The fire that killed 12 people at an apartment building in the Bronx on Thursday night was started by a 3-year-old boy who was playing with the burners on a stove — which he had done before, his mother told investigators. The cause was heart-wrenching, but the behavior not that uncommon.

Daniel A. Nigro, the New York City fire commissioner, said the department gets 75 to 100 referrals a year about children who have a history of playing with or being fascinated by fire.

Preschoolers and kindergartners are most likely to start fires caused by play, and are most likely to die in them, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Four children died in the Bronx fire, but the boy who started it survived when his mother grabbed him and another child and escaped the building.

Nationally, fires caused by play and reported to municipal fire departments, accounted for an average of 49,300 fires per year from 2007 to 2011, the association reported. Such fires caused a yearly average of 80 civilian deaths, 860 civilian injuries and $235 million in property damage during that time period, though they account for a relatively small percentage of total fires.