Most Istanbul fires in 2020 resulted from cigarette butts, data reveals

ISTANBUL

One of the main causes of more than 19,000 fires that occurred in the first 11 months of 2020 in Istanbul were cigarette butts, according to data from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.

Istanbul’s Fire Department extinguished 19,087 fires in this period, and cigarette butts were the cause of 7,595 of them, the state-run Anadolu Agency has reported.

“This makes 39.8 percent of the total fires,” the officials said.

According to data by the Fire Department, cigarette butts caused 10,532 fires in 2015, 11,341 in 2016, 8,420 in 2017, 7,153 in 2018 and 9,201 in 2019.

The second cause of the fires in the province is the electrical short circuits.

In every 25.1 minutes, a fire breaks out in Istanbul, according to the statistics.

Another data showed that the majority of the fires broke out at noon. Around 37.5 percent of the fires occurred between 12 p.m to 6 p.m., 34.2 percent occurred between 6 p.m. to midnight, and 13.6 percent of fires broke out between midnight to 5 p.m.

The officials also shared statistics on responding to the incident. “Firefighters have speeded up their intervening time. They are 4 seconds faster than 2015.”