04/05/2023
A research team from Risk Frontiers and the Metropolitan Fire Brigade of Victoria found that more than 900 people died in preventable residential fires in Australia between July 2003 and June 2017 – a tragedy on the scale of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires which killed 173 people.
Deadly but avoidable
“The heart-breaking thing is that the vast majority of fatal house fires are preventable,” says Metropolitan Fire Brigade Acting Chief Executive Officer Greg Leach. “As firefighters our job is not just to extinguish fires but to stop them from happening in the first place.”
Leach says that the research has uncovered important data about the risk factors leading to residential fire deaths – and will help inform future fire safety campaigns nationally.
The research found that most deaths occur at night in the Australian winter, and more than a third of those who died in residential fires were aged over 65. Fatal fires most commonly occur in the bedroom and living room of a house.
The most common cause of fires, where the cause was known, was from smoking materials, such as a cigarette or pipe, responsible for more than a quarter of known causes of residential fires.
