What actually changed in the 2027 Standard Incident Report

Every Ontario fire department files a Standard Incident Report for every emergency it attends. On January 1, 2027 the form those reports go on changes — the first real revision since 2009.

This is a plain reading of what changed. It is not a sales pitch and it is not advice about software: most departments will file the 2027 SIR exactly the way they file it today.

The dates that matter

Date	What happens
January 1, 2027	Incidents from this date on must be reported in the 2027 format
Through 2027	Incidents dated 2026 or earlier still go in the 2009 format
End of April 2027	First quarterly filing under the new form (January–March)

That second row is the one departments miss. The two formats run side by side for a while. A late January call-out written up in February is a 2027 record; a December 2026 incident you're still finishing is a 2009 record, and it stays one.

Sixty-three new fields

The Office of the Fire Marshal's technical requirements count them section by section:

Section	Applies to	New fields
A	Every emergency response	19
B	Fires and explosions	2
C	Structure fires and explosions	3
D	Carbon monoxide in structures — entirely new	33
Injury form	Every injury and fatality	6

Section D is more than half of it, and it is new from nothing. If your department attends carbon monoxide calls — and nearly all do — that is the change that will take the most work.

Every response and property code was renumbered

Not revised. Renumbered. The response type that was 1 is now 1001. The property type that was 101 is now 1101. The OFM's own note on the code list reads "ALL code numbers have been changed."

If a code is written on a paper form, in a spreadsheet column, or hard-coded in a report someone built years ago, it now means nothing or — worse — it means something else.

Beyond the renumbering, 20 response codes and 17 property codes were removed from the lists and have no row in the OFM's crosswalk. Be careful how you read that: in most cases the occupancy still exists and has been split into something more specific. "Group Home" became two codes, one for care and one for residential. Long-term care, retirement homes and rooming houses all have 2027 destinations. Barns and silos moved into a new agriculture group.

What's genuinely gone is thinner than the count suggests — "Cottage" has no successor label, and so does the old catch-all "No loss outdoor fire".

The problem isn't that you can't code the call in 2027. It's that a 2009 record carrying a deleted code has nowhere to land if somebody converts your history — and the crosswalk won't tell you, because a deleted code simply isn't in it.

We'll come back to the deletions in a later post, because the migration question is genuinely awkward and deserves its own.

A new section, and a fourth file

Carbon monoxide incidents used to be one response code and very little else. In 2027 a CO call in a structure carries its own section: where the CO came from, what fuel, the likely cause, the area and level of origin, whether there was a CO alarm, whether it worked, what type it was, and how many people left because of it.

For departments that file by electronic transfer rather than through the OFM's website, that means a fourth output file alongside the ones for fires and other emergencies.

The injury form changed too, and in a direction worth noticing

Six new fields, and they're clinical rather than administrative: initial impression or assessment, body site of the main injury, treatment or care provided, whether a cardiac arrest occurred, the initial arrest rhythm, and the patient's status when handed to paramedics.

Between them they carry 81 new codes. If your injury reports are currently written by whoever has the clipboard, that will need a conversation with whoever actually treated the patient.

What to settle before January

Nothing here requires a purchase. It requires knowing four things:

How you file today — through the OFM's website, or by sending files. The answer changes what work is involved. If you send files, they have to be tested with the OFM before you file for real.
Who fills the form in, and whether that person has seen the 2027 version yet.
Whether you attend CO calls, and who will be answering thirty-three new questions about them.
What you'd lose if your pre-2027 records stopped lining up with your post-2027 ones.

None of those take money to answer. All of them take longer in January than they do in September.

Sourced from the 2027 Standard Incident and Injury Reporting Manual and the 2027 SIR Electronic Data Transfer Technical Requirements (last updated 2025-11-13), supplied by the Office of the Fire Marshal. This is an unofficial summary and not OFM guidance. Departments should confirm anything that affects their filing with OFMstatistics@ontario.ca, and the current requirements are announced through the Fire Marshal's communiqués.