Public data sources
Every value in the Delaware Fireground Index traces to one of these authoritative public sources. Click any source to verify it yourself.
U.S. Census Bureau
Visit source ↗Population Estimates Program (PEP), Vintage 2024 (July 1, 2024) · 2024
All Delaware counties, annual
Official annual resident-population estimate; the series behind Census QuickFacts (fact PST045224). Values transcribed from the PEP Vintage 2024 county-level bulk file (co-est2024-alldata) filtered to STATE=10; the 3 counties sum exactly to the published state total of 1,051,917.
Delaware Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM)
Visit source ↗OSFM Annual Reports — Fire Deaths by county · 2025
All 3 Delaware counties (New Castle, Kent, Sussex); civilian fire deaths by county (incident county), FY2021-FY2025.
Incident-based civilian fire deaths from the Delaware Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM) annual reports. Each report's "Fire Deaths" section gives a per-county (New Castle / Kent / Sussex) breakdown and enumerates a record-level incident card for every fatality (date, location resolving to county, cause). Exact and unsuppressed — every county is listed explicitly, including zero-death counties (FY2021 Sussex = 0), so absence of a death is a true zero, not merely unreported. Excludes firefighter line-of-duty deaths. The window is FISCAL years (Jul 1 - Jun 30), keyed by the ending fiscal year. Per-county counts sum exactly to each report's stated statewide total each year (8/21/8/20/9 = 66). FY2023's per-county split is derived from the report's donut percentages (50%/12%/38% of 8), which yield a unique integer split of 4/1/3.
County incident sources
Population (Census) and civilian fire deaths (Delaware Office of the State Fire Marshal) cover every county. Incident/response figures are published individually by 0 counties, each with its own definition and reporting year — those county sources are cited on each county’s evidence profile. Counties without a public incident source are shown honestly as “Data not publicly available.”
See the methodology.