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Fire Safety Engineering for Africa:
A Great Need and a Great Opportunity

By: Richard Walls, Antonio Cicione, Birgitte Messerschmidt & Kathleen Almand

In 1990 the population of Africa was 630 million. By 2016 the population was 1.2 billion. By 2050 it is estimated that Africa will be called home by 2.5 billion people. Africa has almost no formal university degrees in fire safety engineering, lacks firefighting resources, has a weak code enforcement environment and lacks facilities for evaluating and certifying fire safety products. Africa has a fire problem.

This brief article summarises a paper on African fire safety presented at the 2019 Interflam Conference, in what could be seen as a “call-to-arms” to the fire engineering fraternity to address a looming problem.1 A growing population, large investments in infrastructure, widespread mining activities, the discovery of various mineral deposits, rapid rural-urban migration and large-scale energy projects means that Africa needs good fire protection engineers, and also needs to develop an environment conducive to fire safety. Fire risk on the continent has grown exponentially in the past decades and without a holistic approach to fire safety it is likely that many people will be affected by the destructive nature of fire. Figure 1 is an infographic showing example of primary natural resources, examples of major infrastructure projects, population growth and urbanisation in Africa. This just presents a sample of activities but does provide a taste of the activities occurring on the continent. In the midst of the challenges the international fire protection community is now confronted with many African opportunities such as: new markets for fire protection products, the ability to uplift communities through training and support, academic research into relatively new fire safety problems and access to bright young minds who could make a difference in fire safety both locally, and internationally.

 

Figure 1: Infographic showing important factors and developments in Africa that influence fire safety needs (Information from: population data 2, natural resources data 3, infrastructure projects 4,5)

Recent fire disasters and Statistics in Africa

Table 1 lists a number of fire incidents in Africa that have occurred in recent years. All sectors are affected, in a similar manner to that experienced in developed countries. However, with high population densities and limited code enforcement such incidents become more common than experienced in countries with a strong fire safety environment and know-how. Incidents such as the fire in the medical store in Ghana can disrupt medical supplies to an entire region, as in this case the store contained supplies for treating HIV/AIDS, Ebola, tuberculosis, amongst other diseases, for 216 districts in Ghana alone.6

Table 1: Examples of recent fire disasters in Africa 1

Location & year:

Incident:

Knysna, South Africa, 2017

Wildland-urban interface fire. Largest deployment of firefighters in history of country. Almost 1000 homes destroyed.

Cape Town, South Africa, 2017

Informal settlement fire in densely populated settlement named Imizamo Yethu. 10,000 people left homeless.

Tema, Ghana, 2015

Largest storage facility for medical supplies in Ghana destroyed in fire. Repository also served other West African nations, thereby affecting medical supplies for the entire region.

Kumasi market, Ghana, 2012

Fire in the Kumasi market where 150 shops were destroyed. The market also had fires in 2009 and 2010.

Cairo, Egypt, 2019

Railway station fire after a train’s fuel tank exploded. At least 25 dead.

Nairobi, Kenya, 2018

Market fire with 70 injured and 15 killed. Multiple fires have occurred in the area.

Lagos, Nigeria, 1999-2007

Study on multiple pipeline fire disasters. 646 deaths were recorded at a single hospital due to pipeline fires, with around 56% of explosions being due to deliberate pipeline damage.

Lagos, Nigeria, 2013

22 storey building, fifth tallest building in Nigeria. Experienced significant structural fire.

Beitbridge, Zimbabwe, 2019

Border control warehouse for storing confiscated goods destroyed in fire. Followed previous warehouse fires in the area.

Phalaborwa, South Africa, 2018

Copper mine with conveyor belt fire in a tunnel that left 6 miners dead.

 

Figure 2 (a) Fire disaster in Imizamo Yethu (Cape Town, South Africa) which left 10,000 homeless 7, and (b) aftermath of the Knysna fire disaster which destroyed almost 1000 homes (images used courtesy of Ryan Heydenrych of Vulcan Wildfire Management)

Statistics from South Africa (which typically has a more developed economy and better enforcement of building construction standards than its neighbours) indicate the number of fire deaths reported by fire brigades is increasing at around 5-10% per annum (but based on mortuary data the total number of people killed in fire related incidents could be as many as 4-5 times higher than this, as many people die in hospital after an incident, which is not reported in brigade statistics). Fire statistics from most developed nations shows an opposite trend than in developing countries. The US has seen a decrease in home fire deaths of 55% from 1977 to 2017.8 England has seen a decrease in fire deaths in dwellings of 55% from 1980 to 2018.9

Roadmap for African fire safety

A roadmap for improving fire safety has been proposed based on the NFPA® Fire & Life Safety Ecosystem 10, as shown in Figure 5. It may have been thought 100 years ago that significantly improving fire safety to the point that staff at fire brigades would be reduced was unthinkable, but this is now happening in various developed countries. In the same manner, hopefully decades from now fire safety in Africa will have improved to a level that is currently not imaginable. A detailed description of all the points of the Ecosystem can be found in the original paper this work is based upon, with just a summary of the main points below.

