Every year U.S. fire departments respond to nearly 2 million fires, with three-quarters of them occurring in residences.
Fire costs our national billions of dollars every year in property loss and thousands of lives lost.
If Americans knew more about fire prevention and better understood how to react quickly and sensibly when fire breaks out, we could greatly reduce fire deaths. Heating equipment causes over 70,000 fires a year Arson or suspected arson causes over 50,000 fires a year. They happen at night, when most people are asleep. Smoking caused an average of 850 deaths per year from 1992 to 1996. When the atmospheric oxygen drops below 17 percent, people get extremely disoriented.