Homeowners Insurance - Reducing the Risk of Residential Fires

Imag5B4ine a fire alarm sounding every 19.2 seconds, day and night for a year, and you will have an idea of how many fires are reported in the United States every year. According to a study released by the National Fire Protection Association in September 2007, U.S. fire departments responded to 1,642,500 fires in 2006.

The damage caused by these fires was enormous. They killed 3,245 civilians and caused more than $11 billion in property damage. Annual losses due to fires is greater than hurricanes ($5.4 billion), floods ($5.2 billion), and earthquakes ($4.4 billion). The U.S. Fire Administration, a department of the federal government, reports that the indirect costs of fires-such as lost business, lost wages, temporary housing, medical expenses, and psychological damage may be eight to ten times greater than direct costs. The risk of fire loss is the single greatest reason to carry homeowners insurance. In fact, it was the reason homeowners insurance was created.

The first fire insurance was developed by Nicholas Barbon, an English physician, economist, and businessman. After the Great London Fire of 1666, Barbon helped rebuild swaths of London burned when the royal baker, Thomas Farriner, failed to extinguish the his ovens on September 1, 1666. Shortly after midnight on September 2, Farriner's house went up in flames, beginning a conflagration that consumed 13,200 houses. Building on the maritime tradition of insuring sea vessel5B4s, Barbon began to offer fire insurance to homeowners in 1667. In 1680, Barbon founded the first fire brigade in London, a measure adopted to help protect the city and minimize his exposure to risk of loss.

Although the first insurance company in America began operating in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1732, fire insurance became widely adopted thanks to the efforts of Benjamin Franklin. In 1752, the 46-year-old Franklin founded the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. Franklin's company pioneered the idea of perpetual insurance, a form of fire insurance in which the customer makes a single deposit with the insurer. The insurance company, in turn, agrees to pay for any losses due to fire. Upon cancellation of the policy, the entire original deposit is returned to the consumer. The insurance company makes money and pays claims by earning a return on the deposit funds from many customers.

Following his own edict that "a penny saved is a penny earned," Franklin and his company worked hard to minimize losses. The company pursued stringent risk management strategies, refusing, for example, to insure wooden homes. An accomplished inventor, Franklin developed several fire safety devices, including the lightning rod and an iron furnace stove, known as the Franklin stove.

Efforts to reduce fire risk continue today-with significant success. The National Fire Protection Association reports5B4 that deaths from fires 11.7 percent in 2006. The 3,245 civilian deaths was the fewest since the NFPA began its current survey in 1977. The most dramatic drop was in residential fire deaths, which declined 14.2 percent to 2,620. Overall, residential fire deaths have declined a whopping 57 percent since 1978.

Several factors have driven down the number and severity of residential fires. The number of adults who are smoke cigarettes has declined by 50 percent, from 42 percent in 1965 to 20.8 percent in 2006. The cigarettes themselves have been engineered to burn cooler, reducing ignitions. At the same time, fabrics and mattresses have been designed to resist ignition from cigarettes. The government mandated changes in cigarette lighter design, making it harder for children to ignite a flame. One of the biggest life savers has been residential smoke detectors, first introduced in 1967 and mandated into building codes throughout the country.

To reduce death, injury, and property damage from fire further, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) calls for five things:

1) More safety education, emphasizing causes of residential fires

2) More home smoke detectors

3) More residential sprinkler systems

4) More fire-resistant products for the home

5) More attention to the fire safety needs of at-risk Americans, such as the old, the very young, and the poor

Great strides have been made in redu5B4cing residential fire fatalities, but fire remains a leading killer. Fortunately, some of the life-saving fixes recommended by the NFPA require very little time or money, such as installing smoke detectors and making sure they are working. You do not have to be a superhero to save a life. Sometimes, all you have to do is install a 9-volt battery.

Bradley Steffens is the author of twenty-one books, coauthor of seven, and editor of the 2004 anthology, The Free Speech Movement. His Censorship was included in the 1997 edition of Best Books for Young Adult Readers and his Giants won the 2005 San Diego Book Award for Best Young Adult & Children's Nonfiction. His latest book is Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist, the world's first biography of the eleventh-century Arab scholar known in the West as Alhazen.

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