By Jon Nisja
Data & Fire Protection Team Supervisor
The Minnesota State Fire Marshal Division has finished compiling preliminary fire loss data for 2020. It was certainly a strange year in many respects, and the state’s fire loss seemed to mirror this.
Total Incidents
Fire departments in Minnesota responded to 318,673 incidents in 2020; that is a slight decrease from 2019 (see chart below).
The following chart shows the type of incidents fire departments responded to in 2020.Fires
The Minnesota Fire Incident Reporting System (MFIRS) classifies fires into three categories: building fires, vehicle fires and outdoor fires. Building fires represented almost half of the fires responded to, while vehicle and outdoor fires combined made up 53 percent of the fires in Minnesota.
The total number of fires was up over recent years. There has been an average of 13,859 fires each year for the past decade. There were 15,639 fires in 2020.
Building Fires
Like the total number of fires, the number of building fires that spread and did damage also went up in 2020. The following chart shows the number of building fires that were not confined and that spread from 2004-2020.
Civil Unrest of 2020
Fires caused by civil unrest in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd caused an increase in both outdoor and building fires:
- In 2020, there were an average of 42 fires per day.
- From May 28 through June 2, there were an average of 99 fires per day.
- For the weekend of May 28 through 30, there were 117 fires per day.
- In 2020, there were an average of 10 building fires per day.
- From May 28 through June 2, there were an average of 43 building fires per day.
- For the weekend of May 28 through 30, there were 63 building fires per day.
COVID-19 Incidents
Fire departments reported responding to 11,044 incidents involving COVID-19 during 2020. These responses involved 323 of the state’s fire departments. COVID-19 was suspected in 8,081 incidents, while a positive COVID-19 diagnosis was reported in 2,963 responses. The following chart shows the breakdown of COVID-19 responses by month.
SummaryAll the major fire trends (number of fires, number of building fires, dollar loss) showed an increase in 2020 over the previous year. Total incidents were down slightly, while a new category of response (COVID-19) arrived in 2020 and had a major impact on fire departments in Minnesota.
