- Author
- Meade, W. P.
- Title
- First Pass at Computing the Cost of Fire Safety in a Modern Society.
- Coporate
- Herndom Group, Inc., Chapel Hill, NC
- Sponsor
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Keywords
- building codes | building construction | costs | economic factors | fire departments | fire protection | fire safety
- Identifiers
- changing face of fire safety; computing the cost of fire; analyzing the cost of fire; impace of CFR program on total costs of fire
- Abstract
- The total cost of fire in the United States is estimated at $115 billion, plus another $13 billion for the economic cost of fire deaths and injuries. This is considerably higher than previously estimated. Several major components of the problem had not been explicitly estimated before. Also, the costs of fire to industry have been increasing because of the vulnerability of high technology to even small fires. This report describes the major components of the total cost of fire, and provides new estimates for each. (A companion report estimates the impacts of the CFR program on the various cost components.) While the scope of this effort permitted only rough estimtes to be made, the order of magnitude that emerges is clear.