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Dispatched but Nobody Responded: How to Report It to NERIS

Every volunteer department has calls where the tones drop and nobody is able to go. Someone has to decide what happens to that incident record. Deleting it hides a fact your department needs to know about itself, and guessing at details makes the federal record wrong. This article covers what to record so the incident tells the truth: you were dispatched, and no unit responded.

The Short Version

  1. Keep the incident. It was a real dispatch. Archive it only if your department was never part of the call.
  2. Keep the incident type CAD dispatched it as. The type describes what the call was, not how it went. A structure fire nobody responded to is still a structure fire.
  3. Say which units did not go. If CAD dispatched specific units, mark each one "Unable to dispatch." That is the flag NERIS provides for a unit that was toned and never rolled. If your department is toned as a whole and no unit ever existed on the call, leave the responding resources empty. NERIS accepts an incident with no unit responses.
  4. Do not add patients, actions, or narrative you cannot vouch for. If nobody from your department made contact, there is nothing to report in those sections.
  5. Check the times on Basic Info, and set a Completed time. A CAD sheet lists every agency on the call, so the en route and on scene times on an imported incident may belong to another agency's unit, not yours. Clear any that are not your department's. Then set the Completed time to when dispatch closed the call, so the incident leaves the Responding board.

Why Not Just Cancel It?

NERIS has a "Cancelled" disposition, and it is tempting to use it for every call that went nowhere. It means something specific: the request for service was withdrawn. Dispatch cancelled you, or the caller cancelled, or another agency arrived and released you before you responded.

A call where you were toned and simply could not muster a crew was not cancelled. Marking it that way removes the one fact that matters most for your own planning and for the national picture of volunteer response: you were needed and could not go. Use "Cancelled" when dispatch actually cancelled you, and "Unable to dispatch" on the units when they did not.

Which Incident Type to Choose

Use whatever the call was dispatched as. If CAD toned it out as a medical call, choose the matching medical type. If it was a fire alarm, choose the alarm type. Do not pick a "no emergency" type just because your department did not respond; those types describe what responders found, and nobody from your department found anything.

Two exceptions:

  • Dispatch cancelled the call before anyone went. Use the "Cancelled" type under No Emergency, and set the no-action reason to Cancelled. That is the true story of the call.
  • You later learn the call was nothing. For example, dispatch tells you it was a false alarm and nobody responded from any agency. Record the false alarm type if you are confident, and still mark your units unable to dispatch.

How to Mark a Unit Unable to Dispatch

On the incident's Resources tab, add the unit that was toned, then check Unable to dispatch. Command Established clears any en route, on scene, and cleared times for that unit, since none of those happened, and asks you to confirm. Leave the crew empty; a unit that never left has no crew to report.

If your department is toned out as a whole rather than by unit, CAD may show no unit at all. Leave the responding resources empty. Do not add an apparatus that was never on the call; the truthful record is a dispatch with no unit response, and NERIS accepts exactly that. Command Established shows an advisory on the Response tab so that an empty list is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight, and the advisory does not stop you from sending the incident for review or submitting it.

If some members went and some did not, only the units that never rolled get the flag. A unit that went en route and was turned around gets a canceled-en-route time instead.

Medical Calls That EMS Handled

This is the most common version of the question. A medical call comes in, your department and the ambulance are both dispatched, and your members stand down because EMS is already rolling and there is little the fire department would add. Now NERIS wants a medical incident, and you have nothing but the CAD sheet.

Here is what to do, and what not to do.

  • Keep the medical incident type. That is what was dispatched.
  • Mark your units unable to dispatch, or leave the resources empty if no unit was ever dispatched, as above.
  • Do not record a patient. NERIS does not require a patient record on a medical incident, and Command Established will not ask for one. Patient evaluation, care, and disposition are statements about what your responders did. If nobody from your department made patient contact, you cannot make those statements. Leave the patient section empty.
  • Do not copy details from the CAD sheet into patient fields. The dispatcher's notes about the caller's complaint are not an evaluation. They are also the patient's private information, which is why Command Established does not send the narrative of a medical incident to NERIS at all.
  • Check the incident-level times. On an incident imported from CAD, the en route and on scene times on Basic Info may belong to another agency's unit, and on a medical call that is usually the ambulance. Clear them unless they are your own. Leaving an ambulance's arrival on your record makes it your response time in every report.
  • Set the Completed time to when dispatch closed the call. Without it the incident stays on the Responding board as an open call.
  • If dispatch or EMS formally cancelled you, set the no-action reason to Cancelled. If you simply did not turn out, leave it unset. The unable-to-dispatch flags carry that meaning on their own.

The result is a NERIS record that says: a medical call was dispatched, no unit from this department responded, and this department had no patient contact. That is accurate, it is complete as far as NERIS is concerned, and it is submitted without anyone pretending to have been there.

What Your Own Reports Will Show

Incidents recorded this way count as calls your department was dispatched to, with zero responding personnel. A unit marked unable to dispatch is not counted as an apparatus response or as a use of that apparatus. Over time that gives you a clear picture of when and where you are unable to turn out, which is the first thing you need when making the case for more members, a duty crew, or an automatic-aid agreement. Members who reported to the station but never went out can still be recorded as station responders for call credit; that is separate from the unit response and does not go to NERIS.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I archive these instead? Only if your department was never a responding agency on the call, for example an ambulance-only run that your CAD sends you anyway. If you were dispatched, keep the record. If you have already submitted it to NERIS, archiving it here does not remove it there, so correct the NERIS record first.

Do I need to write a narrative? No. A short note such as "No response, EMS handled" is fine for your own records. It is not required, and it does not go to NERIS on a medical incident.

What if CAD shows our unit going en route and then clearing right away? That is a unit that responded and was released, not one that was unable to dispatch. Record the en route time and use the canceled-en-route field.