EMMITSBURG, Md. — The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) United States Fire Administration (USFA) issued the 2009 Fire Estimate Summary Series on Wednesday, which presents basic information on the size and status of the fire problem in the United States as depicted through data collected in USFA’s National Fire Incident Reporting System.
According to the data, there were approxiamtely 2,840 fire-related deaths and 12,600 injuries in residential building fires in 2009. Of the nearly $7.3 billion in fire-related damage done that year, $588 million of it was due to intentionally set fires.
Individual summaries are issued as part of the Fire Estimate Summary Series and address the size of a specific fire or fire-related issue as well as highlight important data trends. As part of this series, 17 summaries have been issued presenting basic information on the leading causes of residential building and nonresidential building fires, deaths, injuries, and dollar losses for 2009. The series also highlights overall trends in these leading causes for the five-year period of 2005 to 2009. Additional new and updated fire estimate summaries will be periodically released under this series as future year data become available.
