- Author
- Hall, J. R., Jr.
- Title
- Fire in the U.S.A. and Canada.
- Coporate
- National Fire Protection Assoc., Quincy, MA
- Distribution
- AVAILABLE FROM: NFPA One Stop Data Shop, 1 Batterymarch Park, P.O. Box 9101, Quincy, MA 02269-9101. Telephone: 617-984-7540, Fax: 617-984-7478, Email: osds@nfpa.org. Website: http://www.nfpa.org
- Keywords
- fire statistics | fire losses
- Identifiers
- fire death rate; United States (U.S.A.); United Kingdom
- Abstract
- The United States of America (USA) has a population roughly nine times as large as Canadas in an area roughly the same size as Canadas. The apparent low population density of Canada as a whole is misleading, because nearly all of Canadas population lives near its southern border, within 150 miles of the USA. This also means that Canadas environmental conditions are not dramatically different from those northernmost USA states. The USA reported 33 times as many fires as did Canada in 1999. Most of this difference was in outdoor brush, grass, and trash fires and in vehicle fires. However, the ratio was 17 to 1 for USA residential fires to Canadian residential fires, which is still much larger than the population ratio, suggesting a higher per capita fire incident rate in the USA even after adjusting for differences in what is reported. Based on the 1999 exchange rate of $1.486 Canadian dollars to each USA dollar, the USA economy, measured by gross domestic product (GDP), was 14.2 times as large as the Canadian economy. This ratio is more than one-half larger than the ratio of the two countries populations. USA direct property losses to fire were about 12.1 times as large as Canadian losses.