By Jerry Knapp and William Quinn
House fires are our most important alarm. They account for about 75 percent of all structure fires and an equal percent of civilian deaths and injuries. The National Fire Protection Association calculates that the dollar loss from residential fires in the United States is $200 every second, for an annual loss of about $8 billion annually. On average, one American dies in a residential fire every three hours.
In this article, we share what we learned about house fires while observing the live burns at the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Research Center in Northbrook, Illinois, March 13-15, 2016, and provide insight into how valuable the results of these studies will be in improving strategy, tactics, and firefighter safety when fighting fires in modern houses.
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