Insurance statistics show that the two most common times of the year for barn fires are summer and winter. Winter fires are caused by appliances, rodents chewing through wires, or the accumulation of dust and cobwebs on electrical surfaces. Heating equipment is the leading cause of fires in barns with heat lamps as the leading heating equipment involved in these fires.
Barn fires are not small. Half of barn structure fires involve the entire building. Forty-eight percent of barn structure fires occurred in the Midwest and thirty-two percent occurred in the South in 2002 – 2005 (Flynn, 2008).
This fact sheet will explain to horse owners and others the short and long term precautions that should be taken to help reduce the incidence of barn fires: