Burn Injury Statistics: United States, California, Texas and Washington

By Michael Shemtoub, trial attorney, Beverly Law. Updated November 2026.

This page gathers the numbers people most often look for, each with the agency or journal that published it and the year it covers. Statistics come from different systems that count different things (emergency visits, hospital stays, insurance claims, death certificates, fire department reports), so we say what each number measures. State figures for California, Texas and Washington are at the end.

National burn injury numbers at a glance

The CDC injury figures and the insurance-claims figure count care episodes, so one patient can appear more than once. The NFPA injury count covers only fire injuries reported to fire departments, while the CDC counts include burns of every kind, so the two should not be compared directly.

Who gets burned, and how

The ABA’s 2025 Burn Injury Summary Report covers patients admitted to burn centers from 2020 through 2024 (ABA fact sheet):

National hospital data, which also count patients treated outside burn centers, add more detail. In the 2020 National Inpatient Sample, 33.3% of burn admissions were female, the median age was 3 for children and 49 for adults, and Medicaid was the payer for 33.3% of admissions, followed by private insurance (26.6%), Medicare (20.1%) and uninsured or self-pay (10.2%) (ABA fact sheet). Admissions peak from May through August, which accounts for 37.5% of the year’s burn admissions in a third of the calendar.

How serious burn hospital stays are

The 2020 national hospital data sort burn admissions by how much treatment they needed (ABA fact sheet):

Care is concentrated: 94 hospitals that each admitted at least 100 burn patients a year accounted for 81% of all burn admissions.

A 2013 analysis by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality breaks burn cases down by cause and cost (AHRQ HCUP Statistical Brief 217). That year there were 53,220 hospital stays and 409,183 emergency department visits involving burns. Skin grafting was the most common procedure in burn-related stays, and second-degree burns were the most common severity recorded for both stays (52.9%) and emergency visits (58.4%). The average cost of a burn-related hospital stay was $24,000, more than double the $10,700 average for other stays. Infants under 1 had the highest rates of both burn stays (29.6 per 100,000) and emergency visits (208.9 per 100,000).

The table shows selected causes, and not every record listed one, so the shares do not add up to 100%.

Home fires

The NFPA’s report on 2024 fire losses, published November 2025, gives these national counts (NFPA):

The NFPA reports a home structure fire every 96 seconds, a home fire death every three hours and a home fire injury every 59 minutes in 2024. Fewer fires happen than in 1980, but the death rate per home fire has not improved: 8.9 deaths per 1,000 reported home fires in 2024, compared with 7.1 in 1980. Our apartment fire page covers landlord responsibility for smoke alarms, exits and wiring.

Scalds

Scalds make up 58% of pediatric cases at burn centers. Older adults are hurt by them too: the CDC estimated that adults 65 and older made an average of 8,620 emergency visits a year for nonfatal scald burns from 2001 through 2006. Hot food was involved in 42% and hot water or steam in 30%, and in 76% of the 705 sampled visits the scald happened at home, most often in the kitchen (CDC MMWR).

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says most adults will suffer third-degree burns after two seconds in 150°F water, six seconds at 140°F or thirty seconds at 130°F, and that even 120°F water can cause third-degree burns in five minutes (CPSC). Serving temperatures for coffee and tea are on our hot beverage temperatures page, and bath scalds in care facilities on our nursing home scalds page.

Chemical and fireworks burns

Pool chemicals caused a median of about 4,535 U.S. emergency department visits a year from 2008 through 2017 (CDC MMWR). For 2015 to 2017, the CDC estimated 13,508 visits; at least 56.3% of the injuries happened at a residence, and 36.4% of the patients were under 18 (CDC).

For 2025, the CPSC received reports of at least 15 fireworks deaths and estimated 13,000 emergency department-treated fireworks injuries, with burns to the hands, fingers and head the most common (CPSC, June 24, 2026).

California, Texas and Washington

The U.S. Fire Administration publishes fire deaths by state from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics mortality files, which count every death where fire, its products or an explosion was the underlying or a contributing cause (USFA):

The USFA warns that these are crude rates, not adjusted for age, and should not be used to compare states.

California. The most recent statewide CalStats summary the Office of the State Fire Marshal posts online covers 2020. Reporting departments logged 13,168 structure fires with 399 civilian injuries and 102 civilian deaths; residential properties accounted for 9,818 of those fires, 354 of the injuries and 99 of the deaths. The State Fire Marshal cautions that the counts include only departments that submitted data (OSFM CalStats 2020).

Texas. For Texas, the statewide figure on this page is the USFA death count above. Texas burn data also show up in federal incident reports, such as the Chemical Safety Board’s finding that the 2019 KMCO fire in Crosby killed one worker, seriously injured two and hurt at least 28 others (CSB).

Washington. The Washington State Fire Marshal’s Office reported 30,893 fire incidents, 72 fire deaths and more than $495 million in losses in 2024, a fatality rate of 9.1 per million people. Residential occupancies accounted for 51% of fire deaths. About 60% of the deaths happened where smoke alarms should be installed, and a smoke alarm could be confirmed in only 25% of those. Of 156 fireworks injuries reported in 2024, 61% were burns (WSP 2024 Fire in Washington). Only 290 of the state’s 450 fire agencies reported that year, so these totals cover only the agencies that sent data.

Burn center counts for each state are on our burn center directory: the ABA lists 12 centers in California, 13 in Texas and 1 in Washington (ABA directory). State law for burn claims is on our California, Texas and Washington pages.

How to cite this page

Beverly Law, “Burn Injury Statistics: United States, California, Texas and Washington,” beverlylaw.org, November 2026. Each figure above links to the agency or journal that published it; please cite that original source as well. Corrections are welcome at (310) 552-6959.

Talk to a burn injury lawyer

If a burn caused by someone else put you or your child in the hospital in California, Texas or Washington, call Beverly Law at (310) 552-6959 for a free, confidential case review in English or Spanish. Texas cases are handled by the firm’s Texas-licensed attorneys, Joyce Ondich and John Efstathiou. Read more on our burn injury lawyer page. You owe no fees or costs unless we win.

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Burn Injury Lawyer

Important: This page is general information, not legal or medical advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different; talk to a lawyer about yours. Texas cases are handled by the firm’s Texas-licensed attorneys, Joyce Ondich and John Efstathiou. Last reviewed: November 6, 2026.