Estimating the Total Number of Residential Fire-Related Incidents and Underreported Residential Fire Incidents in New South Wales, Australia by Using Linked Administrative Data

Abstract

The rate of fires, and particularly residential fires, is a serious concern in industrialized countries. However, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the reported numbers of residential fire incidents as official figures are based on fires reported to fire response agencies only. This population-based study aims to quantify the total number of residential fire incidents regardless of reporting status. The cohort comprised linked person-level data from Fire and Rescue New South Wales (FRNSW) and health system and death records. It included all persons residing at a residential address in New South Wales, Australia, that experienced a fire between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2014. The capture-recapture method was used to estimate the underreporting number of residential fire-related incidents. Over the study period, 43,707 residential fire incidents were reported to FRNSW, and there were 2795 residential fire-related health service utilizations, of which 2380 were not reported. Using the capture-recapture method, the total number of residential fire incidents was estimated at 267,815 to 319,719, which is more than six times the official records. This study found that 15% of residential fire incidents that were identified in health administrative dataset were reported. The residential fire incidents that were not reported occurred mainly in socio-economically disadvantaged areas among males and adults.

Human behavior in home fires

“…They found that there were 6.56 fires per hundred households per year of which 96.7 % are not attended by the fire department. Similar results have been found for the United Kingdom [7] and Australia [8][9][10] [11]. The results from [7]- [10] were that 75 % of fires are unattended by the fire service, while [11] found that 85 % of injury-inducing fires were unattended by the fire service.…”

“…The association is likely the person being intimate with the fire in many cases. In general, though, the deadliness of a fire is correlated with its size [12], while recent research [11] suggests that most injury-inducing fires are not reported to the fire department, which in turn suggests that most injuries occur in relatively small fires.…”

Comparison of causes, characteristics and consequences of residential fires in social and non-social housing dwellings in New South Wales, Australia

“…Fire incidents that were not reported to or attended by FRNSW were not included in this study. This suggests that the burden of deaths and injuries associated with residential fire incidents are an underestimated of the true number as demonstrated by the authors elsewhere ( Ghassempour et al, 2021 ).…”

“…The datasets and linkage have been detailed elsewhere ( Harvey et al, 2020 , Ghassempour et al, 2021 ).Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the NSW Population and Health Services Research Ethics Committee (HREC/16/CIPHS/36) and Western Sydney University Human Research Ethics Committee (RH12399).…”

Stack effects in tall building fires: a case study of Taiwan old apartment fire

“…The calculated temperature and smoke field distribution at the fire site were consistent with the reports of the fire department 10 . Ghassempour et al found that fires in socio-economically disadvantaged areas among males and adults were often overlooked and not reported 11 . Jonsson et al found that fatal residential fires more often originated in the bedroom, were more likely to occur at night, and were more often caused by smoking in Sweden 12 .…”