Fire deaths have hit an all-time low in New York, the Fire Department said today.
Just 56 people have died in fires in 2010 — an 18 percent drop from the same period of 2009.
And 2009 itself was a record-setting year, with just 73 fire deaths over all 12 months.
That was four fewer deaths than the previous record years of 1919 and 2006. In both of those years, the city had 77 fire deaths.
“We attribute this to an aggressive campaign of fire safety education and quicker response times,” said Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano.
One factor may be quicker response times — it takes firefighters about four minutes to get to blazes now, down from an average 4 minutes and 36 seconds five years ago.
“The firefighters are getting to jobs quicker and providing assistance quicker to those caught in these emergencies,” Cassano said.
“Firefighters are getting their people out of the buildings, and EMS is providing on-scene life-saving care.”
Fire deaths have dropped even though the number of reported structural fires has held steady this year, the data shows.