Minnesota Department of Public Safety confirms 70 fire-related deaths in 2022

Detroit Lakes , MN (KDLM) – The Minnesota Department of Public Safety announced 70 people died across the state in 2022 during fire-related emergencies.

In a news release, the agency said 2022 saw the most fire-related deaths since 1995 when 86 people killed as a result of a fire.

Minnesota’s interim State Fire Marshal, Amanda Swenson, said these people were more than just numbers on a page.

“While these are the numbers, they were also people,” said Swenson. “They were loved. They had families, jobs and lives and their future was really tragically cut short. So, if 70 seems like a high number, it is.”

The state fire marshal’s office compiled the data from reports from fire departments across the state and the Minnesota Department of Health to make sure the reports and the official causes of death matched.

According to the data, 48 fire fatality victims were male and 22 were female with an average age of 56 years old.

Additionally, Swenson said, 9 fatalities were caused by careless smoking, where an individual did not extinguish their cigarette properly before going to bed. 13 deaths were the result of a vehicle crash that caused a fire and 29 of the 70 deaths occurred when drugs or alcohol were present.

“It’s important to note that while many of these fires can be tracked back to those lifestyle, behavior decisions, some of these fire deaths were the result of accidental incidents, such as: scalding from boiling water, carbon monoxide poisoning, or a gas leak,” she said. 

The agency also points out that 59% of all deadly-fires in 2022 occurred in 30 Greater Minnesota counties; representing 41 of the 70 total deaths.

Per every one million Minnesotans, the fire fatality rate more than doubles in Greater Minnesota compared to the seven-county Twin Cities metro area.

Brainerd Fire Chief Tim Holmes said Greater Minnesota firefighters have to endure a lot of things their metro area counterparts don’t, which may play into fire fatality disparagement between the two areas.

“This data is troubling to Greater Minnesota firefighters for a number of reasons,” said Holmes. “The first, we are already at a disadvantage because paid-on-call firefighters staff many of these departments.”

He said being an on-call firefighter takes more time to respond to the fire station and then load-out for the emergency than it would take for a full-time firefighter to respond a scene directly.

The news release also stated the state fire marshal’s office will be spending the rest of the year doing outreach with their partners in various communities to make an effort to reduce the number of fatalities in 2023.