- Author
-
Hall, J. R., Jr.
- Title
- Total Cost of Fire in the United States.
- Coporate
- National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA
- Report
-
NFPA No. USS13
February 2008
29 p.
- Keywords
-
costs
|
fire statistics
|
fire losses
|
fire departments
|
fire insurance
|
building construction
|
fire protection
|
fire fighters
- Identifiers
- total cost of fire in 2005 fact sheet; estimates of economic loss; summary of the core of total cost of fire; estimates of human loss; value of donated time of volunteer fire fighters
- Abstract
- The total cost of fire in the United States is defined to be a combination of the losses caused by fire and the money spent to prevent worse losses, by preventing fires, containing them, detecting them quickly, and suppressing them effectively. For 2005, that total cost is estimated at $267-294 billion, or roughly 2 to 2½% of U.S. gross domestic product. Property loss - reported or unreported, direct or indirect -- represents only $12.7 billion of this total. The net costs of insurance coverage ($15.9 billion), the cost of career fire departments ($30.7 billion), building costs for fire protection ($45.9 billion), other economic costs ($39.9 billion), the monetary value of donated time from volunteer firefighters ($80-107 billion), and the estimated monetary equivalent for the deaths and injuries due to fire ($41.6 billion), all are larger components than property loss.