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Cooking is, and has long been, the leading cause of home structure fires and civilian home fire injuries. During the five-year period of 2004-2008, U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 1 54,700 home structure fires in which cooking equipment was involved in the ignition or in which the fire department used an incident type that identified a cooking fire that did not spread beyond the cooking vessel.
These fires caused an average of 460 civilian deaths, 4,850 civilian fire injuries, and $724 million in direct property damage. Overall, these fires accounted for 41 percent of reported home fires, 17 percent of home fire deaths, more than 37 percent of reported home fire injuries, and 1 1 percent of the direct property damage resulting from home fires.
Ranges or cook tops were the heat sources in 59 percent of reported home fires involving cooking equipment, 89 percent of associated civilian deaths, 77 percent of the reported cooking fire civilian injuries,...