Reference page

Chimney Fire Statistics: Six Years of U.S. Data, and What Each Number Counts

By: Fort Wayne Chimney Repair Research · Last verified: July 27, 2026 · Dataset version: 2026-07-27

Fort Wayne Chimney Repair Research is the independent research and reference section of fortwaynechimneyrepair.com.

What are the key chimney fire statistics?

The latest broad federal estimate is 15,400 U.S. residential structure fires a year involving a fireplace, chimney, or chimney connector, averaged across 2020–2022 by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The statistics below keep each figure attached to its source, observation period, category, and whether it was officially published or calculated from published values.

All figures were checked against the named primary source on July 27, 2026. Site calculations are labeled as calculations.

1. CPSC estimated an annual average of 15,400 unintentional U.S. residential structure fires involving a fireplace, chimney, or chimney connector in 2020–2022. The estimate was published in April 2026 and is the latest CPSC value available on the verification date.
2. CPSC estimated 14,200 confined fireplace, chimney, or connector fires in 2020, 13,600 in 2021, and 13,700 in 2022. Those rounded annual values produce a calculated same-period average of 13,833 confined fires per year; CPSC did not publish that three-year average as a separate line.
3. Joining CPSC’s 2017–2019 and 2020–2022 tables produces a calculated six-year average of 15,633 broad-category fires per year. The six annual estimates stayed between 14,900 and 16,200.
4. The six annual confined-category estimates averaged 13,933 fires per year in 2017–2022. They represented a calculated 89.1% of the six-year broad-category estimate, but the two categories are not interchangeable definitions.
5. The broad fireplace, chimney, and chimney-connector category averaged 30 civilian deaths and 90 civilian injuries per year in 2020–2022. CPSC’s confined-fire tables state that there were no confined-fire deaths in the years covered by the 2017–2019 and 2020–2022 reports.
6. The broad CPSC category averaged $130.8 million per year in nominal property loss in 2020–2022. The dollar values are not adjusted for inflation.
7. Confined fireplace, chimney, and connector fires averaged a calculated $5.6 million per year in nominal property loss in 2017–2022. That was 4.6%of the broad category’s six-year aggregate loss estimate.
8. Dividing CPSC’s rounded six-year modeled aggregates produces ratios of $404 in nominal property loss per confined-category estimate and $7,832 per broad-category estimate. These are site calculations from rounded modeled totals—not observed repair bills, insurance claims, or measured loss for an individual fire.
9. The 15,400-fire broad-category average equaled a calculated 4.3% of CPSC’s 359,500 estimated annual unintentional residential structure fires in 2020–2022. The percentage inherits the rounding in both published estimates.
10. The same 15,400-fire average equaled a calculated 40.4% of CPSC’s 38,100 annual heating-and-cooling-equipment fire estimate in 2020–2022. It is a share of CPSC’s equipment estimate, not a share of every U.S. fire.
11. NFPA estimated 13,120 confined chimney or flue fires per year and separately estimated 3,010 “fireplace or chimney” fires per year in 2016–2020. Adding the two rows produces 16,130, but that is a Fort Wayne Chimney Repair Research calculation, not an official NFPA incident class.
12. NFPA’s separate “fireplace or chimney” row represented 7% of home-heating fires but 22% of direct home-heating fire property damage in 2016–2020. The confined chimney-or-flue row represented 30% of fires and less than 1% of rounded direct property damage.
13. USFA reported that 49.43% of residential building heating fires in 2017–2019 were fires confined to a chimney or flue. USFA reported 76.59% for all confined heating fires after adding confined fuel-burner or boiler fires; neither percentage is a stand-alone annual chimney-fire count.
14. CPSC’s non-confined solid-fuel fireplace, chimney, and connector rows showed $78.9 million in nominal property loss in 2017 and $116.2 million in 2022. The corresponding gas-fired rows were $25.3 million and $21.6 million; these are annual estimates, not an inflation-adjusted trend.
15. CPSC reported that NFIRS records represented about 70% of estimated fires in its 2017–2019 edition, about 63% in its 2019–2021 edition, and about 60% in its 2020–2022 edition. Those edition-specific capture shares show why raw NFIRS records are not national totals; they do not by themselves prove a permanent trend in future coverage.
16. CPSC reported that confined incidents were about 2% of residential structure fires submitted to NFIRS in 1999 and 49% by 2019. The change reflects the adoption and increasing use of NFIRS 5.0 confined-fire coding as well as whatever changes occurred in fire incidence.
17. Calendar-year 2026 incident submission became exclusive to NERIS on January 1, 2026. January 31, 2026 was the deadline for edits or modifications to calendar-year 2025 NFIRS records, and NFIRS became unavailable to users in February 2026.
18. NFPA 211’s 2024 edition contains an annual-inspection requirement in Section 14.2 for chimneys, fireplaces, and vents. NFPA 211 is a consensus standard; whether and how it is adopted as enforceable law depends on the jurisdiction.

