Home Safety Foundation Study

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Every home owner has an expectation that if a neighboring house catches fire, responding firefighters will respond in time to prevent fire from spreading to adjacent homes.  To avoid multiple structures involved in fire at the time that firefighting operations begin, the exterior fire resistance of structures must be sufficient to rest ignition for the time needed for fire department response.  Changes in community deign generally to reduce spacing between  houses decreases the resistance to fire spread in the community. In some cases also, influenced by weather, fire department responses even though only a few minutes is not sufficient to protect the community from building to building fire spread. The Home Safety Foundation supports increasing public awareness of this condition by collecting incident where building to building fire spread occurs before firefighting begins.  

The Home Safety Foundation as part of its study of fire spread in small lot communities is collecting reports of fires  that illustrate building-to-building fire spread occurring before significant firefighting begins.  A collection of recent fires of this type is maintained on the Home Safety Foundation Twitter page. That page can be accessed by clicking on the button on the right side of this page

In 2004, The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) performed experiments to demonstrate the rapid  fire spread between closely spaced residential structure of common construction. Part of the experiments also demonstrated the effectiveness of exterior wall fire resistant barriers to retard ignition. Increasing the fire resistance of the exterior of homes increases the time available for firefighter response before fire spread. This is one method of providing greater fire safety. The Home Safety Foundation encourages research to develop effective and affordable means to increase the exterior fire resistance of residential construction.

Background Section from NIST Technical Note 1600

According to the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) [National Fire Data Center, Feb 2006], the following summarizes the statistics related to recent U.S. occurrences of fire spread between structures. In 2003, fires spreading beyond the building of origin accounted for 5.4 % of all structure fires. Between 2001 and 2003, fires that spread beyond the building of origin were responsible, on average, for 100 deaths per year, or about 11 % of all structural fire related fatalities. The costs from these fires are estimated at over $0.25 billion per year or 12 % of the total dollar loss from structure fires.  Even though NFIRS does not include all fire incidents, the above data illustrates the magnitude of the problem. Fire spread between structures (when not prevented by suppression) is governed by four parameters: construction type, placement and size of windows, proximity of structures or structure separation distance, and weather conditions, specifically wind. Recent building code changes permit structures built of unrestricted construction (no enhanced fire resistance) to be separated by only 1.8 m (6 ft). As the preponderance of high density housing increases, so does the risk of fire incidents involving multiple structures.