- Author
- Hall, J. R., Jr.
- Title
- Manufactured Home Fire Experience Through 1992 Fires. Final Report.
- Coporate
- National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA
- Report
- HUD-0006547; HUD Order No. HP94-3295, February 1995, 182 p.
- Keywords
- manufactured housing | standards | fire statistics | flame spread | smoke detectors | egress
- Identifiers
- civilian deaths; civilian injuries; overall size and trends; overall patterns; combined effects of the HUD standards; effects of specific HUD standards; statistical estimating procedures applied to the manufactured home fire problem; statistical procedures applied to the estimation of heat tape fires in manufactured homes
- Abstract
- The number of manufactured home fires and associated property damage (adjusted for inflation) have declined substantially since the advent of the HUD Standards, but the numbers of civilian deaths and injuries have declined only modestly and erratically since 1980. From 1980 to 1992, the number of fires in manufactured homes of all ages declined by 35% and the dollars of direct damage (adjusted for inflation) declined by 32%. In the same period, the number of civilian deaths decreased by 7% and the number of civilian injuries increased by 1%. Rolling averages make the death and injury trends appear somewhat better but not as good as the trend in fires. The share of manufactured home fires involving units built after 1976 has grown steadily but slowly, especially in recent years, as would be expected given the steady growth in the post-1976 share of all units. As of 1992, more than two of every five fires involving manufactured homes with known year of manufacture involved post-1976 units. Post-1976 (post-Standard) manufactured homes have much lower rates of civilian deaths and injuries per hundred fires than pre-1976 (pre-Standard) manufactured homes. Using 1980-1992 fires where the age of the unit was known, the death rate per hundred fires was 58% lower for post-1976 units, and the injury rate per hundred fires was 30% lower. As the number of HUD units in the inventory has continued to increase during the decade, overall reductions in the number of deaths and injuries and their rate of occurrence would be anticipated. Instead the number of deaths and injuries has at best modestly declined while their rates per 100 fires have significantly increased in recent years. The overall advantage of fewer civilian deaths per hundred fires in post-Standard units, as compared to pre-Standard units, has been declining significantly.