The single number most writers need is 15,400 fires per year, but it should be quoted as the 2020–2022 CPSC annual average for the broad “fireplace, chimney, chimney connector” equipment category. A narrower confined-fire answer requires a different label and figure.

What does this page cover?

This page separates the principal national chimney-fire measures, publishes a reproducible six-year CPSC series, explains why CPSC, NFPA, and USFA values differ, and documents what can and cannot be said about Indiana and Allen County. Each section begins with the answer a reader would need when the section is read on its own.

Contents

1. What does the six-year dataset show?
2. What does each number count?
3. How was the dataset built?
4. How many fires per year?
5. Do chimney fires kill or injure?
6. How much property damage?
7. Is the 25,000-fire figure accurate?
8. Why do published numbers disagree?
9. Are chimney fires trending?
10. How many homes use wood heat?
11. Indiana and Allen County records
12. What changes after NFIRS ends?
13. What does this data show and not show?
14. Dataset download
15. How to cite this page
16. FAQ
17. Primary sources

What does the six-year chimney fire dataset show?

CPSC’s published annual values show a stable broad-category range of 14,900 to 16,200 fires from 2017 through 2022, while nominal property-loss estimates varied more widely. The dataset joins two adjacent CPSC report editions without interpolating missing years and keeps the broad and confined categories separate.

The broad-minus-confined column is a transparent subtraction. It is not an official CPSC category, it is not a replacement for NFIRS incident coding, and it should not be cited simply as “non-confined chimney fires.” The broad CPSC equipment row and the confined CPSC row are related components of the report’s estimation framework, but their difference does not receive an official incident-class label.

The six-year values support three conclusions without requiring a model beyond arithmetic. First, the broad annual estimates stayed within a 1,300-fire range. Second, confined estimates accounted for most of the broad category by count. Third, the broad property-loss estimate did not move in lockstep with the annual fire estimate, which is why fire counts and nominal loss should be analyzed separately.

The table shows why a damage figure is unusable without a category label. The broad category includes much more estimated property loss than the confined row, while the confined row includes most of the estimated fires. Dividing the rounded aggregates gives $33.8 million ÷ 83,600, or approximately $404 per confined-category estimate, and $734.6 million ÷ 93,800, or approximately $7,832 per broad-category estimate. Those ratios expose the difference between the two aggregate loss profiles. They are not average repair prices, average insurance payouts, or direct observations of individual incidents.

This table describes the part of the CPSC equipment estimate for which a power source can be assigned. It does not establish the fuel distribution of all confined chimney or flue fires. Solid fuel dominates the displayed annual counts and losses, but the table cannot be used to calculate the share of all chimney fires caused by wood because most confined incidents are absent from the fuel detail.

What did the cross-edition check find?

CPSC publishes overlapping three-year report editions, which makes it possible to check whether shared annual values remain stable. The 2019 broad fire estimate was 15,500 in both the 2017–2019 and 2019–2021 editions; the 2019 confined estimate was 13,700 in both; and the 2019 confined property-loss estimate was $5.0 million in both. The 2020 and 2021 broad fire, confined fire, and property-loss values also matched between the 2019–2021 and 2020–2022 editions.

One small difference remains visible: the 2019 broad-category property-loss figure is $117.2 million in the 2017–2019 edition and $117.3 million in the 2019–2021 edition. The six-year table uses $117.2 million because that is the value in the source edition supplying the 2017–2019 block. CPSC’s rounded national estimates can be revised across editions, so the dataset records its source edition rather than asserting that every overlap is immutable.

What does each chimney fire number count?

There is no single interchangeable official category called “chimney fire.” CPSC, NFPA, USFA, NFIRS, and NERIS organize the evidence differently, so the category name and observation period must travel with every number.

What was NFIRS Incident Type 114?

