[original post is likely clipped to save bandwidth]
On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 15:22:00 -0400, "
wrote:



www.usfa.fema.gov/public/factsheets/facts.shtm

A bit under 14 fire-related deaths per year
per million people,
(not counting military and terrorist activity)
80% of which occur in residences,
a bit under 14% of which occur in bedrooms...

so: .14 x .80 x 14 / 1000000

Thus, your chances of getting killed by a bedroom
fire in any given year are about 0.0001568%,

Of course, it doesn't say how many of those
are electrical fires, but it DOES say the the
three biggest sources of residential fire deaths
are smoking, arson, and problems with your
heating system problems. If we assume that
elecrical arc-fires are number four, then
they can't be more than 25% of that total,
which means that AFCI protection is designed
to save you from a hazard that has a less than
1 in 2.5 million chance of killing you in any given
year. Of course, if you otherwise plan to live
for an even hundred years, your chances of
eventually getting killed by a fire that AFCI could
have prevented go up to around 1 in 25 thousand....

--Goedjn


It also doesn't subtract the added deaths due to sleepy persons stumbling
down stairs to reset a false trip.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Autobiography of Mark Twain

gerry

--

Personal home page - http://gogood.com

gerry misspelled in my email address to confuse robots