Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Fire death patterns in residences in Japan were examined through the statistical analyses of fire deaths data base made by Fire Defense Agency. It was identified that there are two typical fire death patterns in residences such as "Disaster-Vulnerable People and Daytime Fire" pattern and "Non Disaster-Vulnerable People and Night-time Fire" pattern. The former pattern can be described typically as the case that a person who needs help to move encountered a fire and failed to escape without any help while he was alone during daytime. The latter pattern can be also described typically as the case that a person who has normal physical function was killed in a fire mainly due to delay of detection while he was drunk or asleep at night. For the purpose of fire deaths reduction, the "Disaster-Vulnerable People and Daytime Fire" pattern should be noticed, because the fire death rate of this fire death pattern is much higher than the another fire death pattern and further the population of those disaster-vulnerable people like aged people 65 or older is increasing rapidly in the recent years and the near future in Japan. KEYWORDS: residential fire, fire death, statistics, life loss risk, pattern analysis.