Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

A preliminary survey of fatal fires in the first six months of 1968 reveals a disturbing upward trend in fire deaths. Based on reports received, there have been 452 deaths in 350 fires - the annual death roll due to fire has nearly doubled in the last eight years. Incidents involving more than one death during the first six months of 1968 have numbered 50, compared with only 35 during the whole of 1960. The most serious incidents have involved a hotel, a small terraced house, a Boeing 707 and a collapse of a block of high flats. Nearly eighty per cent of fire deaths have occurred in dwellings, mainly old terraced houses and houses that have been converted into flats.