The CTIF World Fire Statistics Report № 27 now available for download

The current report № 27 of the CTIF World Fire Statistics was presented at the CTIF Delegates Assembly 2022 in Celje (Slovenia) on July 20, 2022.

The complete report is available for free download here on CTIF.org, along with all other reports collected and published since the start in 2005. 

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Since 1995, the Center of Fire Statistics (CFS) has published annual World Fire Statistics reports in 3 languages.

Some reports additionally were translated into Polish (2006), Turkish (2007), Hungarian (2018), Spanish (2018, Bomberos de Chile), Persian (2020), Korean (2021), and Spanish (2022, Organización de Bomberos Americanos - OBA) languages.

At this point, we would like to thank all supporters for the excellent comradely cooperation!

Since 2005 these reports have been presented on www.ctif.org. 

The main activities of the CFS focused on: 

-  Statistics of the fires
- Statistics of the fire deaths and fire injuries,
- Statistics of the firefighter deaths and firefighter injuries,
- Statistics of the fire and rescue services and their activities, and
- Economic-statistical evaluation of the fires

The primary sources of information for the CTIF fire statistics include the following:

-  Data of the fire-rescue services of the countries,
-  Data of the fire-rescue services of the cities,
-  World Health Organization,
-  World Fire Statistics Center (Geneva Association),
-  Statistical yearbooks of towns and countries, and
-  Annual Reports of Fire Departments.

Current challenges collecting the data: 

The work with  improving World Fire Statistics is developing slowly. The main reasons are connected with the following problems. First, the absence of organizations officially engaged in collecting, processing, and analyzing fire-related data in various countries until the end of the 2th century plays a leading role.

Then, the absence of a national fire statistics system in many countries of the World must be noted. Finally, different rules for the registration of fires, fire deaths, fire injuries, and fire damage in the countries are common problems. Since the number of countries considered in the CTIF statistics of the years varies, the representative proportion of the world population also varies: 1996 – 0.9 billion and 2007 – 3.8 billion people. In the 2022 report, we had  3.3 billion people.

As a second indicator, we must note that since the number of states considered and their population varies, the representative number of fires analyzed varies. The numbers are between 2.5 million and 4.5 million. In the current report, we analyze 4.0 million fires.

To make the numbers from the different countries comparable, we present relative vital figures: The average number of fires per 1,000 inhabitants., the average number of fire deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, and the average number of fire deaths per 100 fires.

The data for 2020 show the following fire situation on Earth: 24,2% of all fires occur in residential buildings (other buildings - 8,0 %, vehicle fires - 11,5 %). All other fires were noted mostly as forest, grass, and rubbish fires. Unfortunately, 82.7% of all fire deaths are in residential building fires.61% of the burn injuries are also registered in these fires.

Data for the year 2020 for 48 countries of the World summarizes that  3.3 billion people live in the countries examined. The fire brigades served almost 70 million missions. Of these, 4 million calls were on fires: 

- More than 20,700 people died, and more than 70,000 were injured in fires.
- There are an average of 20.8 incidents per 1,000 inhabitants (fires - 1.2).
- 0.6 fire deaths and 2.1 injuries were registered per 100,000 inhabitants.
- For every 100 fires, there were 0.5 deaths and 1.8 injuries.

Furthermore, the CFS has been working on various publications over the last decade to make the CTIF known worldwide:

- Brushlinsky N., Sokolov S., Wagner P.: Humanity and Fires, EDURA (Poland), 2010, pp.
353, ISBN 978-83-88777-29-5

- Piotr Guzewski, Dariusz Wróblewski, Daniel Małozięć et.al.: CZERWONA KSIĘGA POŻARÓW (Red Book of Fires), Wydawnictwo CNBOP-PIB, Józefów 2014, pp. 1034

- Brushlinsky N., Sokolov S., Wagner P. in chapter: RYZYKO POŻAROWE I ZAPOBIEGANIE POŻAROM DZISIAJ I PROGNOZY NA PRZYSZŁOŚĆ (Fire Risk And Prevention In Nowadays And Forecast For The Future), ISBN 978-83-61520-14-6;

- Brushlinsky N., Sokolov S., Wagner P.: chapter "Problems of Fire Safety in the Modern World and chapter Modeling the Process of Fire and Rescue Services Activities; in Michail Chalaris et al. "Novel Approaches in Risk, Crisis and Disaster Management; (2018), Nova Science Publishers, ISBN: 978-1-53613-239-7, New York, USA.

In 2020-2022, the CFS participated in the EU FireStat project. This project brings together the knowledge and experience of nine different international fire safety institutions. The project maps the existing fire data collected across the Member States and proposes meaningful data sets to allow decisions on fire safety at Member State and EU levels.

This pilot project aimed to analyze the terminology and data collected by the Member States regarding building fires. That will identify the collection difficulties and interpretation differences and propose a common vocabulary and a method to collect the necessary data.

For more information, https://eufirestat-efectis.com/ is available. Now a new project is ongoing. Under the name "100 Cities - 100 Years - Evaluation Of Urban Fire Risks, the Center of Fire Statistics of CTIF invites many large cities around the globe to review the city's history and the story about firefighting in urban centers.

The project is currently represented in the following continents:  

- Africa - 6 cities

- Americas - 28 cities,

- Asia - 32 cities

- Europe - 51 cities,

Oceania - 2 cities.

More information is available here:

https://www.ctif.org/news/100-cities-100-years-evaluation-urban-fire-risks-part….

In the near future, the CTIF Fire Statistics Team plan to explore the following themes: 

- General modernization of the CTIF statistics
-  Special investigation regarding Fire causes
-  Evaluation of the Staffing problem in Fire Departments
-  Working on definitions
- Special statistics (school fires, hotel fires, fires in high-rise buildings, and forest fires).

Comments and criticism regarding the CTIF statistics are always welcome.