Trends of fire deaths and effects of fire safety measures in Taiwan during 1971-2015

Purpose: Although fire causes 2 % of deaths of the global accidents in Taiwan, injury or death caused by fire is frequent and largely preventable.Approach: Using the Health and Vital Statistics, Fire Losses and Casualties Table, Abridged Life Tables, and Services for Fire Fighting by official publications during 1971-2015, we approached the trends of population, ages, gender, and social costs associated with fatal fire and evaluated the effects of fire safety measures.Results: The higher mortality rate of fire death was in the elders. Fire death rates were 1.92 folds higher risk in males than in females (p < 0.05). The potential years of life lost (PYLL) implied the most efficient evaluation for the fire safety measures. Fire mortality and casualty could be prevented by fire prevention, fire rescue and emergency medical measures effectively. The most significant effect of fire safety measures was evasion training that adopted the indicator of mortality per 102 burned houses (MBH).Conclusions: Therefore, fire prevention efforts should concentrate on males, and elders. The decreasing of fire numbers should be developed and encouraged.

GUIDELINES ON EVALUATING PASSENGER EVACUATION POSSIBILITIES IN AVIATION INCIDENTS INVOLVING FIRES

Accident analysis of survived people shows that the main causes of fire death are the hazardous effects and consequences of panic attacks which usually occur in such situations. The passengers are killed by heat and toxicity of combustion products. This depends on the materials used in an aircraft’s construction, especially for interior decoration. The time available for the survival of passengers depends on the size of the fire load in the cabin of the aircraft, and it is determined by the characteristics of the materials. In case of fire, polymeric materials are flammable and emit large amounts of heat and smoke which contain poisonous gases that are the main causes of death. With the development of fire, the gas temperature changes in the volume of passenger compartment; therefore, it is necessary to set the dependence of the occurrence of death from heat.