Fire safety leaders tackle how to reduce smoking related fires

Acting United States Fire Administrator Charlie Dickinson and National Fire Protection Association President and CEO James Shannon have completed a report on behavioral mitigation to reduce the number of fires caused by smoking.

“Smoking continues to be the No. 1 cause of residential fire deaths, which justifies a new look at research about the role of
behaviors in causing those deaths,” Dickinson said. “Through this partnership with NFPA, hopefully, we can reduce fire deaths from this cause.”

Smoking-material fire deaths are more likely to involve a fire that begins very close to the victim. The percentage of smoking-material fatal fire victims who are “intimate” with ignition is three times the corresponding percentage for fires due to other causes, according to the report. Fatal victims of smoking-material fires are, therefore, less likely than fatal victims of other kinds of fires to be saved by strategies and technologies that react after ignition, such as smoke alarms. For many, if not most, of those victims, there is no substitute for prevention. The report further noted that one in four fatal victims is not the smoker whose cigarette started the fire.

NFPA’s Shannon said it “is clear from the report we must continue to educate smokers and their families and friends about the strategies that will have the greatest impact on this tragic ongoing loss of life.”

The project recommends the use of general messages and several specific messages aimed at specific audiences. The recommended messages are:

•If you smoke, smoke outside.

•Wherever you smoke, use deep, sturdy ashtrays. Ashtrays should be set on something sturdy and difficult to ignite, like an end table.

•Before you throw out butts and ashes, make sure they are out. Dowsing in water or sand is recommended as the best way to do that.

•Check under furniture cushions and in other places people smoke for cigarette butts that may have fallen out of sight.

•Smoking should not be allowed in a home where oxygen is used.

•If you smoke, choose fire-safe cigarettes.

•To prevent a deadly cigarette fire, be alert. You won’t be if you are sleepy, have been consuming alcohol, or have taken medication or other drugs.

Those messages have been applied to existing USFA educational materials and are being adopted into NFPA educational messages as they come up for routine revision.

The full report can be found at: http://www.usfa.fema.gov /research/other/smoking-
mitigation.shtm. USFA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003. More on NFPA can be found at www.nfpa.org.

Topics Leadership