- Author
- U.S. Fire Administration
- Title
- Investigation of Confined Structure Fires.
- Coporate
- U.S. Fire Administration, Washington, DC
- Journal
- Topical Fire Research Series, Vol. 5, No. 8, 1-5, February 2006
- Keywords
- structures | fire investigations | injuries | fire statistics | fire losses | costs | fire spread | human factors engineering | smoke detectors | NFIRS
- Identifiers
- confined fires and unreported fires; distribution of fires; fires with content loss only; month of year; time of day; 2002 loss measures for confined structure fires; confined structure fires by incident type (2002); dollar loss summary, confined structure fires (2002); monthly incidence of confined structure fires by general type of incident (2002)
- Abstract
- Findings: (*) Confined structure fires account for 37% of all reported structure fires and 38% of residential structure fires. (*) Per fire, confined fire losses are far lower than the average structure fires. Less than 14% of confined structure fires reported losses. (*) More than half (57%) of all confined structure fires are confined cooking fires. (*) Inattentive behavior is the most common human factor that results in confined fires. Confined structure fires are small fire incidents that are limited in scope, are confined to noncombustible containers, rarely result in serious injury or large content losses, and are expected to have no accompanying property losses due to flame damage. This topical report is a summary of a detailed analysis of the characteristics of small fires that occur in structures that are contained or confi ned as recorded in the U.S. Fire Administration's (USFA's) National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS).