NFPA's Fifth Needs Assessment of the US Fire Service, published in December 2021, found that 78% of fire departments responsible for wildland and WUI fires have unmet training and resource needs, and that 50% of smaller departments cannot handle a WUI fire involving more than one structure. To help address training gaps on the community planning and prevention side of this equation, the SFPE Foundation--with the support of hundreds of volunteers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency--has developed several courses for U.S. Fire Service personnel that draw on emerging research, knowledge, and tools from the fire protection engineering community.
The US Fire Administration defines the “5Es” of community risk reduction as: Education, Engineering, Enforcement, Emergency response, and Economic incentive. Bringing together the first two E’s, education and engineering, the SFPE Foundation used Department of Homeland Security Federal Emergency Management Agency Fire Prevention & Safety Grants (Fiscal Years 2021 and 2023) to develop two WUI risk assessment and mitigation courses for the U.S. fire service. The SFPE Foundation's WUI courses are designed to educate fire service members on fire engineering elements of the WUI fire challenge, thereby reducing community risk.
The Fiscal Year 2021 FEMA FP&S grant enabled the SFPE Foundation to develop an initial "WUI Risk Assessment & Mitigation" course for the Fire Service. During the course development, we learned from the fire service that as more fire departments are called to engage in WUI fire prevention and protection strategies, training on the basic principles of individual asset protection, such as structural hardening, defensible space, and vegetation management, is increasingly available, but access to advanced WUI fire engineering topics is limited. Therefore, the SFPE Foundation pursued a Fiscal Year 2023 FEMA Fire Prevention & Safety grant to develop an "Advanced Topics in WUI Fire Risk Assessment & Mitigation Curriculum."
The SFPE Foundation is actively pursuing additional funding opportunities to develop future WUI courses that will benefit the fire service and the communities they serve.
The SFPE Foundation's goal is to offer fire departments around the United States (and eventually outside the U.S.) the ability to mix and match various WUI fire training courses delivered in-person, virtually, or on-demand. If you are interested in learning more about SFPE Foundation's WUI curriculum and how the Foundation can customize the available training to best fit your Wildland-Urban Interface educational needs, please contact Lisa VanBuskirk, WUI Initiatives Program Manager at lvanbuskirk@sfpefoundation.org.