in a NC volunteer fire department at the time of hire and still be an active volunteer firefighter.

For what's new in 2026, the National Emergency Response Information System (NERIS) became the only federal reporting system. Previously, NFIRS was the reporting system for 50 years, but it has shut down, and NERIS has taken over. Fire marshals said NERIS should give more current and up-to-date statistics about trends in the fire service.