The fire problem in the United States, on a per capita basis, is one of the worst in the industrial world. Thousands of Americans die each year in fires, tens of thousands of people are injured, and property losses reach billions of dollars. To put this in context, the annual losses from floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters combined in the United States average just a fraction of the losses from fires. The public in general, the media, and local governments, however, are generally unaware of the magnitude and seriousness of fire to communities and to the country. Each year, the National Fire Data Center of the U.S. Fire Administration publishes a 10-year statistical overview of the fires in theUnited States, with focus on the latest year in which data were available at the time of preparation. This report is designed to armthe fire service and otherswith informationthatmotivates corrective action, sets priorities, targets specific fire programs, serves as amodel for state or local analyses of fire data, and provides a baseline for evaluating programs. This Eleventh Edition of Fire in theUnites States covers the 10-year period from 1987 to 1996, with emphasis on 1996. The primary source of data is fromtheNational Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS), but National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) annual survey results, mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics, and data from the state fire marshals are also used. Because of the time it takes to collect data from nearly 13,000 fire departments that participate in NFIRS, edit and obtain corrections, and analyze and display the results, the publication lags the date of data collection. Each edition of this report describes the overall national fire problemand casualties to firefighters. Biannually, the reports address either a state-by-state examination of fire or, alternatively, the problem of fire in residential and non-residential structures—the subject of this Eleventh Edition. And each year, an assessment of several specific special topics is performed; this year, these topics include multiplefatality fires, urban area fires, and the relationship of alcohol consumption to fire deaths.