NFIRS Incident Type 114 was the code for a fire originating in and confined to a chimney or flue. Both conditions matter: the origin is the chimney or flue, and the fire remains confined there. A fire that spreads beyond the flue no longer satisfies the Type 114 definition, but the replacement code and the category in which its consequences appear depend on the facts recorded in the incident report; the page therefore does not assign every spreading fire automatically to one specific alternate row.

The Type 114 definition is narrower than the broad CPSC “fireplace, chimney, chimney connector” equipment category. CPSC uses NFIRS product and incident detail and then weights the available records to national fire-loss totals. A writer should not replace the equipment label with “confined chimney fire” merely because both appear in the same report.

What is CPSC’s broad equipment category?

CPSC’s broad row is an equipment grouping used in its Residential Fire Loss Estimates. It combines the report’s estimate for fires involving fireplace, chimney, or chimney-connector equipment, including applicable confined-fire estimates that cannot be assigned to detailed equipment or power-source subrows. It is currently the clearest one-number federal answer to the broad query, but its exact label should remain visible.

CPSC states that its national product-specific estimates derive from NFIRS incident details weighted to NFPA’s annual estimates of total U.S. fire losses. The result is a modeled national estimate, not a simple tally of every submitted record and not a census of every fire that occurred.

What do NFPA’s two chimney-related rows mean?

NFPA’s 2016–2020 supporting table publishes 13,120 confined chimney or flue fires per year and a separate 3,010-fire “fireplace or chimney” row. The same table reports 0 rounded civilian deaths, 20 civilian injuries, and $5 million in direct property damage for the confined row; the separate fireplace-or-chimney row reports 30 deaths, 50 injuries, and $234 million in damage.

Adding the two fire rows gives 16,130 fires per year, equal to a calculated 36.5%of NFPA’s 44,210 annual home-heating fires. That calculation is useful only when the two source labels stay visible. It is not an NFPA incident class and should never be attributed to NFPA as though the organization published a single 16,130-fire chimney category.

What is creosote, and what can the data prove about it?

Creosote is a combustible residue that can accumulate on the interior of a chimney or flue as wood smoke cools. CSIA’s current safety page describes chimney-fire temperatures around 2,000°F in masonry chimneys, says factory-built chimneys are tested to withstand flue-gas temperatures up to 2,100°F, and states that a prefabricated metal chimney damaged by a chimney fire should no longer be used and must be replaced.

Those are safety statements from the organization’s own page, not national incidence statistics. The CPSC six-year tables do not provide a verified national percentage of chimney fires caused by creosote, and the confined-fire records generally lack the detailed equipment and power-source fields required to calculate one. The page therefore does not publish a creosote-causation percentage.

A chimney-fire aftermath assessment can involve hidden damage that is not visible from the ground. The relevant safety determination belongs to qualified personnel using the applicable inspection standard and manufacturer documentation; this page does not provide step-by-step instructions for inspecting or reusing fire-exposed venting equipment.

Source:Chimney Safety Institute of America, “Preventing Chimney Fires,” read July 27, 2026. csia.org — Preventing Chimney Fires

How was the chimney fire dataset built?

The dataset transcribes published primary-source values, records each category and observation period, and labels every derived value with its formula. No annual value was interpolated, no survey was invented, and no state or county count was published without a documented reporting denominator.

What sources were included?

The source hierarchy was:

1. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Residential Fire Loss Estimates for the national broad and confined CPSC series.
2. National Fire Protection Association supporting tables for its 2016–2020 heating-fire categories and national-estimation method.
3. U.S. Fire Administration reports and system pages for residential heating-fire shares, NFIRS methodology context, the NFIRS-to-NERIS transition, and Indiana’s state profile.
4. U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey for the wood-space-heating denominator.
5. Indiana Department of Homeland Security’s own reporting document for the current Indiana participation and completeness context.
6. Chimney Safety Institute of America’s own page for the safety statements attributed specifically to CSIA.
7. CPSC’s 1983 Consumer Safety Alert for the historical 22,500-fire statement.
8. NFPA’s current NFPA 211 materials for the 2024 edition and its annual-inspection language.

Secondary articles were useful only for identifying claims that required an origin check. They were not used as evidence for the page’s numerical findings.

How were the six annual CPSC values collected?

The 2017, 2018, and 2019 broad-category values came from CPSC Tables 1a through 1d in the October 2022 report. The 2020, 2021, and 2022 broad-category values came from the corresponding tables in the April 2026 report. Confined-category fire, injury, and property-loss values came from the earlier report’s Tables 10a through 10c and the later report’s Tables 9a through 9c, because CPSC renumbered the confined-fire section between editions.

