- Author
- U.S. Fire Administration | Federal Emergency Management Agency
- Title
- Residential Structure and Building Fires.
- Coporate
- U.S. Fire Administration, Washington, DC Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington, DC
- Keywords
- residential buildings | building fires | fire statistics | NFIRS | costs | fire data | fire losses | smoke detectors | fire protection | structures | fire alarm systems | housing | fire extinguishing agents | effectiveness | methodology
- Identifiers
- National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS); national estimates; trend data; cause categories; when fires occur; unreported fires; types of residential structures; one- and two-family residential structures; multifamily residential structures; time of fire alarm; month of year; day of week; confined fires; nonconfined fires; smoke alarm performance
- Abstract
- The residential portion of the fire problem continues to account for the vast majority of civilian casualties. National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) estimates show that, while residential structure fires account for only 25 percent of fires nationwide, they account for a disproportionate share of losses: 83 percent of fire deaths, 77 percent of fire injuries, and 64 percent of direct dollar losses. Analyses of the residential structure fire problem were published formerly as a chapter in each edition of Fire in the United States. The most recent edition of Fire in the United States, the fourteenth edition published in August 2007, featured an abbreviated chapter on residential structures. This full report is the most current snapshot of the residential fire problem as reflected in the 2005 National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) data and the 2005 NFPA survey data. In this report, as in previous chapters in Fire in the United States, an attempt has been made to keep the data presentation and analysis as straightforward as possible. It is also the desire of the United States Fire Administration (USFA) to make the report widely accessible to many different users, so it avoids unnecessarily complex methodology.