Scotland is worst in UK for fire deaths and injuries

Published on Friday 28 August 2009 22:49

SCOTLAND has the highest rate of fire deaths and injuries in the UK, it emerged yesterday, as figures showed a 13 per cent rise in fatalities.

There were 59 people killed in fires in 2007 – up from 52 the previous year, according to the official figures.

Roddy Robertson, of the Fire Brigades Union Scotland, said he believed socio-economic reasons were a major factor in Scotland having the highest number of fire deaths and injuries.

He said: "If you look at where Scotland lies in the quality of housing and standard of living in comparison with other parts of the country, you will find the trends follow a similar pattern. There are higher levels of smoking, higher alcohol consumption, and we have more houses of multiple occupation.

"It's a combination of factors that has led to the dreadful record that we have."

A spokesman for the Scottish Government also agreed that socio-economic factors were involved.

He said: "While difficult to establish common factors in all incidents, fire deaths in Scotland are, like the UK as a whole, most often linked to a combination of housing type and social and lifestyle factors."

The figures showed the most common cause of accidental house fires, which claimed the lives of 40 people, was lit smoking materials, with a total of 20 people killed in this way.

There were 43 deaths in house fires, with 18 of these in properties in which there was no smoke alarm.

Eleven deaths took place in homes where a smoke alarm was fitted but did not work.

A spokeswoman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said: "It's disappointing to see the figures for deaths through smoking materials have risen, because for the past few years they had been declining. It shows we still have to get safety messages out there about always making sure cigarettes are extinguished properly.

"The figures showed a third of fires occurred where there wasn't a working smoke alarm, and these are crucial.

"We know that they have massively decreased deaths in accidental house fires in recent years."

The figures, which were published by Scotland's chief statistician yesterday, also showed an increase in the number of people injured in blazes of 5 per cent to 1,722.

However, the overall number of fires in Scotland fell from 50,520 in 2006 to 45,912 in 2007. The number of more serious fires – classed as primary fires – also dropped for the eighth year in a row to 13,805.

Firefighters responded to 53,840 false alarms in 2007, which was 54 per cent of their total call-outs. There were 4,920 malicious false fire alarms, the lowest figure for ten years.

Community safety minister Fergus Ewing said: "The Scottish Government was doing everything it could to improve fire safety and drive down deaths.

Any death from a fire is a tragedy and prevention is the best way to tackle Scotland's poor record."