The category wording, units, rounding notes, and source period were checked before the two three-year blocks were joined. The dataset retains a source URL and report date on every row. No missing year was estimated, and the 2019 death suppression was preserved as “fewer than 10.”

Which figures are official, and which are calculated?

An official estimate is a value published by the named issuing organization. A calculated value is arithmetic performed by Fort Wayne Chimney Repair Research using published inputs. The principal calculations are:

• Six-year broad annual average: (15,900 + 16,200 + 15,500 + 15,800 + 14,900 + 15,500) ÷ 6 = 15,633.33
• Six-year confined annual average: (14,000 + 14,400 + 13,700 + 14,200 + 13,600 + 13,700) ÷ 6 = 13,933.33
• Current-period confined annual average: (14,200 + 13,600 + 13,700) ÷ 3 = 13,833.33
• Confined share of the six-year broad estimate: 83,600 ÷ 93,800 × 100 = 89.13%
• Confined share of six-year broad nominal property loss: $33.8 million ÷ $734.6 million × 100 = 4.60%
• Ratio of confined modeled loss to confined modeled fires: $33,800,000 ÷ 83,600 = $404.31
• Ratio of broad modeled loss to broad modeled fires: $734,600,000 ÷ 93,800 = $7,831.56
• Broad category’s share of all CPSC unintentional residential structure fires, 2020–2022: 15,400 ÷ 359,500 × 100 = 4.28%
• Broad category’s share of CPSC heating-and-cooling-equipment fires, 2020–2022: 15,400 ÷ 38,100 × 100 = 40.42%
• NFPA two-row calculated sum: 13,120 + 3,010 = 16,130
• USFA-derived confined chimney-or-flue value: 34,200 × 49.43% = 16,905.06

How were rounding and suppression handled?

CPSC rounds fires to the nearest 100, deaths and injuries to the nearest 10, and property loss to the nearest tenth of a million dollars. NFPA’s supporting table rounds fires, deaths, and injuries to the nearest ten and direct property damage to the nearest million dollars. Calculations using these figures inherit the source rounding and should not be read as more precise than the inputs.

A CPSC asterisk for a death estimate below 10 is displayed as fewer than 10. It is not converted to zero.

What do the verification tiers mean?

• ★ Verified:Read directly against the issuing agency’s report, official dataset, standard material, or original organization page on July 27, 2026.
• ● Compiled: Compiled from a cited primary source with direct re-verification still pending.

Every published row in dataset version 2026-07-27 is marked ★. No ● row remains in the production dataset.

How many chimney fires happen in the United States each year?

The best current broad answer is 15,400 fires per year, the CPSC annual average for unintentional residential structure fires involving a fireplace, chimney, or chimney connector in 2020–2022. A narrower same-period answer is a calculated 13,833 confined-category fires per year, derived from CPSC’s published annual values of 14,200, 13,600, and 13,700.

Which figure should a writer use?

Use 15,400 when the article needs the latest broad federal equipment-category estimate. The complete wording is:

CPSC estimated an annual average of 15,400 unintentional U.S. residential structure fires involving a fireplace, chimney, or chimney connector in 2020–2022.

Use 13,700when the article needs CPSC’s latest annual confined-category estimate for 2022. Use 13,833only when the article explicitly identifies it as a calculation from CPSC’s three annual 2020–2022 confined values. Use 13,933 only for the calculated six-year confined average covering 2017–2022. Those numbers are not rival estimates that can be averaged together.

Does “2026” mean these fires happened in 2026?

No. The title year identifies the page’s verification edition. CPSC published its 2020–2022 report in April 2026, but the incidents represented by the current estimate occurred during 2020, 2021, and 2022. No CPSC national chimney-category estimate for 2023, 2024, 2025, or 2026 was located as of July 27, 2026.

Are undetected chimney fires included?

CSIA states that the majority of chimney fires go undetected at the time they occur. An incident that produces no fire-department response may not create a record in the source systems used for national estimation. That limitation does not prove that every published national estimate is a mathematical lower bound. CPSC and NFPA apply weighting and imputation to reported data, and a modeled estimate can differ from the unknown true total in either direction.

Do chimney fires kill or injure people?

The broad CPSC fireplace, chimney, and chimney-connector category averaged 30 civilian deaths and 90 civilian injuries per year in 2020–2022. CPSC’s confined-fire tables state that no confined-fire deaths occurred in the years covered by the 2017–2019 and 2020–2022 reports, but that statement describes a modeled reporting category and does not mean a chimney-origin fire cannot become fatal after spreading.

