Injuries from Fires

According to the Centers for Disease Control, CDC, fire is the fifth most common cause of unintentional death in the United States. When it comes to death from a home injury, fire is the third leading cause. Overall, the United States is sixth among the twenty five developed countries that provide information regarding their mortality rates from fires.

Over the last two and a half decades or so, the number of fatalities and injuries that are caused by residential fires has declined, but the number is still too high considering how preventable many of the fire-related deaths are. In this regard, residential fires remain a significant public health problem.

In 2006, a person died in a fire or because of a fire every 162 minutes. In the same year, a person was injured by a fire roughly every half an hour. Of the deaths that occurred every 162 minutes, 80% of those deaths occurred at home. This gave the United States 2,580 deaths from fires and 12,925 injuries from fires, and neither figure counts the firefighters who responded to 412,500 fires that year.

Interestingly enough, the majority of deaths from fires are due to smoke or toxic gases released in the fire, not from burns from the flames themselves. The two leading causes of fires and death are smoking (leader in fire deaths) and cooking (leading cause of residential fires).

The Centers for Disease Control have identified a number of groups that are at risk for fire exposure and death. These groups include children under the age of 4, senior citizens, the poorest groups in the United States, and those living in rural areas.

Contact a Harrisburg Personal Injury Lawyer

If you were injured in a fire caused or exacerbated by someone else’s negligence, contact the Harrisburg personal injury lawyers of Lowenthal & Abrams, P.C. at 610-667-7511.