NFPA Journal - September/October 2019 - 83

Property loss
NFPA estimates that the 1,318,500 fires to which the fire
service responded in 2018 caused $25.6 billion in property
damage, an 11 percent increase over the $23 billion in 2017.
It is worth noting that the $25.6 billion figure includes major
wildfires in California in 2018, which caused over $12 billion
in direct property damage.
Fires in structures not related to wildfires resulted in $11.1
billion in property damage, an increase of 3 percent from 2017.
Each structure fire resulted in an average property loss of
$22,176, an increase of 3 percent from the previous year. From
1977 to 2018, excluding the events of September 11, 2001, the
average loss per structure fire was $3,757 in 1977 and $22,176 in
2018, for a nearly sixfold increase. When property loss is adjusted
for inflation in 2018 dollars, however, the increase in the average
structure fire loss between 1977 and 2018 is 43 percent.
Of the 2018 property loss in structures, $8 billion occurred
in home structures, an increase of 4 percent from 2017.
An estimated $6.5 billion of this loss occurred in one- and
two-family homes, an increase of 6 percent. An estimated
loss of $1.5 billion occurred in apartments or other multifamily housing
including condominiums, a decrease of
4 percent.
Other property damage results for
2018 include $778 million in store
and office properties, an increase of
2 percent; $508 million in industrial
and manufacturing properties, a 1 percent increase; $1.4 billion in highway
vehicles, virtually unchanged from last
year; and $473 million in other vehicles, a 20 percent decrease.
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
NFPA Journal.

Intentionally set fires
NFPA estimates that 25,500 structure
fires were intentionally set in 2018, an
increase of 13 percent from the year
before. These fires resulted in an estimated 350 civilian deaths, an increase
of 25 percent from the previous year.
These fires resulted in $593 million in
property loss, an increase of
2 percent compared to 2017.
In 2018, there were also an estimated
9,500 intentionally set vehicle fires, an
increase of 12 percent compared to the
year before. These fires resulted in $65
million in property loss, a decrease of
13 percent from 2017.

Estimates of intentionally set fires do not include fires
where the cause is unknown or unreported.

Description of the NFPA survey and
acknowledgements
NFPA annually surveys a sample of US public fire departments, stratified by the size of the communities 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 populations less
than 5,000, a sample is selected and stratified by the size of
the community protected. A total of 2,631 fire departments
responded to the 2018 fire experience survey.
Our national projections are made by weighting the
sample results according to the proportion of the total US
population accounted for by communities of each size. Point
estimates are presented in this article, and there is a range
associated with each estimate.
The data and information included in the full US Fire Loss
report are only part of the fire loss picture. A more detailed
and complete report on the overall patterns and trends of
2018, available from NFPA's Research, Data, and Analytics
Division, includes patterns by region and size of community,
as well as a more complete description of survey methodology. The full report, including additional information like the
number of fire department responses by type of call, will be
available online in October at nfpa.org.
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 installation fires, or for fires extinguished by fixed suppression systems to which no fire
department responded.
NFPA is grateful to the many fire departments that
responded to the 2018 National Fire Experience Survey for
their continuing efforts to provide the data necessary to
make national projections. The author would also like to
thank the members of NFPA staff who worked on this year's
survey, including Steve Belski, Frank Deely, and Jay Petrillo
for editing the survey forms and making follow-up calls to
fire departments.
2016 Fire Loss update
NFPA has identified an issue with the dollar loss numbers
for 2016, which were included in the summary of the annual
Fire Loss report that appeared in the September/October
2017 NFPA Journal. The dollar loss is higher than originally
reported. This issue does not affect the 2018 report that
appears here. The figures have been corrected in the 2016 and
2017 Fire Loss reports and are available, along with errata,
at nfpa.org/fireloss.
BEN EVARTS is data collection & research manager in the Data & Analytics
Department at NFPA.

N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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