Residential Structure and Building Fires

The residential portion of the fire problem continues to account for the vast majority of civilian casual-ties. 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.

This report addresses residential structure fires over the 10-year period from 1996 to 2005, with a focus on 2005 data. It is organized differently from its predecessor chapters in the many editions of Fire in the United States.

As NFIRS 5.0 allows analysts to distinguish between buildings and nonbuildings, this report addresses residential structure fires in two major sections. The first section presents an overview of residential struc¬ture fires and trends for the residential subsets of one- and two-family structure fires (including mobile homes used as fixed residences, a subset of one- and two-family dwellings), multifamily structure fires (apartments, rowhouses, town houses, condominiums, and tenements), and other residential structure fires such as rooming houses, hotels/motels, and other property types reported as residential.

The second section addresses residential building fires with the above three major subsets applied to residential buildings: one- and two-family, multifamily, and other residences.

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