The Center for Fire Research (CFR) has had a huge impact on reducing casualties and losses from fires. It also has helped stimulate new industires, and saved industry enormous sums by engineering fire safety better, averting business disruption, reducing liability, and in a number of other ways. The dividends of the past continue; CFR's budget essentially has been "paid" through the Year 2100 by even the most conservative estimates of its impact. This was a first, brief effort to estimate the magnitude of the CFR impact, and how it is distributed across the major components of the total cost of fire. More work is needed on virtually every aspect of the estimation procedures used here. CFR's program has made a great contribution to life safety in the United States and has saved business billions of dollars in losses and unnecessary costs of fire. A much greater impact can be achieved with a few millions of dollars more investment in the CFR program each year - the enhanced program.