An Analysis of Hoarding Fire Incidents and MFB Organisational Response

This report represents a study of all identifiable hoarding related incidents responded to by the Metropolitan Fire and Emergency Services Board (MFB) in Melbourne, Australia within a three year period from April 2009 to April 2012. All of the incidents we included in this study were identified through formal and informal data collection methods and used to establish a database. This database allowed us to analyse these incidents and compare them to the previous MFB hoarding study and other MFB fire statistics to identify the demographics and characteristics of hoarding related fires. The results of this study will be used to improve the risk reduction advice given by MFB to hoarding households and to engage other agencies to develop a coordinated response to this issue