She was at a party with the rest of the cast and crew of Rikas tyttö, her third and last film, while shooting at the Aulanko Hotel in Hämeenlinna; the party had been her idea.

Sari mistook this chimney for a scenery balcony, climbed up, and fell down inside it into a heating boiler's furnace, where she died instantly of internal injuries and cardiac arrest.

Sirkka Sari was buried in the churchyard at Perkjärvi in her native Karelia.

Both the church and the cemetery were destroyed in the Winter War the following year, and the area was thereafter annexed by the Soviet Union.

Today the territory is part of Russia, and attempts to locate her grave since the end of the Cold War have so far been unsuccessful.