"John A. Weeks III" writes:
The bottom line is that wood fireplaces cause a quarter
million fires each year and kills hundreds of people,
representing about 25% of all residential fire damage.

Can you document these statistics?

The report that I found on the US Fire Administration Web site
does not seem to support them, although for some reason some
of the figures are missing from the report so it's hard to
draw any hard and fast conclusions from it.

The sad thing is that it is totally avoidable--just don't
light a wood fire in your house.

Or make your fireplace safe and follow fire safety rules!