How High Is The Risk To Women From Accidental Fires In India?

Posted: March 8, 2020

Women are more at risk from accidental fire, even if we ignore the violence against women that puts them at a higher risk – why is this?

While at one hand, women are celebrated as Maa Durga, Lakshmi or Saraswati, the actual plight of women is contradictory. Increasing violence against women in every field is at an alarming rate. Women are not safe even in terms of accidental fire deaths…

Yes, here we are going to talk about the most ignored but the most important threat that lies in all of our homes/ places that we visit – fire safety, that is.

According to the NCRB data in the year 2018, the total accidental fire deaths are 12748 of which 7244 are women, that is 56.8 per cent of the total fire deaths. It means more women die in our country in fires.

If we look at the past 4 years data, here’s what it says:

Why are fire accidents so common?

Lack of awareness of fire safety – In general, we don’t give any importance to fire safety. How many of us learn about it or educate people around us about it? Do we know what to do if you are in an emergency situation?

Nonchalance – A prevailing mindset that nothing can happen to us. A fire can happen to anyone, anytime. Remember the news that we read every morning – “Gas burst killed a family of five” or “Electrical short-circuit in a High-rise killed 4” This passes as just a piece of news and we don’t give any value to it beyond that.

Why do more women die of fire accidents?

Threat and accident-prone – Women, in our country, toil every day in the kitchen. This makes them prone to accidental kitchen fires. If we look at the data, many women die due to cooking gas bursts.

Fire accidents are preventable. If we take due care to educate ourselves about fire safety, we can be more vigilant and prevent emergency situations in the first place. Having said that, in such a situation, fire safety education will help you to know what you should and shouldn’t do.

Here is a resource guide that can help you to prevent fires: Home fire safety checklist.

Image source: Pyar Ke Papad Serial

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