NFPA Journal - September/October 2016 - 69

Firefighters put water on the remains of a New Jersey apartment complex destroyed by fire in January 2015. è partly due to two major fires in Louisville, Kentucky, and Duryea, Pennsylvania. Property loss on industrial and manufacturing properties rose to $924 million over the year before, a highly significant 47.6 percent increase. This jump was caused in part by an industrial facility fire that occurred in Okolona, Kentucky. It should be kept in mind that property loss totals can change significantly from year to year due to the impact of occasional large-loss fires. NFPA provides an annual analysis of such fires in the November/December issue of the NFPA Journal. Intentionally set fires NFPA estimates 23,000 structure fires were intentionally set in 2015, a highly significant increase of 21.1 percent over the year before. These fires resulted in an estimated 205 civilian deaths, an increase of 30.6 percent from the previous year. At the same time, though, these fires resulted in $460 million in property loss, a highly significant decrease of 25 percent compared to 2014. In 2015, there were also an estimated 10,000 intentionally set vehicle fires, 25 percent more than the year before. These fires set resulted in $74 million in property loss, a decrease of 36.2 percent from 2014. Estimates of intentionally set fires do not include allocation of fires whose causes were unknown or unreported. Description of the NFPA survey, and acknowledgements NFPA annually surveys a sample of U.S. public fire departments, stratified by the size of the community they protect, to project national estimates of the fire problem. All public fire departments that have fire response and reporting responsibilities and protect communities of 5,000 or more are included in the sample. For departments that protect a Photographs: AP/Wide World population less than 5,000, a sample is selected and stratified by the size of the community protected. A total of 2,699 fire departments responded to the 2015 fire experience survey. Our national projections are made by weighting the sample results according to the proportion of total U.S. population accounted for by communities of includes additional information like the number of fire department responses by type of call is available at nfpa.org/ fireloss. These results are based only on fires attended by public fire departments. No adjustments were made for unreported fires and losses, such as might occur when an occupant extinguishes the fire. Nor were adjustments made for fires attended solely by private fire brigades such as those at industrial and military AN ESTIMATED installation fires, or for fires extin23,000 FIRES WERE guished by fixed suppression systems to INTENTIONALLY SET which no fire department responded. NFPA is grateful to the many fire IN 2015 departments that responded to the 2015 National Fire Experience Survey each size. Point estimates are presented for their continuing efforts to provide in this article, and there is a range associ- the data necessary to make national ated with each estimate. projections. The author would also like The data and information included to thank the members of NFPA staff in the full U.S. Fire Loss report are only who worked on this year's survey, part of the fire loss picture. A more including Frank Deely, Justin Cronin, detailed and complete report on the and Jay Petrillo for editing the survey overall patterns and trends of 2015, forms and making follow-up calls to available from NFPA's Fire Analysis & fire departments, and Norma CandeResearch Division, includes patterns by loro for processing the survey forms. region and size of community, as well as a more complete description of surHYLTON HAYNES is a senior research analyst in vey methodology. The full report that NFPA's Fire Analysis and Research Division. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016 NFPA JOURNAL 69 http://www.nfpa.org/fireloss http://www.nfpa.org/fireloss

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - September/October 2016