According to the newspaper, alcohol was involved in 50 to 70 percent of all fire deaths in the past few years. Intoxicated persons are more likely to fall asleep while smoking, thus increasing the risk of fire. Drunkenness also makes it more difficult to detect a fire, and to flee a fire that has begun.
Last year, some 118 people are thought to have died in fires, 40 more than the previous year.
In terms of population, two times the number of people die in fires in Finland than the average in other Western European countries.
YLE