The likelihood of structure fires tends to increase as temperatures drop.
Even so the Galesburg Fire Department tells WGIL that the number of structure fires this winter has seen a modest drop.
Galesburg Fire Marshall Randy Hovind says the department handled four from December 2015 to January 2016 compared to 5 in that same period last year.
“We had various causes. One was caused by improper disposal of oily rags so they did spontaneously combust. We had three from cooking, we had four that were undetermined, which means we never did determine the cause of the fire and we had one electrical,” Hovind says.
Despite even winter fire statistics the department’s annual report shows 122 fire responses for the entirety of 2015, 59 of those being structure fires, up 11 from the previous year.
The kitchen was the most common origin of those fires with over one third.
The 2015 fires resulted in $1.7 million in damage, almost $500,000 more than last year.
False alarms were down to 360, after 2014 saw an all-time high of 375.
There was also a record number of total calls in 2015 at 4,286, with a little over half of those being Emergency Medical Service calls.
That’s a 7 percent increase from 2014 to 2015, which was the previous record for calls.
