Episodes

The devastating 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California serves as a haunting reminder of how rapidly wildfires can overwhelm communities. We have not known anything like it - the flames raced through Paradise at four miles per hour, 30,000 residents had mere minutes to evacuate, and many couldn't escape in time. What happens when the fire goes worse than worst case scenario, but still people need to escape? How do we protect lives when escape routes are blocked by fire or gridlocked traffic? Dr....

The world looks entirely different through a thermal camera lens, especially in a fire scenario. These devices reveal harsh temperature gradients between hot and cold surfaces, adding another dimension to how fire safety professionals understand and navigate dangerous environments. Thermal cameras have transformed firefighting operations with astonishing effectiveness. Studies show that in smoke-filled buildings, thermal cameras have significantly improved the changes to identify victims. This ...

The AI revolution has arrived, but fire safety engineers face a critical dilemma: how to leverage powerful AI tools while protecting confidential project data. Professor Ruggiero Rino Lovreglio from Massey University and Dr. Amir Rafe from Utah State University join us to explore the world of local Large Language Models (LLMs) - AI systems you can run privately on your own computer without sending sensitive information to the cloud. While cloud-based AI like ChatGPT raises serious privacy conce...

When experts from different disciplines attempt to collaborate on complex problems, such as evacuation modelling, we often discover that we're not speaking the same language. Even seemingly simple terms like "density," "velocity," and "distance" carry dramatically different meanings across physics, psychology, engineering, and computer science. In this episode, we present the "Glossary for Research on Human Crowd Dynamics," a remarkable community effort that brought together over 60 researchers...

In episode 17 of the Fire Fundamentals, we delve into the fire detection technology. Fire detection forms the critical foundation of all active fire protection measures, serving as the prerequisite for any fire safety engineering solution to work effectively. Following key points are discussed: Detection systems must balance sensitivity with reliability to avoid false alarms that disrupt building operations False alarms lead to serious business continuity issues and may eventually cause system...

In the 16th part of the Fire Fundamentals series, we invite Randy McDermott from NIST to join us for a deep dive into turbulence and its critical role in fire dynamics modelling. We explore the physics behind turbulent combustion and how it fundamentally shapes fire behaviour, plume dynamics, and simulation accuracy. In this episode we cover: Defining turbulence as the enhancement of mixing and heat transfer through the creation of eddies and instabilities Understanding length scales in turbu...

In this podcast episode, I invited Chris Jelenewicz, the CEO of SFPE, to bring me up to date on the society. The SFPE Handbook on Fire Protection Engineering is undergoing a major revision with the sixth edition expected by summer's end, expanding to five volumes with significant new content on emerging topics like wildland fires and lithium-ion batteries. In this episode, we cover how the handbook is written, edited and when it will be released to the public. Some highlights from the episode i...

Water might seem like the simplest part of firefighting – just point and spray, right? Well, as you can imagine, the reality is a bit more complex. In this conversation with veteran firefighter and CFBT instructor Szymon Kokot, we pull back the curtain on firefighting's most critical resource to reveal the intricate science and logistics behind effective fire suppression. Did you know a standard fire truck carries just 10 minutes' worth of water for a typical residential fire? Or that a water-f...

As a consequence of the Grenfell Tower disaster, some strong legislation was proposed, such as a combustible ban on building walls. This, however, affected more than just the building facades, as it excluded materials such as laminated glass used as balcony balustrades. Today, the path forward demands evidence that could inform decisions on the future of laminated glass in this use. In this conversation with Mike Spearpoint and Konstantinos Chotzoglou from OFR Consultants, we dive deep into the...

Today I'm taking you for a sightseeing trip to see what fire safety looks like beyond our usual office, residential buildings and car parks. Fire engineering takes on an entirely different dimension when applied to massive infrastructure projects where conventional building codes provide minimal guidance and engineers must forge their own path. Dr. Mukesh Tomar from Jacobs takes us deep into the world of "non-real estate fire engineering" – the complex realm of cable tunnels stretching dozen...

Dr Randy McDermott takes us behind the scenes of fire science's most critical software tool in this conversation about the Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS) developed at NIST. As one of the developers, Randy offers valuable insights into how this essential modelling tool is maintained, improved, and adapted to meet the evolving challenges of the fire safety community. The conversation begins with a look at the development process itself, based on a greater picture roadmap and also addressing prac...

Four years ago, what began as a mission to preserve valuable fire safety engineering conversations has grown into a fairly large platform connecting professionals across 170+ countries. The journey to 200 episodes and nearly 200,000 downloads has been both challenging and deeply rewarding – in this episode, I share a bit about my journey, the state of things and the near future of the podcast. *** Important notice: at the end of the show notes is a survey , and I would be thrilled if you part...

