Methodology
To identify the states where the most people per capita are killed by fire, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data compiled by the U.S. Fire Administration. States are ranked by the number of people who were killed in a fire for every million state residents. Data is for 2019 and is adjusted using population data from the U.S. Census Bureau from July 1, 2019. The fire death rate – or the number of deaths caused by fire per 1 million people – was not computed for states which reported fewer than 10 fire deaths.
We also reviewed supplementary data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the total land area burned by wildfires in 2019.
Supplementary data on reported cases of arson in 2019 are from the United States Bomb Data Center, a division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It is important to note that arson data compiled by the ATF is dependent on real-time reported incidents and likely undercounts the actual number of arson cases.
