Home Cooking Fires Marty Ahrens July 2020 Copyright © 2020 National Fire Protection Association® (NFPA®) Key findings Cooking is such a routine activity that it is easy to forget that the high Unattended cooking was the leading cause of cooking fires and temperatures used can easily start a fire. During 2014–2018, cooking casualties. Clothing was the item first ignited in less than one percent of was the leading cause of reported homei fires and home fire injuries these fires, but clothing ignition led to 8 percent of the home cooking and the second leading cause of home fire deaths. ii fire deaths. Cooking caused an average of 172,900 reported home structure fires Cooking oil and grease fires are a major part of the cooking fire per year (49 percent of all reported home fires in the US). These fires problem. resulted in an average of 550 civilian deaths (21 percent of all home More than one-quarter of the people killed by cooking fires were asleep fire deaths) and 4,820 civilian injuries (44 percent of all reported home when they were fatally injured. More than half of the non-fatal injuries fire injuries) annually. occurred when people tried to control the fire themselves. The vast majority of reported cooking fires were small. The percentage The report also shows that: of apartment fires started by cooking was nearly twice that of cooking fires in one- or two-family homes. But apartments are also more likely • Cooking caused more home fire deaths in 2014–2018 than in 1980–1984. to have monitored smoke detection systems than are one- and two- • An average of 470 home cooking fires were reported per day in 2018. family homes. Such systems could result in fire department responses • The peak days for home cooking fires were Thanksgiving and Christmas. to incidents that might have been handled by the occupants if the fire Unless otherwise specified, the statistics presented in this report are department had not been alerted. estimates derived from the United States Fire Administration’s Ranges or cooktops were involved in 61 percent of reported home National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) and NFPA’s annual cooking fires, 87 percent of cooking fire deaths, and 78 percent of Fire Experience Survey. cooking fire injuries. Households that used electric ranges showed a For more detailed information, see Home Cooking Fires: Supporting higher risk of cooking fires and associated losses than those using gas Tables. See Non-Fire Cooking Burn Injuries to learn more about this ranges. related topic. i The term home encompasses one- or two-family homes, including manufactured homes and apartments or other multifamily housing. ii Death and injury estimates exclude firefighter casualties. NFPA Research • pg. 1 Trends in cooking fires and cooking fire casualties reported cooking fires. After leveling off for a few years, reported cooking fires hit consecutive new highs in 2012–2015. In 2016–2018, Data indicate that reported cooking fires started to decline in 1981 and these fires fell below the 2014 and 2015 levels, but they remained then plateaued before falling again in the 1990s. NFIRS 5.0, first historically high. Changes to NFIRS may have influenced some of introduced in 1999, made it much easier to document minor cooking these trends.1 See Figure 1. fires (referred to as confined fires) that did not spread beyond the pan, oven, or other container in which the fire started.iii During the transition There were more cooking fire deaths in 2014–2018 than in 1980–1984, years of 1999–2001 — when NFIRS 5.0 was being introduced — less even though total home fire deaths fell 46 percent from the earlier than half of the fire data was collected under the new rules and period. It appears that less progress has been made in reducing deaths definitions. Consequently, those estimates were omitted from the trend from home cooking fires than deaths from most other fire causes. graphs. The use of NFIRS 5.0 was accompanied by an increase in See Figure 2. Figure 1. Reported home cooking firesiv by year: 1980–2018 B.Civilian deaths C.Civilian injuries A.Fires 7,000 200 700 170 175 540 6,000 148 600 150 500 5,000 5,030 125 500 400 4,000 4,370 100 300 3,000 75 NFIRS 5.0 first In Thousands In introduced in 1999 2,000 50 200 25 100 1,000 0 0 0 iii Causal information is not required for structure fires with the six confined fire incident types, including confined cooking fires, although it is sometimes provided.. Structure fires that do not have these incident types are referred to as non-confined fires, even though fire spread is sometimes limited to the object of origin. In this analysis, confined cooking fires