Public data sources
Every value in the Washington 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 Washington 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=53; the 39 counties sum exactly to the published state total of 7,958,180.
Washington State Fire Marshal's Office
Visit source ↗Fire in Washington 2024 — Fire Fatalities by County (2020-2024) · 2024
All 39 Washington counties; civilian fire fatalities by county of incident, 2020-2024
Incident-based civilian fire fatalities (counted where the fire occurred), reported by fire departments via NFIRS and compiled by the Washington State Fire Marshal's Office in its annual 'Fire in Washington' report. Exact, un-suppressed counts including 0/1/2. Notes on source reconciliation: (a) the per-county table omits Island County, but the listed counties reconcile exactly to the published statewide totals, so Island is 0 in every year; (b) a stray 'Kennewick' row (a NFIRS miscode — Kennewick is a city in Benton County) reports 1 fatality in 2024 that is not attributable to a Census county and is excluded, so the 39-county total is 369 vs the report's published 370; (c) King County's printed 5-year total (75) is a typo — its by-year cells (sum 72) are used and reconcile to the statewide totals.
County incident sources
Population (Census) and civilian fire deaths (Washington 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.