FIRE FATALITIES IN ELDERLY PEOPLE

Fatal dwelling-house fires account for 10% of all accidental deaths in the United Kingdom with one-quarter of the deaths being of elderly pe ople. No study has described the characteristics of elderly individual s who die in fires. We report results from a retrospective review of a ll fatal dwelling-house fires in Scotland from 1980 to 1990. Of 1096 p eople dying in fires, 243 (23%) were aged over 75. When compared with patients under the age of 75, older patients were significantly less l ikely to have alcohol detected in their blood at the time of the fatal fire and significantly less likely to be smokers. Significantly more fires billing elderly people were caused by faulty or misused electric al items in the house, particularly electric blankets, These differenc es between elderly and Younger individuals dying in in dwelling-house fires may suggest that preventive strategies for the elderly populatio n require a different emphasis from those for younger people.