Socio-demographic predictors of residential fire and unwillingness to call the fire service in New South Wales

- Unreported fires are important in the estimation of fire hazards and their injuries.
- In New South Wales 10% of population had reported that they had a residential fire.
- For those who had residential fire, about 70% were unwilling to call fire brigade.
- People who spoke other languages plus English were two thirds less likely to call.
- Future interventions should target NSW residents that spoke other languages.

In most industrialised countries, the majority of fire-related deaths and injuries occur in the home. Australia has implemented fire prevention programs and strategies, including the use of smoke alarms, to minimise this burden. The number of reported house fires has declined over the past decade. However, there is a growing recognition that unreported fires are important in the estimation of total fire hazards and their associated injuries. This current study used data from the 2014 New South Wales (NSW) Population Health Survey, a yearly telephone survey, consisting of 14,732 survey respondents. Univariate and multiple binary logistic regression models were conducted to examine predictors of residential fire and (un)willingness to call the fire service in the event of a residential fire. The proportion of respondents who experienced residential fires in NSW was 10% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 9.3, 10.8). The proportion of respondents who were willing to call the fire service was 3.1% (95% CI: 2.7%, 3.6%) and that of respondents unwilling to call was 6.9% (95% CI: 6.3%, 7.6%). Multivariate analyses revealed that respondents spoke another language in addition to English were significantly less likely to have experienced a home fire (odds ratio [OR] = 0.46; 95% CI: 0.32, 0.65, p < 0.001) and significantly less likely to call the fire service (OR = 0.34; 95% CI: 0.21, 0.54, p < 0.001), compared with those who only spoke English at home. The results in this study will inform Fire & Rescue NSW's ongoing development of appropriate interventions and awareness-raising programs about residential fire prevention.