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Nonresidential Building Fire Causes (2015-2024)

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National estimates

The 2024 national estimates for the leading causes of nonresidential building fires show that there were:

  • 33,200 cooking fires.
  • 14,900 other unintentional, careless fires.
  • 13,000 intentional fires.

Overall trends

Overall trends in the leading fire causes for the 10-year period of 2015 to 2024 show the following:

  • 10% increase in nonresidential cooking fires.
    • Cooking as the leading cause of nonresidential building fires for the 10-year period.
  • 75% increase in nonresidential other unintentionally or carelessly set fires.
  • 43% increase in nonresidential intentionally set fires.
*Estimated trends in time-series data may be skewed by high-impact outlier events that inflate cumulative variance, and the magnitude of these trends may appear artificially amplified or minimized due to the scaling of the graphic.

Leading causes of nonresidential building fires (2015-2024)

Leading causes of nonresidential building fires (2015-2024)
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
Cooking 30900 28900 33700 31700 33200 28600 31100 35800 33300 33200
Other unintentional, careless 10900 10700 12300 11900 12800 12200 14100 16500 13800 14900
Intentional 9800 9000 10900 10200 12000 14600 17700 18900 14300 13000
Electrical malfunction 8200 7100 8200 8100 8200 6800 7200 8000 7400 8000
Heating 7900 7100 7600 7100 7400 6400 7100 8100 6500 6700
Open flame 6500 5700 6700 5900 6500 6200 7100 7500 5900 6100