Public data sources
Every value in the Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts 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=25; the 14 counties sum exactly to the published state total of 7,136,171.
Massachusetts Department of Fire Services
Visit source ↗MFIRS County Profiles — Fires by County, Civilian Deaths (2017-2021) · 2021
All 14 Massachusetts counties; civilian fire deaths by county, 2017-2021
Incident-based civilian fire fatalities from the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services' MFIRS 'County Profiles' (Fires by County — Civilian Deaths column). Exact, un-suppressed counts including 0 (genuine zeros printed for Dukes/Nantucket). Per-year county counts reconcile to the published statewide totals (2017:58, 2018:45, 2019:42, 2020:44, 2021:46 = 235). This is the most recent COMPLETE, internally-validated county-level window DFS publishes: standalone county civilian-death tables for 2022 and 2024 are not publicly available (the 2022 figures in the 2023 MFIRS Annual Report's comparison table are internally inconsistent and were NOT used), so the window ends at 2021 — an older vintage than the other states, disclosed accordingly.
County incident sources
Population (Census) and civilian fire deaths (Massachusetts Department of Fire Services) 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.