Fighting fire with fire data
It looked like just another shack fire.
But this fire in Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa in September 2019 was different because it was captured by a CCTV camera, allowing researchers at Stellenbosch University to forensically analyse it and come up with recommendations for reducing future fires.
Writing in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction this month, they said: “The footage provides high-quality data allowing for novel analysis and understanding of such events never previously attainable.”
One of the researchers, Natalia Flores Quiroz, said footage of the 33-minute fire took about eight months to analyse. They studied the fire’s behaviour, the actions of residents and the operations of firefighters.
Quiroz and colleagues Richard Walls, Antonio Cicione and Mark Smith also studied the fire-and-rescue service’s incident report and interviewed teams from five fire stations that responded to the incident.
The cause of the fire is unknown, but researchers observed that residents quickly produced buckets of water to fight it.
The video showed that in the 30 minutes after the first fire engine arrived, firefighters struggled with a lack of water. “According to the firefighters’ statements, there were no hydrants available,” said the study. The hydrants were either not working or had been vandalised.
The researchers said that information from the study could be used to develop fire spread models, enhance firefighter responses, plan for such incidents, develop community training and develop fire safety interventions in general.