were analyzed separately from non-confined fires and the results were summed. iv Estimates for the NFIRS transition years of 1999–2001 are unstable and not shown. NFIRS 5.0, first introduced in 1999, originally defined equipment involved in ignition (EII) as the piece of equipment that provided the principal heat source that caused ignition if the equipment malfunctioned or was used improperly. Change 290 in Specification changes and corrections, effective in 2006, amended the definition to include any equipment that was the principal heat source. Beginning in 2012, Change 337 required the EII data element to be completed if the heat source or another factor contributing to ignition indicated some type of operating equipment was involved. This was removed, effective with 2015 data. NFPA Research • pg. 2 Figure 2. Change in average home fire deaths Causes and circumstances of home cooking fires 6,000 and cooking fire deaths per year 4,830 5,000 Unattended cooking was by far the leading factor in cooking fires and 4,000 1980–1984 2014–2018 cooking fire casualties. See Figure 3. Abandoned or discarded material, 3,000 2,620 which may have been related to unattended cooking, ranked second in the causes of cooking fires and third in cooking fire deaths and injuries. 2,000 1,000 500 550 A fatal fire in a Maine single-family home began when a male 0 Home fire deaths Cooking fire deaths occupant fell asleep in an adjacent room while cooking oil was being heated on the kitchen stove. Investigators believe that Reported home cooking fires in 2014–2018 when he woke to the burning oil, he threw water on the fire. This caused the fire to spread. The victim was found in the During 2014–2018, local fire departments responded to an estimated kitchen with burn and smoke inhalation injuries.2 average of 172,900 home cooking fires per year. These fires caused an average of 550 civilian deaths; 4,820 civilian injuries; and $1.2 billion in direct property damage annually. Cooking caused almost half of the In another common scenario, combustible materials such as wrappers, reported home fires (49 percent) and home fire injuries (44 percent) and potholders, or clothing caught fire when they were left by or came too one in five home fire deaths (21 percent). Cooking was the leading close to hot cooking equipment. cause of reported home fires and home fire injuries and the second leading cause of home fire deaths. Figure 3. Leading factors in home cooking fires and cooking fire deaths: 2014–2018 A. Fires B. Deaths Equipment unattended 31% Equipment unattended 53% Abandoned or discarded material 10% Heat source too close to Heat source too close to 15% 9% combustibles combustibles Unclassified misuse of material 9% Abandoned or discarded material 11% Failure to clean 8% Unintentionally turned on or not Unintentionally turned on or not 8% 8% turned off turned off 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% NFPA Research • pg. 3 Almost one-third of the fatal cooking fire victims and two-thirds of the consumer awareness on how to deal with these fires. Flames from a non-fatally injured were in the area of origin when the fire started. See small oil or grease fire can be smothered by sliding a lid over the pan Figure 4. With unattended cooking being the leading cause, it is not and turning off the burner. The pan should be kept covered until it is surprising that one-fifth of the fatalities were people involved in the completely cool. ignition who were not in the area of origin. These were likely cooks Anthony Hamins, Sung Chan Kim, and Daniel Madrzykowski who had left the room. conducted experiments with cooking oil and peanut cooking oil on a Figure 4. Home cooking fire casualties in or not in free-standing range in the open and a range in a residential kitchen area of origin and involved in ignition: 2014–2018 arrangement.3 Their report described three phases of cooking oil fires. Involved Not involved In the first stage, the fire ignites and grows in the pan. Next the oil boils 80% 69% 66% over and flows out of the pan. Other objects often ignite during this 60% 28% phase. The oil is consumed in the decay phase. They found that small 40% 30% 48% 33% cooktop fires could grow ultra-fast in a kitchen. In a subsequent article, 10% 20% 38% 21% it was noted that “cooktop fires can be larger than traditional gasoline 4 20% 21% 12% pool fires.” 0% Deaths in area of Deaths not in Injuries in area of Injuries not in Although clothing was the item first ignited in less than one percent of origin area of origin origin area of origin the reported home cooking fires, clothing ignitions led to 8 percent of the home cooking fire deaths.