USFA’s broader residential heating-fire analysis shows the same severity split without being a chimney-only result. For 2017–2019, USFA published loss rates of 0.0 deaths and 1.3 injuries per 1,000 confined heating fires, compared with 10.2 deaths and 48.4 injuries per 1,000 non-confined heating fires. The confined group includes chimney/flue incidents and confined fuel-burner or boiler fires, so those rates must not be relabeled as chimney-specific casualty rates.

Source: U.S. Fire Administration, Heating Fires in Residential Buildings (2017–2019), Table 3. usfa.fema.gov — Heating Fires 2017–2019 (PDF)

How much property damage do chimney fires cause?

CPSC’s broad fireplace, chimney, and chimney-connector category averaged $130.8 million per year in nominal property loss in 2020–2022. The joined 2017–2022 series averaged a calculated $122.4 million per year for the broad category and $5.6 million per year for the confined category.

Which damage figure is the correct one?

The answer depends on the category being discussed:

• $130.8 million per yearis CPSC’s current 2020–2022 broad-category average.
• $122.4 million per year is the calculated six-year broad-category average for 2017–2022.
• $5.6 million per year is the calculated six-year confined-category average.
• $234 million per yearis NFPA’s 2016–2020 estimate for its separate “fireplace or chimney” row.
• $5 million per yearis NFPA’s 2016–2020 estimate for its confined chimney-or-flue row.

Each value can be correct within its own source definition and period. Publishing a dollar amount without the category creates a false conflict.

Did chimney-fire damage rise 32%?

The broad CPSC nominal loss estimate increased from $110.9 million in 2017 to $146.4 million in 2022, a calculated change of approximately 32.0%. That is a nominal-dollar comparison between two rounded annual estimates. The source values are not adjusted for inflation. The calculation cannot establish that physical fire severity rose 32%, that repair requirements rose 32%, or that an inflation-adjusted economic burden rose 32%.

Is the “25,000 chimney fires a year” figure accurate?

This verification pass did not locate a current primary source that states exactly 25,000 annual chimney fires under a defined category and observation period. The number should not be published as a current national fact unless its original source, scope, and year can be produced.

CSIA’s current “Preventing Chimney Fires” page contains numeric safety information, including temperature figures, but it does not state a national annual chimney-fire count or a national annual property-loss total. That finding is limited to the page as read on July 27, 2026; it does not prove that the number never appeared in an older document.

Why do published chimney fire numbers disagree?

Published values differ because the sources use different categories, observation periods, national-estimation frameworks, weighting procedures, and rounding rules. A difference between two calculated values does not prove that either source is wrong, and it cannot be assigned to one methodological choice unless the source provides that decomposition.

How much do same-period CPSC and USFA values differ?

USFA estimated 34,200 residential building heating fires per year in 2017–2019 and reported that 49.43% were confined chimney-or-flue incidents. Multiplying the two rounded values gives approximately 16,905 confined chimney-or-flue fires per year. CPSC’s confined fireplace, chimney, and connector estimates for the same three years average 14,033. The difference is approximately 20.5%; the cause is not isolated.

Why are raw NFIRS records not the national total?

NFIRS collected incident reports submitted voluntarily by fire departments. Not every department reported every incident, and the detailed records represented only a portion of the national fire-loss totals. CPSC weighted product-specific NFIRS frequencies to NFPA’s national fire-loss estimates separately for fires, deaths, injuries, and property loss. For estimated fires, the cited editions report approximately 70% for 2017–2019, 63% for 2019–2021, and 60% for 2020–2022.

Why did confined-fire coding change so much after 1999?

NFIRS 5.0 introduced incident codes for fires confined to an originating item or system and required less information for those records. CPSC reports that confined fires represented about 2% of residential structure fires submitted to NFIRS in 1999 and 49% by 2019. That change is evidence of a reporting and coding shift, not proof of a corresponding behavioral change.

Are chimney fires becoming more or less common?

CPSC’s broad-category estimates were approximately flat across the six years available in the joined series: 14,900 to 16,200 fires per year from 2017 through 2022.

The six-year CPSC series is long enough to reject a simple claim that chimney-category fires rose every year or fell every year during the period. It is not long enough to establish a durable long-term trend, forecast future incidence, or isolate causal effects. The broader USFA history shows approximately 200,000 residential building heating fires in 1983, 41,200 in 2015, and 33,100 in 2019; that decline concerns residential heating fires generally and should not be restated as an 83% decline in chimney fires.

