The Fire Problem

Many Americans believe "fires can only happen to other people...not to me, and not in my home". Yet over 80 percent of fire deaths occur in the home.

According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), fire is the third leading cause of accidental death. Residential occupancies account for most fire fatalities and most of these deaths occur at night during the sleeping hours. 1.5 million Americans are injured by fire each year. It is estimated that each household will experience three (usually unreported) fires per decade and two fires serious enough to report to a fire department per lifetime.

Even though 92% of homes in America have smoke detectors today, the fire death rate does not reflect any decrease in deaths due to this protection. The United States has one of the highest fire death rates in the industrialized world, with home fires as a leading cause of death in children. To put the fire epidemic into perspective, each year fire kills more Americans than all natural disasters combined, and kills more children than polio did as a run away epidemic. According to the Burn Awareness Center, burns are the number one cause of accidental death in children under the age of 2, the second cause of accidental death in children from ages 1-4, and the third for ages 1-18.