The good new is that the damage from fires in Nassau County were down in 2012 to $50.1 million from $53.9 million in 2011. The bad news is that the number of structural fires that actually caused damage were up to 1,069 from the previous year’s 763. This is according to the Nassau County Fire Commission. The most expensive month was December 
with $7.3 million in fire damage. It also suffered from the most fires at 382. Nearly 70 firefighters were injured, with 20 required hospital admittance. Fortunately, no firefighters died.
The biggest cause of fires was cooking with 276 incidents.
- Heating unit fires followed at 105, which include those caused by oil and gas burners.
- All three causes, cooking, heating, and barbecues, were greatest in December.
- Propane and natural gas barbecues caused only 37 fires.
- There were 487 vehicle fires, 783 brush and outdoor rubbish fires, and 2,158 spills. About 396 of the calls were for hazardous material spills, such as gasoline or chemicals.
- Ambulance and rescue calls formed 27,634 incidents with 1,331 such calls sent to other fire departments.
Alarms went off 68,851 times.
- Nearly 3,936 were false alarms and 4,946 were automatic false alarms, which showed no apparent cause for the alarm.
- About 6,150 were automatic alarms with no damage. Among the factors causing such alarms are cooking smoke and steam from showers. Alarms due to carbon monoxide activations happened 4,131 times.
All Island can show you how our alarm systems can help to prevent these dangers to your home.
