An extremely niche post, but for scanner listeners who wonder what the numeric codes given after the fire department responds somewhere, e.g., “We’ll be returning. Code this a 136,” the answers are varied:
- Many places seem to have their own codes. Boston uses these codes, while someone kindly scanned the codes used by Waltham here.
- There’s a national standard, NFIRS (National Fire Incident Reporting System), that people seem to want to standardize on, but change is slow. You can get the complete guide here (FEMA.gov); you probably want page 3-21, which is page 41 of the 491 page PDF.