Fires

From The City Wiki · Reference page · 5 entries · game data version 1.10.11

Fires: Fire engines, how fires spread, casualties, and fires from homeless camps.

Buildings catch fire now and then. The nearest fire station sends an engine, and the faster it arrives the less is lost.

Fire engines

Once a fire is out the crew stays on to damp it down for about an hour, so each engine is tied up for around an hour and a half per fire. If several fires break out together, the rest wait or mutual aid comes from outside the city, which arrives late. The advisor warns you when two or more fires are burning and they come to three quarters of your engines or more.

Station	Engines
Small fire station	2
Large fire station	3
Fire headquarters	5
Neighborhood fire station	1
Heavy rescue station	3
Volunteer fire station	2

How fire spreads

A fire left alone for 20 game minutes spreads to the buildings around it: next door, behind, or across a narrow street. Avenues and boulevards are wide enough to act as firebreaks. A building that stays fully alight for about 2 hours and 40 minutes with nobody fighting it burns down.

The Free smoke alarms district policy halves the number of fires that start in a district, for $0.50 per resident a day.

Deaths and injuries

When a fire is put out in time, there is a 3% chance that someone inside dies, and a 30% chance that smoke makes up to 2 people ill. When a building burns down, each person inside has a 10% chance of dying, and if nobody does there is still a 50% chance one person is lost.

When a home burns down

The families move into homes elsewhere in the city that have room, a household at a time. If there is nowhere for them, about three in ten of the adults put up a tent in a homeless camp and the rest leave the city.

Fires from homeless camps

A camp with people in it and a tree close by has a 5% chance each day of a fire getting away from it. The trees burn and set the trees around them alight, including ones you planted, and a burning tree right next to a building can set the building on fire. A fire station that reaches the spot puts the trees out, and so does rain or snow.

Fire cover and happiness

Homes in reach of a fire station get +3. Homes outside every station's reach get -3, and in a growing city that gets worse, down to -18 at 50,000 residents.

In Easy mode engines head back soon after the fire is out, and fires are deadlier: 35% chance of a death even when it is put out in time, and when a building burns down at least one person dies and each of the others has a 20% chance. Smoke can make up to 12 ill.

Fires