Current affairs


when they amount to major community wide disasters. But people living in informal settlements are disproportionally affected by fire and there are countless examples illustrating the severity of the problem. In 2009, a fire in a slum in Karachi, Pakistan, killed 39 people, including 20 children2


.


A fire in March 2017 in the Imizamo Yethu informal settlement in Cape Town, South Africa, killed four people, destroyed over 2,100 homes, and made 9,700 people homeless3


. In fact, fire related death rates


are 13 times higher for people living in informal dwellings in comparison to formal dwellings in South Africa4/5


. These large fires are acute events which


threaten lives and livelihoods. In addition, they damage property and can cause major disruption to urban systems, especially if critical infrastructure is affected. While often not reported, frequent smaller


fires are a chronic problem, rendering cities less able to function and to provide basic services, in addition to the immediate impacts felt by affected residents6


. Urban fires exemplify a global problem that


the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) defines as an extensive risk, which is a widespread risk ‘to repeated or persistent hazard conditions of low or moderate intensity, often of a highly localised nature, which can lead to debilitating cumulative disaster impacts’7


. Neglected problem


Arup’s research team works on fire risk in informal settlements. Having studied the seemingly intractable problems faced by underserved and at risk populations in these settlements, our team advocates for fire safety in them, and develops engineering based approaches to help address this global fire challenge. For a number of years, we have been visiting informal settlements, conducting interviews with community leaders, fire and rescue services, non governmental organisations (NGOs), academic institutions and social businesses, and reviewing technical and academic literature to gain a deep understanding of the nature and scale of such fires. Recently, we developed A Framework


for Fire Safety in Informal Settlements. This provides a structured way of approaching the challenge, and directs attention towards potential investments in fire risk reduction. It has been designed to be flexible, so that it can be applied to different contexts and settlement typologies. It is envisaged that this framework will be a point of reference for a wide range of stakeholders seeking to better understand fire safety in informal settlements, and to support holistic consideration of fire hazards and fire risk reduction there.


FOCUS


Photo copyright: Sullivan Photography www.frmjournal.com MARCH 2019 43


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60