The United States historically has had one of the highest fire loss rates of the industrialized world – both in terms of fire deaths and dollar loss. This unenviable status has perplexed many experts in the fire world. The United States is health and safety conscious in many areas – automobiles, consumer products, food, and medical drugs, to name a few – and has a vast arsenal of technological resources to combat fire. For such a safety conscious and technologically advanced society to be a leader in fire losses is indeed puzzling. This report explores the magnitude and the nature of the U.S.’s fire death problem, and it is divided into two sections. The first section presents a statistical portrait of fire death rates for fourteen industrialized countries. Comparisons reveal the magnitude of differences between the U.S., Japan, and a selection of European countries in fire death rates. Trends in overall rates and differences between countries are also explored. The second section of this report presents observations about key institutional and attitudinal differences between the U.S. and industrialized countries with significantly lower fire death rates. Allocations of fire fighting resources and different cultural attitudes regarding the “acceptability” of fire are addressed in this section.