As Homeowners Move On, Fire Moves In

In the overwhelming majority of abandoned home fires, while its often evident someone has been inside, they're gone by the time firefighters arrive. Vacant building fires killed an average of 50 civilians yearly between 2003 and 2006, the NFPA reports.

But as the economy leaves more people homeless, they're increasingly taking shelter in empty homes, said Eduardo M. Penalver, a Cornell University law professor studying squatting.

"Squatting is dangerous for the squatters," he said. "The illegality of it sort of causes people to cut corners. So a lot of fires are caused by people making fires to heat or cook, or setting up some sort of jerry-rigged mechanism for stealing electricity."

The dangers, though, are often relegated to places we'd rather bypass.

Like the forgotten house near downtown Dallas, where Earnest Sirls, 46, bedded down in March after missing curfew at the Salvation Army shelter. Hours later, firefighters doused flames consuming a house they believed to be empty. Five days later, Sirls' sister and nephew found his body in the wreckage.

Or the boarded up house in Indianapolis where Sarah Campbell, 24, and Leroy McQueen, 52 , died in a February fire blamed on a heater.