How many U.S. homes use wood for space heating?

EIA’s 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey estimated that 11.02 million U.S. housing units used wood for space heating, including 2.25 million using it as the main source and 8.83 million using it as a secondary source.

Why is there no “fires per 1,000 wood-burning homes” rate?

The numerator and denominator do not describe the same population. CPSC’s broad category includes fireplace, chimney, and connector equipment across applicable fuels; its confined category can include flues serving gas and oil appliances; and the EIA denominator covers housing units using wood for space heating in 2020. The periods also differ. Dividing a six-year CPSC average by a one-year EIA housing estimate would produce a precise-looking number with mismatched fuels, equipment, years, and populations. The draft rate was therefore removed rather than published.

What do Indiana and Allen County records show?

The current official materials reviewed do not support a defensible exact Indiana, Allen County, or Fort Wayne chimney-fire series. Indiana publishes fire-service reporting and completeness information, but a local chimney-fire total requires an incident-level export with documented category mapping, deduplication, extract date, and reporting-participation denominator.

What would make a local series publishable?

A future local table should be based on an official export containing, at minimum:

• De-duplicated incident records by calendar year.
• County and reporting-agency fields.
• The incident code and full category label.
• A documented NFIRS Incident Type 114 or NERIS successor mapping.
• The extract date and source system.
• The participating-department or eligible-entity denominator.
• Known completeness, synchronization, and transition limitations.
• A clear label distinguishing reported incidents from a modeled estimate.

What changes after NFIRS ends?

The national fire-reporting system changed from NFIRS to NERIS across a 2025 hybrid year and a 2026 exclusive-reporting start. The transition creates a continuity question for future chimney-fire series, but the official timeline does not say that every 2025 record is partial or unusable.

January 31, 2026 was an edit deadline for calendar-year 2025 NFIRS records, not the first date on which 2026 reporting switched systems. USFA states that calendar-year 2026 incident submissions were exclusive to NERIS beginning January 1, 2026 and that NFIRS became unavailable in February.

A defensible bridge between NFIRS and NERIS requires official category mapping, documentation of the reporting universe, and an evaluation of whether the variables and estimation procedures remain comparable. The production rule is therefore simple: do not place post-transition NERIS values onto the 2017–2022 CPSC line until the issuing source documents the category and method.

What does this data show, and what does it not show?

This page shows what the cited primary sources publish, how the compatible annual CPSC values join, and how the calculated figures were produced. It does not convert incompatible categories into one master count, present a modeled estimate as a census, or publish a local number without a reporting denominator.

1. “Chimney fire” is not one universal category. CPSC’s broad equipment grouping, CPSC’s confined row, NFPA’s confined chimney-or-flue row, NFPA’s separate fireplace-or-chimney row, and USFA’s heating-fire share answer different questions.
2. The national values are estimates rather than a census. CPSC and NFPA use incident details and national estimation procedures. A table value should be called an estimate unless the source labels it otherwise.
3. NFIRS participation was voluntary.Raw records do not equal national totals, and CPSC’s edition-specific capture shares differ by period and loss measure.
4. Undetected incidents may be absent from source records. CSIA states that many chimney fires go undetected. That does not prove that a modeled national estimate is necessarily a lower bound.
5. Confined-fire records carry limited detail. NFIRS required less information for confined fires, so equipment and power-source fields are generally unavailable for most incidents in the confined category.
6. Detailed equipment fields are missing at high rates even outside confined rows. CPSC statistically allocates missing or unknown equipment information when producing product-specific estimates.
7. Intentionality treatment differs by table.CPSC’s broad equipment estimates exclude intentionally set fires; its confined-fire section states that intentionality information was unavailable for those incidents.
8. The source values are rounded. CPSC fire estimates are rounded to the nearest 100, casualties to the nearest 10, and property loss to the nearest $0.1 million. Site calculations inherit those limits.
9. A suppressed value is not zero.CPSC’s 2019 broad-category death figure means fewer than 10.
10. Property-loss values are nominal. They are not adjusted for inflation, and nominal changes cannot be restated as changes in physical severity or real economic burden.
11. Aggregate loss ratios are not repair costs. The $404 and $7,832 calculations divide modeled rounded totals. They are not medians, invoice averages, insurance payouts, or direct incident observations.
12. The source periods differ. The principal current values cover CPSC 2020–2022, NFPA 2016–2020, and USFA 2017–2019. A year should never be removed from a quoted figure.
13. The six-year trend does not establish cause. It shows the annual estimates and their range. It does not explain why they moved or forecast future years.
14. The USFA-derived 16,905 value is a calculation. USFA publishes 34,200 heating fires and a 49.43% share; it does not publish 16,905 as a stand-alone chimney-fire count.
15. The 20.5% CPSC–USFA comparison cannot be attributed to one factor. Category framing, control totals, weighting, estimation procedures, and rounding may all contribute.
16. The EIA wood-heating denominator cannot produce a valid chimney-fire incidence rate. The numerator and denominator cover different fuels, equipment, periods, and populations.
17. No exact Indiana, Allen County, or Fort Wayne chimney-fire series is published. No official export meeting the incident-code, deduplication, extract-date, and participation-denominator requirements was located in this verification pass.
18. The 25,000-fire claim remains unverified as a current national fact. The review did not locate a current primary source with the exact count, category, and period.
19. The 1983 CPSC figure is historical and product-specific. Its exact wording is “associated with” metal factory-built chimneys connected to wood and coal stoves; it is not a current all-chimney estimate.
20. The NFIRS-to-NERIS transition may affect continuity. Future values should not be appended to the current series until category mapping and methodology are documented.

