Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Fire statistics for multi-storey houses indicate a possible association between the incidence of fires causing casualties and fire spread, even allowing for the presumed state of awareness of the victims at the time of the fire. This association is quite strong for fires involving fatalities and seems to indicate a strong correlation between fatalities and spread, but the association is relatively weak for fires involving non-fatal casualties, whose frequency appears to be correlated more with the frequency of outbreaks of fire. It is pointed out that no causal relationship has been established and that there is more than one explanation for this association.