By Alan Agadoni, Senior Vice President, EDR® at LightBox
When a fire breaks out at a commercial property, it doesn’t just destroy structures. It can leave behind a toxic legacy that lingers for years. Hazardous materials released during a fire can contaminate soil, water, air, and even neighboring buildings. Yet until now, researching past property fire events and related risks has been a manual, fragmented process.
Now LightBox Live brings unprecedented access to fire and emergency incident reports. The National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) is now integrated directly into the LightBox Live mapping application, helping environmental professionals (EPs) and risk managers better identify, evaluate, and document potential releases of hazardous substances from historical fires.
Why Fire History Matters in CRE Due Diligence
Consider a warehouse storing flammable solvents or a large water treatment plant. A structural fire at such a site could trigger not only acute airborne contamination but also lingering onsite health and regulatory risks that are costly to remediate. In some tragic examples, urban conflagrations like last year’s Los Angeles-area fires destroyed thousands of structures and released toxic substances into entire neighborhoods. As we have learned, large residential fires also involve significant releases of toxins like heavy metals, asbestos, and the combustion byproducts of plastics and chemically treated wood. Of course, the environmental risks associated with the use of PFAS-containing Aqueous Film-Forming Foam (AFFF) to extinguish fires at airports and military installations are well documented.
Until now, there has been no fast and easy national resource for identifying historical fire or hazmat incidents. Local fire department files take time to acquire and are often inconsistent, or incomplete. EPA’s Emergency Response Notification System (ERNS) is an archive of initial release reports involving transportation, but it is limited in scope and usefulness. As a result, fire-related contamination risks have been hard to spot, despite their potential to trigger cleanup obligations or impact property valuation.
But with the new fire and incident data in LightBox Live, all this has changed. And it isn’t just fire history that can be found in the new data, but also emergency hazardous material incident reports as well. The data often includes physical property data such as address, construction type and property use. For EPs conducting Phase I environmental site assessments (ESAs), this means fires and hazmat releases are not only historical tragedies but also documented environmental release events with real implications for Recognized Environmental Condition (REC) determinations, cleanup obligations, and stakeholder liability.
Regulatory & Industry Guidance on Fire-Related Releases
Federal environmental regulations such as the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and the Emergency Response Notification System (ERNS) all acknowledge the risks of chemical releases due to fire. These frameworks along with related state, local and tribal regulations often govern how cleanup is triggered and reported when fires lead to hazardous discharges.
ASTM E1527-21, the industry standard for Phase I ESAs, while not explicitly detailing fire history reviews, nevertheless expects professionals to consider impacts that are normally associated with a fire event. Areas to consider from the standard:
- Observe building physical damage and staining during site reconnaissance
- Review fire department records and ERNS entries
- Interview site and fire official personnel about past events
- Document visual signs of staining, residue, or remediation activity
Fire Incident Databases Now Available in LightBox Live
LightBox Live now integrates data from the NFIRS. Managed by the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), NFIRS includes millions of incident reports from 1980 through 2023, offering a rich view into fire and hazardous materials activity across the U.S.
The dataset captures details such as:
- Fire origin and cause
- Hazmat involvement
- Property use type
- Departmental actions
- Property loss estimates
NFIRS includes powerful HazMat-specific fields, like release type and chemical name, making it a valuable tool in industrial and commercial contexts.
Track the Location of Fire Incidents with Precision
Fire incident sites now appear as geolocated icons on the interactive map and as a searchable spreadsheet in the ‘List’ view. Users can:
- Toggle NFIRS layers on or off
- View incident details on the map and in a list
- Search, filter and export fire records
- Review details within the same application used for adjoining property buffers, VEC modeling, and database layering
Fire data is visible for both subject and nearby properties, with a search radius of 1/8 mile. This makes it easier than ever to spot patterns of past fire activity and potential contaminants that might require deeper scrutiny during Phase I or Phase II work.
The new fire database in LightBox Live offers more than just information on fire and emergency incidents. Because it can be easily searched and compared to all the other agency data and historical imagery available, it can confirm and add details on events as they were observed in the immediate aftermath, from a local, knowledgeable source. You will be amazed at how you can “connect-the-dots” to so many other datasets.
A Fire-Informed Future for CRE Risk Assessment
The addition of NFIRS fire history data into LightBox Live marks a new era for environmental due diligence. No longer do EPs need to piece together fragmented records or rely solely on interviews and property observations to uncover fire-related risks. These databases empower professionals to identify potential red flags faster, with richer context and stronger documentation.
As we’ve said throughout this series, LightBox Live is not just an evolution, it’s a reimagining of how EPs work. And fire history is now a central pillar of that smarter, more connected approach.
Stay tuned for our next blog as we continue to explore new features and content layers that help you deliver better assessments even faster.
Until next time, stay fire-aware and data-informed.
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—Alan
