Adair Lewis finds that there are plenty of surprises in the figures for private garage fires
Private garages risk review
cave’, but these structures would be expected to be somewhat modest outbuildings – and thus it came as a bit of a surprise to find that private garages, which are a subset of non residential miscellaneous properties in the RISCAuthority large loss fire database, was actually populated. Not a lot, but six fires in the last ten years in private garages each resulted in a property loss of more than £100,000, which was quite a surprise – with more surprises to come. To put the figure in perspective, there have been 634 fires during the period from 2009 to the end of 2018 that have been classified as non domestic miscellaneous properties, with private garages representing just 0.9% of this total and 0.1% of the total records on the database. Experience has indicated that there has been a fairly consistent number of fires in private garages over many years. But in the main these have been relatively small incidents, with conventional wisdom (for which read ‘unsubstantiated assumption’) declaring that they represent an escalation in deliberate fire setting, fires being lit in waste bins and bags of rubbish escalating to garden sheds, garages and similar outbuildings prior to arson attacks on homes and businesses in the area. Bearing in mind the cause of the fires, they
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would be expected to occur predominantly during the hours of darkness. This ‘wisdom’, however, is not totally supported by the figures (“statistics” seems too grand a term when the numbers are so small), as although one of the six fires was due to arson and three were of
UCH HAS been made in the press lately of some guys (and girls) being overly fond of their shed, garage or ‘man
indeterminate cause, none occurred between 18:00 and 06:00 – that is to say, during the night. The small numbers have led to rather curious rounding of figures in the database; it would appear that two fires occurred during the morning, one in the afternoon and three at an unknown time of day. With regard to problems encountered by fire
and rescue services in three cases (50% of such fires), firefighting operations were hampered by the presence of acetylene cylinders. While the presence of acetylene may suggest a serious hobby, it more likely indicates businesses being operated from the garages concerned. Acetylene cylinders are widely regarded as one of the most hazardous materials commonly encountered in industry, and their presence may not have been anticipated by firefighters called to a residential area. What is quite unexpected is that, in two
cases, water supplies inadequate for firefighting purposes were encountered. Private garages are normally of modest size and thus should be within the firefighting capabilities of front line pumps attending. In the event of a more serious blaze, hydrants should be nearby in residential areas. The biggest surprise, however, relates to the financial losses. The six recorded fires in private garages represent over a fifth (22.2%) of the total losses in non residential miscellaneous properties, and while the latter overall average is £822,707 per fire, the losses from private garages averaged an enormous £19,328,749 per fire. Clearly, something is wrong! Investigating this further by removing ‘vehicles only’ as a possible cause of fire, the
54 DECEMBER 2019/JANUARY 2020
www.frmjournal.com
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