RVs on Fire

I came across this post on the iRV2 forum. The discussion was based on an unfortunate incident where a Jeep being towed by an RV caught fire. That incident was reported here.

I then came across this video.

RVs catching fire? Does that happen very often?

I decided to ask Google.

About 263,000 hits in the News. I went through the first few pages, fire after fire.

We do have a small fire extinguisher in our coach. There is no way that it would be able to contain the type of RV fires that Google showed.

I decided to do a bit more digging. It turns out that in Canada, the Council of Canadian Fire Marshals and Fire Commissioners keeps track of this sort of data. For the province of Ontario, during 2007 — the most recent report that I could find — there were 6,347 fires. 60 of them involved a Motor Home, Camper or Trailer. RVs on fire accounted for less than 1% of all fires in Ontario. As a percentage of the total RVs on the road in Ontario? I don’t know. But I would hazard to guess that there are at least 60,000 which brings 60 down to a very small percentage of RVs that catch fire in any given year.

In the United States, the average seems to be roughly 3,000 RV fires in a given year. RVs on fire account for about 1% of all fires in that country as well. Bear in mind that the statistics are fairly rough if you go into more detail — highway fires versus stationary fires. But you get the idea. The risk of fire is certainly a factor however it is not a common feature of owning and operating an RV.

Maintain your RV, do your vehicle inspections and be safe on the road.

Fires can happen anywhere whether you are in an RV or in a house.