Where can the dataset be downloaded?

The dataset is available as CSV for spreadsheet and statistical use and as JSON for programmatic use. Both files contain the primary-source rows, site calculations, source URLs, verification dates, category labels, formulas, verification tiers, and caveats described on this page.

Dataset version: 2026-07-27 · Last verified: July 27, 2026 · Primary series: United States, 2017–2022 · Contextual records: 1983–2026, depending on source

What fields are included in the CSV?

The CSV contains:

record_id, geography, publisher, source_dataset, period_start, period_end, year, category, metric, value, display_value, unit, official_or_calculated, formula, verification_tier, verification_date, source_publication_date, caveat, source_title, source_url

Every calculated record states its formula. Every official record carries the issuing source, period, and category. Values that should not be interpreted as official incident classes or individual-event averages carry that warning in the caveat field.

How should this page be cited?

The following block provides neutral publication metadata for editors, researchers, and data users. It does not change the underlying primary-source attribution required for any government or NFPA figure quoted from the page.

What else should readers know about chimney fire statistics?

These answers restate the page’s principal findings in forms that remain accurate when read outside the surrounding section. Each answer preserves the category, period, and estimate-versus-calculation distinction.

How many chimney fires occur each year in the United States?

The latest broad CPSC estimate is 15,400 unintentional U.S. residential structure fires per year involving a fireplace, chimney, or chimney connector, averaged across 2020–2022. For the narrower CPSC confined category, the annual estimates were 14,200 in 2020, 13,600 in 2021, and 13,700 in 2022, producing a calculated same-period average of 13,833.

Is the “25,000 chimney fires per year” statistic accurate?

This verification pass did not locate a current primary source stating exactly 25,000 annual chimney fires under a defined category and observation period. CSIA’s current chimney-fire page contains numeric safety information but does not state a national annual fire count, so the 25,000 figure should not be published as a current fact without its original source.

What was NFIRS Incident Type 114?

NFIRS Incident Type 114 meant a fire originating in and confined to a chimney or flue. A fire that spreads beyond the flue no longer satisfies that definition, but its alternate coding depends on the incident facts; it should not be assigned automatically to one replacement category without the underlying record.

What is the difference between a confined chimney fire and CPSC’s broad category?

The confined category represents fires remaining within the applicable confined-fire definition. CPSC’s broad “fireplace, chimney, chimney connector” equipment row covers a wider equipment grouping and is the source of the current 15,400-fire annual average. The categories overlap within CPSC’s framework but are not interchangeable labels.

Did CPSC report zero chimney-fire deaths?

CPSC’s confined-fire tables state that there were no confined-fire deaths in the years covered by the 2017–2019 and 2020–2022 reports. The broad fireplace, chimney, and chimney-connector category still averaged 30 civilian deaths per year in 2020–2022, so “zero” must not be applied to the broad category or to every fire that originated in a chimney.

How much property damage do chimney fires cause?

CPSC’s broad fireplace, chimney, and chimney-connector category averaged $130.8 million per year in nominal property loss in 2020–2022. The joined six-year series produced a calculated broad average of $122.4 million and a confined-category average of $5.6 million, so a damage figure is incomplete without its category and period.

