Each year, over one billion smokers throughout the world light over 6 trillion cigarettes, creating a potential source of ignition from cigarette butts and from cigarette lighters and matches that fall into the hands of young children.
In France, a single lighted cigarette thrown from a moving car in 1999 ignited a fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel, a major thoroughfare between France and Italy, causing 39 deaths and over $1 billion in losses to the region. The Oakland Hills fire in California, in which a lit cigarette remains a suspected cause, left 10,000 homeless, destroyed nearly 4,000 dwellings and cost more than $1.5 billion.
