Worth Noting
From time to time, this website will feature articles that add context to the evolution of Fire and Life Safety Education and of Community Risk Reduction. The article that follows examines fire deaths in the United States between the mid-1970's until 2021.
Downward Trend in U.S. Fire Death Rate Has Reversed By Philip Schaenman and Edward Sondik The fire prevention community had a spectacular success from the mid-1970’s to the early 2010’s. The United States and Canada had had among the highest fire death rates per capita in the Western world. Then, from 1977 to 2011, the number of U.S fire deaths dropped by nearly 60 percent, from about 7,400 deaths in 1977 to 3,005 in 2011. Given the growth in population for the U.S in this period, the reduction per capita was even more impressive, about 71 percent, from 3.4 fire deaths per 100,000 persons to 1.0 in 2011. The sustained drop was likely due to a collection of programs that resulted in an increase in the number and maintenance of smoke alarms in homes; stronger codes requiring more structures to be sprinklered; focused public fire education programs for cooking, youth fire setting, heating and other leading causes of fire; safer consumer products such as space heaters, TVs, and range tops;and encouragement of fire departments to do more prevention work, including safety visits to households. The decrease in the annual number of fire deaths also was influenced by the nationwide drop in smoking, which was the leading cause of fire deaths in this period. Improved focusing and measuring effectiveness of fire prevention was made possible by having better data from the USFA National Fire Incident Reporting System on the causes of fires—more details on the source of ignition, what got ignited, whether caused by behavior or equipment failures, the condition of the victims at the time of the fire, and other factors. The drop in fire deaths occurred while the US population increased by about 50 percent, a period during which the population also aged-- and we know that fire death rates double and triple for people over 70. It also was a period of high immigration and an increase in the number of low-income homes. But then things started to get worse. From 2011 to 2021, there was a 26 percent increase in fire deaths, from 3,005 in 2011 to 3,800 in 2021. Fire deaths per 100,000 persons increased from 0.96 to 1.13, an increase of 18 percent. (The increase in the per capita rate was less because the U.S. population increased by more than 8 percent over that decade.) Annual fire deaths are still much lower than in the 1970’s though trending upward significantly. Why this turnaround occurred is not well understood and requires further analysis. In part, it may be a slackening of prevention efforts by fire departments, despite excellent prevention and training materials available from USFA, NFPA and Vision 20/20, and many attempts to increase outreach to fire departments and the public. This book discusses what might be done to further improve fire prevention and the wider concept of community risk reduction. We hopefully can restore the downward trend in the fire death rate and mitigate other growing community risks. ------------------------ Sources: USFA and NFPA published data. Authors: Philip Schaenman, Associate Administrator, USFA, 1976-1981, and director of the National Fire Incident Reporting System. Dr. Edward Sondik, Director, US National Center for Health Statistics, 1996-2013. For additional information: pschaenman@tridata.com