Since the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning (DSB) began keeping statistics 23 years ago, over 100 people have been killed in fires caused by arson.
DSB began keeping statistics of deliberately ignited, fatal fires in 1993, reported the newspaper, VG.
From that year, and through 1999, 31 people in died fires caused by arson. During the next decade, the figure was 58, while a further 14 have died since 2010, up until last year.
That makes a total of 103 deaths, but DSBs list is not the complete story. The statistics include cases in which the police informed DSB that a fire was intentional, but the information was not always correct, the newspaper said.
One of the fires that was not included in the statistics, was a fire in a block of bedsits in Urtegata in Oslo in 2008. Six people died in the fire, which police believe was started by arson.
A man was arrested a short time later, but that and several other arson cases against him were dropped.
Even without inclusion of the fire in Urtegata in 2008, that was one of the worst years recorded in DSBs statistics, with nine dead in nine fires. The only year with more deaths by arson was 2001, when 10 people died in six different fires.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
