Fire damages or destroys more than 400-thousand homes in the U.S. each year resulting in 3,500 deaths and losses of more than 4-billion dollars. Firefighters everywhere will tell you fire prevention is the most effective weapon, but the search for a perfect fire retardant or fire prevention method goes on. Here's Michael Holigan... About The House.

Michael Holigan: Almost 90% of all accidental fires start in a home, displacing families and destroying property and personal belongings. A fire retardant chemical spray may be part of an answer to reducing that number.

Donny Stansfield: This is a wood shingle that supposed to be on top of a house. And you can see how fast and easy it starts on fire. This is one I had treated and you put the blow torch right up against it and hold it there as long as you want to and it won't even burn.

MH: Donny Stansfield says this clear, odorless fire retardant is non-toxic and becomes permanent when it dries. He says it can be sprayed on anything in the house. It's guaranteed for the lifetime of the home on any material that is not exposed to the outdoors or has not been steam cleaned or laundered. Applications on wood shake shingles are guaranteed for a minimum of five years. This fire spread rapidly across wood shake roofs in a Plano, Texas, neighborhood last year. Since then, Plano Fire Marshall Russ Mower has investigated a number of fire retardants and fire prevention techniques.

Russ Mower: A real unscientific test would be to take a sample of the wood shingle that the sales person gives you and just throw it in your dishwasher and run it through a cycle of the dishwasher using just a regular dish washing detergent and then dry it out real good to see if it burns. And you'll see how well the products going to weather.

MH: Mower recommends checking with your local fire department before contracting to have any fire retardant applied on your house.

I'm Michael Holigan, About The House.