Top 10 US States by Annual Fire Deaths
USFA/NFIRS state-level rollup ranking US states by annual fire-death count and per-capita rate. Rendered server-side from the live state_stats table.
Research period:
Research question
Which US states record the highest annual fire deaths, and how does fire-death concentration compare to fire-injury and property-loss totals at the state level?
Methodology
This ranking is generated automatically from the U.S. Fire Administration's published dataset and reflects the annual fire deaths for each entity as most recently reported. The page updates whenever we refresh our copy of the source data, so the numbers always match the latest release we have ingested.
Coverage and exclusions: entities with no reported value for this metric are left out of the ranking rather than shown as zero, since a missing figure is not the same as an actual zero. U.S. Fire Administration occasionally withholds a value for confidentiality, small-sample, or quality-control reasons, and those withheld entries are excluded the same way.
Data provenance: U.S. Fire Administration publishes this dataset on its own release schedule, and we pull each new release as it becomes publicly available. If a later release revises a prior figure, the revised number will appear here automatically the next time we refresh our copy, no part of this page is hand-edited.
Editorial governance: PlainFireData maintains an editorial standards process covering how rankings are built, how outliers are handled, and how corrections are processed if an entity disputes a figure attributed to it. A named editor reviews this page before publication, shown in the byline above. Corrections and clarifications can be requested through the contact channels linked in the site footer.
Transparency: every number on this page traces back to a specific U.S. Fire Administration source record, linked from the entity pages reachable from this ranking. See our methodology page for the full source list, update cadence, and how each figure is derived.
See the methodology page for the full source list, update cadence, and how each figure is derived.
Top 10 US States by Annual Fire Deaths
Live data, updated automatically whenever we refresh our copy of the source
The ranked top 10
Every row below reflects the most recent data we have on file. Refresh the page after we update our copy of the source to see the latest values.
| # | State | Annual fires | Fire deaths | Deaths / million | Fire injuries | Property loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | 168,000 | 346 | 8.8 | 1,284 | $3.86 billion |
| 2 | Texas | 162,000 | 241 | 7.8 | 1,039 | $1.95 billion |
| 3 | Florida | 106,000 | 206 | 9.0 | 892 | $1.04 billion |
| 4 | New York | 113,000 | 150 | 7.6 | 1,241 | $1.02 billion |
| 5 | Ohio | 68,900 | 138 | 11.7 | 718 | $707.0M |
| 6 | North Carolina | 62,800 | 131 | 12.0 | 491 | $646.0M |
| 7 | Georgia | 56,000 | 128 | 11.6 | 401 | $684.0M |
| 8 | Illinois | 72,000 | 127 | 10.0 | 705 | $836.0M |
| 9 | Tennessee | 47,400 | 115 | 16.1 | 434 | $542.0M |
| 10 | Pennsylvania | 73,800 | 115 | 8.8 | 825 | $802.0M |
Source: U.S. Fire Administration, USFA NFIRS Fire Estimates. Values reflect our most recent copy of the source data. U.S. Fire Administration, USFA NFIRS Fire Estimates. Values reflect our most recent copy of the source data.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is California, with a value of 346 on the Fire deaths column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the U.S. Fire Administration publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update the next time we refresh our copy of the data.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record (346) and the 10th-ranked record (115) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from U.S. Fire Administration, specifically the USFA NFIRS Fire Estimates. PlainFireData ingests the source vintage published by the agency and republishes it here in a clear, browsable format. Every page reflects our most recent copy of the data, there is no stale cached export, and an update from the source agency propagates to this page within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and how each figure is derived.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
NFIRS death counts depend on coroner reporting back to local fire departments and then upward to USFA, some fire-related deaths are recorded in vital statistics but not in NFIRS, and vice versa. Year-to-year variance can be substantial for low-population states, where a single multi-fatality event can dominate the annual count. State rankings by raw count favor populous states and do not control for population. Property-loss estimates are reported by the responding department and reflect contemporaneous assessment, not insurance settlement or replacement-cost estimation. Multi-state incidents (wildfires, transportation events) can be reported in different states by different responding agencies. State-level rollups also reflect NFIRS participation rates which vary materially by state.
Fire deaths per million residents
Population-adjusted rate (2023 US Census) - the rank changes sharply once you control for population
Sources
- USFA NFIRS Fire Estimates Summary - https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/
- NFPA Fire Loss in the United States - https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/US-Fire-Problem