As Temperatures Drop, Firefighters Seeing Uptick in Home Heating Fires

Tis the season for house fires caused by heating equipment.

Firefighters across the country are urging people to use extreme caution when using any appliance to heat their homes.

Home heating equipment is the second-leading cause of U.S. home fires and home fire injuries, and the third-leading cause of home fire deaths and direct property damage, according to the NFPA.

Researchers who analyzed fires caused by heating devices from 2018-2022 also determined:

• Space heaters and heating stoves were the type of heating equipment responsible for the largest shares of losses in home heating equipment fires, accounting for nearly half (46%) of the fires, but nearly eight out of ten deaths (76%) and seven out of ten (72%) of the injuries in home fires caused by heating equipment. 
• Fires originating in a kitchen or cooking area accounted for the largest share of home heating fires (18%). 
• While the larger (non-confined) fires involving fireplaces or chimneys were involved in fewer than one in ten fires caused by heating equipment (8%), they caused just over one-fourth of the direct property damage (27%).
• Nearly half of the heating equipment fires (46%) occurred in the three-month period from December through February

Oklahoma City Fire Capt. John Chenoweth told KFOR: “People are heating their homes more, people are using fireplaces. We have the open vacant structures. The unhoused people are trying to seek shelter and they use warming fires. So, our winter months are always the busiest for fires.”

Fires in vacant buildings are especially dangerous for firefighters, who enter to determine if someone is present.

“Once you start a warming fire in an open vacant structure, you don’t know how it’s going to go,” he said.

Boiling Springs, SC Fire Capt. Trevor Owens told WSPA that in the winter, they see an uptick in heat equipment fires. 

“People are using heaters inside that they shouldn’t be,” Owens said. “A lot of issues we run into as far as calls in heating are usually with kerosene heaters.”

Another NFPA report showed:

• Heating equipment is a leading cause of fires in U.S. homes. Local fire departments responded to an estimated average of 44,210 home structure fires caused by heating equipment each year in 2016-2020. These fires resulted in annual losses of 480 civilian deaths, 1,370 civilian injuries, and $1 billion in direct property damage.
• Heating equipment caused one in six home structure fires (13%) that took place in 2016–2020 and 18% of home fire deaths.
• A vast majority of home heating fire deaths (88%) involved stationary or portable space heaters.
• Nearly half (46%) of all home heating fires occurred in January, February, and December.