- Author
- Hall, J. R., Jr.
- Title
- Fire in the U.S. and Canada.
- Coporate
- National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA
- Keywords
- death | injuries | damage | fire incidence | fire statistics | fire fatalities
- Abstract
- The United States (U.S.) has a population roughly nine times as large as Canada's in an area roughly the same size as Canada's. The apparent low population density of Canada as a whole is misleading, because nearly all of Canada's population lives near its southern border, within 150 miles of the U.S. This also means that Canada's environmental conditions are not dramatically different from those northernmost U.S. states. The U.S. reported 31 times as many fires as did Canada in 2001. Most of this difference was in outdoor brush, grass, and trash fires and in vehicle fires. However, the ratio was 18 to 1 for U.S. 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 U.S. even after adjusting for differences in what is reported. Based on the 2001 exchange rate of $1.549 Canadian dollars to each U.S. dollar, the U.S. economy, measured by gross domestic product (GDP), was 14.4 times as large as the Canadian economy. This ratio is more than one-half larger than the ratio of the two countries' populations. U.S. direct property losses to fire were about 11.5 times as large as Canadian losses, if the unique events of September 11, 2001, are excluded.