Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The reduction of residential fire deaths is attained not only by popularization of fire protection measures such as smoke detectors and residential sprinklers, but also by many other efforts such as improvement of fire safety of appliances and furniture used in homes, popularization of fire-resistive houses, and fire safety education of the public. This paper explores a potential approach to fire death reduction by examining the factors that affect fire incidence and fire death rates, using statistical analysis of trends by age group, types of home structure, and causes of fires based on the database of fire incident reports and fire death reports in Japan. A? a result, it was found that the popularization of safer heating appliances and fire-resistive houses and/or fireproof wooden houses provides us a good prospect for reducing fire deaths in the future as a potential alternative approach besides fire protection systems. Also, the declining trend in fire death rate of older people seen in recent years will help reduce the estimated future number of fire deaths.