Restaurant Building Fires Cost $172 Million a Year: Report

An estimated 5,900 restaurant building fires occur annually in the United States, resulting in an estimated average of 75 injuries and $172 million in property loss.

The leading cause of all restaurant building fires is cooking at 59 percent and nearly 91 percent of these cooking fires are small, confined fires with limited damage.

These are some of the facts from an updated report on restaurant building fires from the U.S. Fire Administration’s National Fire Data Center. It is based on 2007 to 2009 data from the National Fire Incident Reporting System.

Other findings from the report:

• While cooking is the leading cause of all restaurant building fires as well as the smaller, confined restaurant building fires, electrical malfunction is the leading cause of the larger, non-confined restaurant building fires.
• Non-confined restaurant building fires start in cooking areas and kitchens 41 percent of the time.
• Deep fryers (9 percent), ranges (7 percent), and miscellaneous kitchen and cooking equipment (5 pecent) are the leading types of equipment involved in ignition in non-confined restaurant building fires.
• Smoke alarms were reported present in 44 percent of non-confined restaurant building fires. In addition, full or partial automatic extinguishment systems, mainly sprinklers, were present in 47 percent of non-confined restaurant building fires.

The full report can be viewed at: http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/