I've finally done it. We've repeated Jin's experiment! I thought I knew-it-all about that experiment, but boy... knowing and doing it are two different things. I can say, I've finally cleared my mind on some thoughts after this, which I am finally happy to share with all of you! First things first, massive thanks to my partner in crime Wai-Kit Wilson Cheung, from the group of prof. Xinyan Huang, who was the man on the ground doing the experiments with me. Together we went further into this mode...

The gap between fire safety engineering and firefighting operations creates a profound challenge that affects building safety worldwide. Even experienced fire safety engineers - myself included - face uncertainty when designing for firefighters without being firefighters themselves. Yet many building codes explicitly require engineers to account for firefighting operations in their designs. This examination dives into the timeline analysis essential for effective firefighter support, from notif...

What happens when a lifetime of studying industrial fire hazards meets the creative mind of a novelist? In this conversation with Professor Joaquim Casal, we explore the unique intersection of fire safety engineering and science fiction through his novel "The Last Fire." Professor Casal, a retired academic from Universitat Politécnica Catalunya and founder of their fire research group, has crafted something unique – a novel where the protagonists are fire researchers and the plot revolves aroun...

Episode 200! And for this special episode, I've travelled to London to interview Prof. Guillermo Rein and Dr Matt Bonner on a piece of research carried out at Imperial College London, with the experiments performed in our laboratory at the ITB. In this episode, we discuss the concept of flammability of the building facades and how this flammability is assessed with different testing methods available in the world. You could argue that every country has their own method, and in some case...

We know a whole lot more about mass timber in fire than we did a few years ago (even when I’ve just started the podcast 199 episodes back …). But is this knowledge widely used in engineering practice? Is it used in the same way by different stakeholders? Definitely not. This is why to move timber into something we would consider “new normal”, we need more than research. We need a consensus on how to apply the outcomes of our research in practice. And this is this podcast episode. Built by Natu...

The devastating impact of waste and recycling industry fires costs approximately $2.5 billion annually in the US and Canada alone, with lithium-ion batteries causing roughly 50% of these incidents. In this episode with Ryan Fogelman from Fire Rover, we discuss: • Understanding the scale of waste facility fires and why traditional fire protection methods often fail in these environments • How lithium-ion batteries have created a "hockey stick" rise in fire incidents since 2015 • The "vape effect...

When wildfire threatens neighbourhoods with closely-spaced homes, what determines whether flames leap from one structure to the next? The FSRI research team - Rebekah Schrader, Joseph Willi, Daniel Gorham and Gavin Horn - joins us to unveil their experimental series that methodically dissects the pathways through which fire spreads between buildings. The team walks us through their massive outdoor experimental setup, where they created controlled compartment fires and measured their impact on a...

In this podcast episode, we host Rebekah Schrader, Joseph Willi, Daniel Gorham and Gavin Horn, all from the FSRI, to cover their recent experimental research on fire spread through external walls. This is part 1 of the interview - the background, rationale and context. In part 2, we cover the experiments themselves, findings and actionable guidance from the experiments. This research is conducted within the context of structure-to-structure fire spread, potentially in urban conflagration scenar...

The UK's Building Safety Act requires high-risk buildings to maintain comprehensive fire safety cases - living documents that identify hazards, mitigate risks, and establish clear accountability for building safety. This is the subject of my discussion with Chris Mayfield and Martyn Ramsden from OFR. • Safety cases differ from fire strategies by being owned by the building's accountable person rather than consultants • The Principal Accountable Person must take responsibility for preventing fir...

Professor Xinyan Huang from Hong Kong Polytechnic University shares his expertise on battery fires and the various experimental methods researchers use to trigger thermal runaway events under controlled conditions. • Terminology matters - "thermal runaway" more accurately describes battery failure than "ignition" as the critical reactions occur inside the cell • Nail penetration testing is widely used but contains surprising complexities, including nail material, penetration depth, velocity and...

Welcome to another Fire Fundamentals. This time the episode is focused on various extinguishing technologies. Invited guest - Bogdan Racięga, Director at Baltic Fire Laboratory and expert in fire protection systems breaks down the fundamental differences between suppression and extinction technologies and how they work in real-world applications. Clear distinction between suppression systems (control fires while meeting temperature criteria) and extinction systems (must completely extinguish fi...

Jet-fan systems effectively control smoke in car parks by creating directed airflows that transport smoke from one point to another, similar to how longitudinal ventilation works in tunnels. These systems offer cost-effectiveness and simplicity by eliminating ductwork while providing powerful smoke management capabilities when properly designed and understood. • Jet Fans create momentum transfer through air entrainment rather than directly moving smoke • Two distinct operational modes exist: sm...