Figure 5: The Fire and Life Safety Ecosystem (used permission of the NFPA) 10

The main “cogs” when producing countries that are safer in terms of fire are:

  1. Government Responsibility: Government plays an essential role in the enabling of infrastructure for fire safe buildings, and in the developing world this element of the ecosystem is a building block for all others. Political instability, such as in those countries in Africa experiencing war or major governmental crises, will hinder fire safety improvements.
  2. Investment in Safety: Government and key global institutions must be prepared to invest in fire safety as a key enabler of economic development.
  3. Development and Use of Current Codes: Open, transparent, and regularly updated building and fire prevention codes are key for improving safety.
  4. Code Compliance: Enforcement of codes by a suitably qualified workforce is essential.
  5. Reference Standards: Quality fire protection products and system are a given in a mature fire safety ecosystem and are driven by a mature set of product safety standards.
  6. Preparedness and Emergency Response
  7. Informed Public: When the public is aware of fire safety issues significant improvements can be made.
  8. Skilled Workforce: This area is one where African colleges and universities should seek to work with international collaborators to rapidly advance in improving fire safety. It is important that education be developed for all the different levels required to implement fire safety: (i) fire science postgraduate education (ii) engineering education, (iii) technician level, (iv) fire services and operational training, (v) management of facilities, (vi) regulatory enforcement bodies and also (vii) in associated construction fields such as architecture.

Although Africa is far behind in terms of fire safety engineering knowledge, technical specifications, testing facilities, response capacity and similar issues, the continent can, and must, draw upon the resources available in the international community. Stellenbosch University, South Africa, is currently developing a fire safety engineering postgraduate program to try upskill engineers on the continent. Through developing online courses and partnering with other universities it is hoped that the work being developed will be able to have a continental impact.

Acknowledgements

Support for this work has been received from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation under the “Fire Engineering Education For Africa” grant. Recommendations and conclusions presented in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.

Richard Wallsa & Antonio Cicionea are with Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Birgitte Messerschmidt & Kathleen Almand are with National Fire Protection Association, USA.

References

1.        Walls RS, Cicione A, Messerschmidt B, Almand K. Africa: The next frontier for fire safety engineering? In: Interflam Proceedings. London; 2019.
2.        UN. Economic Development in Africa - Report 2018: Migration For Structural Transformation . New York: United Nations; 2018.
3.        World Bulletin. Mapping Africa’s natural resources. https://www.worldbulletin.net/world/mapping-africas-natural-resources-h191272.html. Published 2017. Accessed March 15, 2018.
4.        iied. Chinese Investment in Africa’s Forests — Scale , Trends and Future Policies . London: International Institute for Environment and Development; 2016. http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/G04095.pdf.
5.        Bangure K. Infrastructure in Africa - A Snapshot of Key Infrastructure Development Plans on the Continent. Forst & Sullivan; 2013.
6.        Owusu-Sekyere E, Adjuik RY, Wedam E. The Central Medical Store Fire Disaster: A Test for Institutional Compliance in Disaster Prevention in Ghana. SAGE Open. 2017;7(2). doi:10.1177/2158244017699528
7.        Kahanji C, Walls RS, Cicione A. Fire spread analysis for the 2017 Imizamo Yethu informal settlement conflagration in South Africa. Int J Disaster Risk Reduct. 2019. doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101146
8.        Ben Evart. Fire Loss In The United State During 2017. Natl Fire Prot Assoc . 2018;(Oktober):1-23. https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/US-Fire-Problem/Fire-loss-in-the-United-States.
9.        UK Home Office. Fire Statistics Table 0502: Fatalities and non-fatal casualties by fire and rescue authority and location group, England. data.gov.uk. https://data.gov.uk/dataset/f7ccba2d-f679-46e1-8d6d-de7bee690d40/fire-statistics-fatalities-and-casualties. Published 2017. Accessed September 20, 2003.
10.      Messerschmidt B. The Fire & Life Safety Ecosystem – a holistic approach to fire safety. In: Interflam Proceedings. London: Interscience; 2019.