Is $404 the average cost of a confined chimney fire?

No. The $404 figure is a ratio obtained by dividing CPSC’s rounded six-year modeled confined property-loss estimate by its rounded modeled confined fire estimate. It is not an observed average repair bill, median loss, insurance payment, or estimate for an individual chimney.

Why do CPSC, NFPA, and USFA publish different chimney-fire numbers?

They use different category definitions, observation periods, estimation universes, weighting methods, and rounding rules. A same-period calculation using USFA’s 34,200 heating-fire estimate and 49.43% confined-chimney share produces approximately 16,905, compared with CPSC’s 14,033 confined-category average for 2017–2019, but the 20.5% difference cannot be assigned to one methodological choice.

How many homes use wood for heat?

EIA estimated that 11.02 million U.S. housing units used wood for space heating in 2020: 2.25 million as the main source and 8.83 million as a secondary source. Those values cannot be divided into the CPSC chimney-fire estimate to create a valid rate because the source populations, fuels, equipment, and periods do not match.

Are chimney-fire statistics available for Indiana, Allen County, or Fort Wayne?

No exact local series meeting this page’s publication criteria was located. A defensible series requires de-duplicated official incident data, the incident category and mapping, an extract date, reporting-agency fields, and a participation denominator; the page does not substitute a statewide reporting count or a guessed local estimate.

What changed when NFIRS ended?

Calendar-year 2026 incident submission became exclusive to NERIS on January 1, 2026. January 31, 2026 was the deadline to edit or modify calendar-year 2025 NFIRS records, and NFIRS became unavailable in February 2026; future statistical continuity depends on documented category and methodology mapping.

Does NFPA 211 require annual chimney inspections?

NFPA 211’s 2024 edition contains an annual-inspection requirement in Section 14.2 for chimneys, fireplaces, and vents. NFPA 211 is a consensus standard, and its legal adoption or enforcement depends on the jurisdiction.

Which primary sources support this page?

The numerical findings and dated system statements above trace to the issuing organization’s own report, dataset, standard page, or original publication.

1. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. 2020–2022 Residential Fire Loss Estimates: U.S. National Estimates of Fires, Deaths, Injuries, and Property Loss from Unintentional Fires. April 2026. Tables 1a–1d, 3a, 3d, 9a–9c, and Methodology. cpsc.gov (PDF)
2. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. 2017–2019 Residential Fire Loss Estimates. October 2022. Tables 1a–1d, 3a, 3d, 10a–10c, and Methodology. cpsc.gov (PDF)
3. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. 2019–2021 Residential Fire Loss Estimates. Official cover date July 2024; running headers show May 2024. Used for the cross-edition comparison. cpsc.gov (PDF)
4. National Fire Protection Association. Home Heating Fires: Supporting Tables. December 2022. Table 1 and methodology notes. nfpa.org (PDF)
5. U.S. Fire Administration. Heating Fires in Residential Buildings (2017–2019). Topical Fire Report Series, Volume 21, Issue 10. December 2021. usfa.fema.gov (PDF)
6. U.S. Fire Administration.“NFIRS Sunset.” Page last reviewed April 20, 2025. usfa.fema.gov
7. U.S. Fire Administration.“Indiana Fire Loss and Fire Department Profile.” NFIRS 2023 data. usfa.fema.gov
8. Indiana Department of Homeland Security. Indiana Fire Service Data Report, July–December 2025. March 2026. in.gov (PDF)
9. U.S. Energy Information Administration. 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, Table HC1.6: Household Energy Use by End Uses. Final release March 2023. eia.gov (PDF)
10. Chimney Safety Institute of America. “Preventing Chimney Fires.” Page read July 27, 2026. csia.org
11. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. “Consumer Safety Alert.” 1983. Historical statement on metal factory-built chimneys connected to wood and coal stoves. cpsc.gov
12. National Fire Protection Association. NFPA 211: Standard for Chimneys, Fireplaces, Vents, and Solid Fuel-Burning Appliances, 2024 edition. nfpa.org
13. National Fire Protection Association. Official NFPA 211 standards-development material preserving the Section 14.2 annual-inspection text. nfpa.org (PDF)

Last verified: July 27, 2026 · Fort Wayne Chimney Repair Research

Related references on this site: Chimney Parts Diagram (66 labeled components across four system types) · Research & Reference hub · Resources · Editorial and source standards

For information about chimney safety services in Fort Wayne, see chimney liner repair and chimney rebuilding.