Your house is on fire! Your priority is to get your family out of your burning home. Luckily, their rooms aren’t the ones in flames (yet). After making your way through the smoke, you get to them. The only way out of your house is going downstairs which just happens to be where the fire rages on.
Instead of waiting for firefighters to come to your rescue and potentially risk entrapment in your home, you make the bold choice to escape. You and your family eventually make it out, but at a cost. You and your family suffered burn injuries ranging in different severities; from first-degree to third-degree. You, your spouse, and your children all must be taken to a nearby hospital for medical treatment.
Causes of Home Fires
Recently, the Law Offices of Anthony Carbone has covered burn injuries in-depth and, more specifically, what your legal options are if you suffer an injury. In this blog, we will educate you about the leading causes of house fires in New Jersey and across the United States.
In the most recent report from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), a home fire happens every 83 seconds in the U.S. On average, a fire claims about nine lives per day. In 2015, home fires led to 78 percent of all fire-related fatalities. It was determined that most of these deaths were caused by the following:
- Cooking equipment
- Heating equipment
- Wiring and lighting
- Intentional
- Smoking
Overall, cooking is responsible for doing the most harm. Unattended cooking and flammable cooking materials (cooking oil, grease, etc.) are the two biggest reasons this is so. More than 50 percent of injuries associated with cooking fires occurred when people tried fighting the fire themselves.
Check Your Smoke Alarm!
Here is a need-to-know fact about fire safety or lack thereof – three out of five home fire fatalities resulted from fires that happened in homes without smoke alarms or smoke alarms that didn’t work properly. People who are drinking, using drugs or other substances, sick, or near where the fire began may not be able to react in time to the smoke’s alarm warning.
Many people tend to disable their smoke alarm because they find it to be annoying, especially if they are cooking or have an indoor fireplace. Unfortunately, those who disable their alarms forget to turn it back on.
Contact Burn Injury Attorney Anthony Carbone
If you are the victim of a home fire injury in New Jersey, now is the time to act. Contact the Law Offices of Anthony Carbone today for a free evaluation of your case. He will get you and your loved ones the compensation you deserve for your burn injuries