Wildland-Urban interface fires

Every week, it seems that the news media reports a devastating wildland-urban interface fire somewhere in the world. These fires have killed numerous people and animals and destroyed our forests, homes, and other properties.

CHRIS JELENEWICZ , SFPE Chief Engineer and Interim Chief Executive Officer, asks what can our profession do?

HISTORICALLY, NOT MANY practitioners in the fire protection engineering profession have been involved in mitigating the effects of WUI fires. However, this is changing. For example, we are seeing more interest in WUI fire research in the fire protection engineering community, and our academic institutions are having discussions in their fire protection engineering classrooms. As such, it is exciting to see how Fire Protection Engineering magazine has dedicated an entire issue to this emerging topic.

Without a doubt, a fire protection engineer’s knowledge, skills, and abilities can help us better understand problems related to WUI fires. Although these fires involve complex interactions of topography, weather, vegetation, and structures, the fire protection engineer’s broad understanding of combustion, fire dynamics, and fire models can help estimate how these deadly fires spread and impact our communities. Even more exciting, we now see the aspects of human behaviour in fire theory used to help assess how communities evacuate.

As the fire protection engineer has become more involved in WUI fires, so has SFPE. Over the last few years, the SFPE Foundation’s WUI Working Group Initiative has been developing a model to engage our community of researchers and practitioners in developing and implementing engineering solutions. All of these are guided by answering the question: “What can fire engineering contribute to addressing the problem of fire and related hazards in the WUI?”

Although these fires involve complex interactions of topography, weather, vegetation, and structures, the fire protection engineer’s broad understanding of combustion, fire dynamics, and fire models can help estimate how these deadly fires spread and impact our communities.

Divided into three module teams: (1) Individual Asset Protection, (2) Community Notification & Evacuation, and (3) Community Wildland Fire Protection, this group has identified a range of areas where fire engineering can contribute practical knowledge, tools, and methods globally. This has led to the development of a virtual handbook of engineering-based resource materials to support fire department WUI property fire risk assessments and recommended mitigation strategies for use in the field1

At the same time, the SFPE Roadmap: Identifying Research Needs for the Fire Safety Engineering Profession identifies the future research needs for the fire safety engineering profession. This roadmap is intended to be a living document and has a long-term focus central to defining the future of SFPE’s technical initiatives. The Roadmap has a separate section on WUI fires.

Additionally, the upcoming 6th edition of the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering will have an entire section dedicated to WUI fires. In this section, there will be chapters on the following topics:

Overview of Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires

Evacuation and Emergency Management in WUI Fires

Environmental and Health Issues from Wildland Fires and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires

Exposure Threats to Structures in the WUI

Structure Ignition Vulnerabilities of Structures in Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires

Modelling of Wildland Fires and WUI Fires

Urban and Land Use Planning

Moving forward, SFPE will continue to work with the fire safety community by getting more involved in this important area of fire safety.

1. Home - WUIHandbook (sfpe.org/wuihandbook/home)