A fire in Northfield recently displaced three people living in a mobile home. Flames engulfed a garage in the same town earlier that week.
One man died in a Boscawen house fire at the start of the month. Also in Boscawen, two other blazes destroyed a house and damaged part of a sober living facility, and in Concord, one resident perished in a house fire at the start of November.
The list of calamities goes on.
Once cold weather sets in and people start to heat their homes, the number of structure fires increases. Nearly half of all structure fires are attributed to heating systems, according to Deputy Fire Marshal Anthony Booth, and their increased usage in the winter accounts for the uptick in fires at this time of year.
“The fires that occur from heating systems, it’s usually a lack of maintenance,” Booth said. “Or like with chimney fires — there’s a lot of chimney fires — people aren’t getting them cleaned or they’re not getting them repaired, and so then a fire will spread from the chimney into the roof or the attic.”
Fires igniting from wood-burning stoves happen when the stove pipe does not properly inflate. “Where it penetrates through the wall, it ignites the wood that’s in contact with it,” he said. Along similar lines, attic fires can occur when blown-in insulation touches the furnace’s exhaust pipe and heats up. Rodent nests, which are flammable, can also get into such systems.
As a whole, the number of structure fires has been steadily increasing since 2021. That year, 973 incidents were reported. Only a few years later in 2024, that number grew to 1,623.
Booth noted the marked increase and said his office is trying to understand the reasons behind it.
“What we’re interested in is this: Is there better reporting of these fires, as in they were always occurring at these numbers, but they weren’t necessarily reported correctly? Or is this really a rise in fires that are occurring? And if so, why? So that’s something we have to dig into the data a little bit,” he said.
The state is moving to a new fire reporting system in January, which should allow for the collection of more detailed data.
When it comes to fire fatalities, Booth said the time of year does not seem to affect the frequency of deaths.
Last winter, there were 13 fatalities resulting from house fires between October and March, but the three winters prior only saw four fatalities each. The winter of 2021-2022 had 11 house fire deaths.
New Hampshire has seen four fatal fires since the weather grew cold this season: one in Concord, Colebrook, Boscawen and Milton each.
“The only fire suspected to have been involved in a heating system this winter was the recent one in Milton,” he said. “It appears to have originated at or near a wood stove. It is still under investigation but could have involved ignition of combustible materials that were too close to the stove.”
While heating systems do need to be maintained to prevent blazes, residents’ behavior can also impact the chances of a fire occurring, Booth explained.
“Putting combustibles too close to hot surfaces, for example, if people stack their wood up right next to their wood stove, that could heat up at night,” he said. “We have people who put space heaters too close to bedding, so blankets and things like that can ignite if they’re too close to space heaters.”
The best way to combat fire danger is to be vigilant, keeping three feet of space around anything that heats up and having chimneys inspected yearly.
“Then, people have to just be aware that if you’re running any kind of electrical appliance through an extension cord, you could be heating up the extension cord beyond its insulating capabilities,” Booth said. “Surge protectors and extension cords can only carry so much current, and if you’re running multiple space heaters off of one of those, you’re likely to heat it up in that PVC insulation or the plastic can ignite.”