Citation

Flores Quiroz N, Walls R, Cicione A, Smith M. Fire Safety J. 2021; 125: e103435.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.firesaf.2021.103435

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing number of projects on informal settlement (IS) fire research, which has been primarily focused on understanding the fire dynamics in IS through full-scale experiments. However, much less is known about real IS fire incidents. Recently, a Framework for Fire Investigations in Informal Settlements (FFIIS) was developed. However, the FFIIS has not been applied to real IS fire incidents yet. This paper seeks to conduct fire investigations by applying the FFIIS to three real fire events. One of them was recorded by a CCTV camera and was analysed in depth in previous work. The video footage was used to benchmark the findings obtain using the FFIIS. The application of the FFIIS allows one to develop hypotheses that more accurately define the area of fire origin and pattern formation sequence. This implies that the fire pattern for large post-flashover fires in ISs can be treated as wildland fires pattern, as proposed by the FFIIS. Additionally, spread rates and the impact of dwellings' separation distances, in these incidents, are studied. Understanding the limitations and the quality of the information that can be obtained when applying the FFIIS is fundamental to improve the guidelines proposed.

Language: en

Keywords

Fire investigation; Fire spread; Home survivability; Informal settlements