Fire Kills - you can prevent it

The Fire Kills campaign is a national fire safety publicity campaign. It was established over 10 years ago, and aims to reduce the number of deaths in house fires by raising awareness of the issues.

Smoke alarms

Deaths from fire are now at their lowest level since records began in 1959. This is because there has been an increase in the use of smoke alarms. Twenty years ago only five per cent of households had alarms, now this figure is up to 80 per cent.

Statistics from Communities & Local Government (opens in new window)

This has been largely due to a national Fire Kills advertising campaign, focused on smoke alarms and smoke alarm maintenance. Fire Kills advertising has had a real and positive impact on people and fire safety prevention in the home.

Fire Kills has been responsible for a number of thought-provoking, memorable and effective fire safety campaigns, including:

• 'Fire Starts when your Attention Stops' - after this successful kitchen fire safety campaign, chip pan fire injuries in the home decreased by 23 per cent when compared with the previous five year average (1998-2002). This represented a fall of 12 per cent for all causes of fire related injuries in the home over the same period
• ‘Put it Out, Right Out’ – This campaign promoted fire safety messages related to smoking and helped to reduce smoking-related fire deaths by a fifth in 2004
• ‘Pull Your Finger Out’ - our most recent Fire Kills campaign, fronted by Julie Walters, highlights the dangers of not testing your smoke alarm often enough

Further information on key government campaigns on fire prevention issues over recent years can be found on the Campaign materials page.

Campaign materials