It's a list that no homeowner wants to see their city on.
The Hartford insurance company has released its national survey ranking cities in the country that are most at-risk for home fires, and two are right here in Northeast Ohio.
News 5's Danita Harris dove into the findings to see what residents in Akron and Canton have been getting wrong and the efforts being done to make homes safer from fires.
It's been a little over a year since a fire started inside the walls of Shawn Spaulding's Akron home.
"I was real relaxed, watching TV. And next thing I know, all hell broke loose, basically," Spaulding said.
Even before his tragedy, the former Kenmore homeowner said he knew the area was no stranger to devastation.
"There was already eight fires. I was number eight or nine," Spaulding said.
Akron came in at 40th on Hartford's 2023 Home Fire Index.
The insurance company identified the top 150 cities in the country with the highest risk for home fires.
They looked at data from the National Fire Incident Reporting System and surveyed adults across the country.
According to the survey, 44% of people in Akron said they had a working smoke detector in every bedroom of their home, compared to 57% nationwide.
There is hope that a $10,000 grant will help educate residents about fire safety.
"This has nothing to do with anything involving the fire department capabilities, with the fire department, the resources they have, response times, anything like that. It's really more of an indication of the risky behaviors of residents," Hartford Assistant Director Jeff Welch said.
The findings from the survey also put Canton at number 41 on the list, which is 31 spots higher than where the city landed in 2020.
While the high ranking shows residents that they need to be aware of the dangers they put themselves in, like charging devices overnight or leaving lit candles unattended, Steve Henderson, Division Chief of the Canton Fire Department, said the city is in a unique situation.
"There's a lot of factors built into it. But Canton's a pretty old city, so we have a lot of vacant and older structures that tend to be more susceptible to fire," Henderson said.
Henderson said the city has seen a slight increase in structure fires over the last year. Many of those fires happened in homes without smoke detectors.
