Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Models of human behaviour in fires either ignore injuries or assume that they are a step or two away from fatalities, and concentrate on predicting evacuation and fatalities. This paper looks at evidence from residential building fires to explore continuities and discontinuities between civilian injuries and fatalities. Factors involved in injury and fatality relate directly to characteristics and behaviour of occupants and suggest major differences between the two types of casualty including age, gender, location of the fire, type of injury, and response to the fire. There are sufficient differences to warrant caution in assuming that fatalities form part of the same spectrum as non-injury and injury.