Leading Causes for Commercial Fires

6/2/2020 (Permalink)

The best kind of fire is one that never happens.

Our SERVPRO of Evanston team has seen the catastrophic damage that can occur when a fire ravages a commercial building. A fire in your commercial building can cost your business large amounts of money in downtime and inventory loss, not to mention possibly put the lives of your employees at risk. Being prepared is the key to preventing fires and minimizing the damage when they do occur. The United States Fire Administration has compiled data to put together a list of the top five causes of fires in commercial buildings from the last decade. We hope that being conscious of these can help your business in planning and prevention. 

Top 5 Causes of Fires in Commercial Buildings

1. Cooking. Fires that began in the kitchen and escalated out of control contributed 30,900 fires to the past decade. Remind your team that it is important to be careful and aware of your surroundings in the kitchen
2. Unintentional and careless behavior. This category includes accidents which lead to fires and contributes around 10,900 fires. 
3. Arson. Arson, or intentionally set fires, accounted for 9,800 fires. Talk about an unhappy customer. 
4. Electrical malfunction. Electrical or wiring problems resulted in around 7,000 fires.
5. Heating problems. Issues with HVAC systems lead to around 6,000 fires in the last decade. 

Prevention is very important to avoiding a fire, however sometimes they are inevitable. As a business itself, SERVPRO of Evanston knows that time lost is money lost. We are equipped and ready to help you restore your business in the event that a fire does occur so that you can get back to work. For emergency fire services, you can contact us 24/7 at 847-763-7010.