077 - Informal settlements - we need solutions not gadgets, Richard Walls

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 0:00

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the fire science show this week. We're back to the subject of informal settlements and fire. I guess you may remember we had Danielle Antonellis from Kindling sometime ago into podcasts. Actually super happy that Danielle has won the international woman of the year in fire awards. Uh, amazing achievement, Danielle. So very well-deserved, I'm so happy for you. And our podcast episode is quite a testimony to why this awards. When to you. Into today's episode. I am interviewing a scientist who works in South Africa. Professor Richard Walls. Who is building his own fire group at Stellenbosch university in the South Africa. It's actually going quite amazing. You should watch them. They're doing so good, amazing stuff coming from, from their group. However, the reason why I've invited Richard is that he really has touched the subject. He has the. Field experience with this topic. He's seen these fires. It's in the settlements. He's talking to the local authorities. He's talking to people. He has participated in project Iris. That touched the fires of informal settlements and his group has carried the full scale experiments within that program. So today, We're going to talk a little more about the engineering of this topic. What makes the challenges, how does the landscape of the informal settlements Where do the fire challenges come from actually? And how do we deal with them? Some really good ideas. How can we deal with them? And. And the Supreme potent explanation, why fire safety cannot be solved by one gadgets? Why there's not a silver bullet that can solve. The fire safety issue why do we need to look holistically at the problem Unfortunately We can only go from a hundred to zero fires. We cannot just, Prevent them all, but, uh, with a very realistic view on, on this matter. Richard's group is trying to, limit this as, as low as possible. Every fire prevented. Every fire that did not spread the massive event is someone's life. Saved someone's property safe. So very well. Efforts. Furthermore Richard it has published a guideline of fire safety engineering in such spaces. And we're going to talk about this as well in the episode. So a real material, very useful material. , that's actually going to affect the safety of a billion of people. That's that's I still find that astounding. Yeah. How many people are. Under fire risk. Within these settlements. anyway, before we jump into the episode, I just wanted to remind you that we are gathering the questions for the Q and a episode. That's gonna air. At the very end of the month. So, uh, I guess you still have some time to submit a question and I'm waiting for them. I'm happy to. Answer them. And if you send the one to one of the podcast guests, I'll try to get them, answer it for you. I don't know if we can make it this month, but I will, I will try. So, yeah, that's it's for the introductory talk let's spin the intro and let's jump into the episode Hello everybody. Welcome to the Fire Science Show. I'm today here with Professor Richard Walls from Stallenbosch University in South Africa. Hey, Richard, Great to have you in the show.

Richard Walls: 3:43

Hey, Great to be here. Thanks for having me on the.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 3:46

I would love to have you on the show, really happy that this finally happened. I've invited you to talk about one of the research topics that is very, Close to you or, or covered a lot by your group that I see and, and that's also an important subject. It has been already in the podcast, but I would love to go into more technicalities of that. That is the fire, issues within informal settlements and let's say, More excluded part of the world's population, how they deal with, with fire safety issues. And, you've been researching that a lot. I guess it is in a way connected to, your geographical location, but maybe also some other factors. Let's start with how did you get involved in, in researching fire safety? in, in informal settlement? Yes.

Richard Walls: 4:33

Um, well firstly, in terms of fire safety in general, I got it into it like everyone else, and that's by accident. Uh, I was, Yep. So I don't think I've met anyone who knew they wanted to be a fire scientist or fire engineer when they were young, and then, In terms of actually getting involved in formal settlements, uh, there various things that I think helped me along the way. When I was young, I actually used to help out at a burn survivor home for kids. So I'd go pick them up for Sunday school on Sunday morning, and the kids were missing arms and eyes and legs and all sorts of crazy things from, Boones. They'd experienced mainly from informal settlements. So, It became a reality there. And then once we started doing fire research, just realized the big issue, because it happens all the time. I mean, literally every day in Cape Town there's a fire and across the, um, the country, 15 to 20 recorded fires per day. And that's, there's, stacks of unrecorded. We don't even know what the numbers are when one or two or three homes burn down, but they're not, not reported. So it's a big issue and that's, that's why we decided to start getting.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 5:32

to what extent is it a recognized issue? Okay. You, you had your personal, history of helping children, and I guess that brought you much closer, but. On like governmental scale or, or public opinion scale, Is it recognized as a severe issue? Like is, is the scale really recognized at this? Because I guess every now and then you have a, a giant next biggest fire that happened and probably everyone talks about it for a week, but to, to what extent is a part of the, of the public discussion?

Richard Walls: 6:01

it pops up regularly because we have so many large fires. So a couple of times a year, a hundred, 200, 500, a thousand homes burned down somewhere in the country. So I mean, a thousand homes by international status is a massive disaster for us. It's sort of a regular occurrence, so it's part of ongoing discussion. So it'll often pop up, especially from the department team and settlements, national disaster management. But the problem is, is it's part of. Host of problems. As soon as you've got millions of people staying in formal settlements, everything's a problem. Health is a problem, Sanitation problem, water supply, security, safety, jobs. So it's kind of a mess of everything you don't want in one place in terms of social challenges and providing infrastructure. So fire is one of many things, including flooding, et cetera, et cetera.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 6:45

I wonder to what extent is also a, a recent problem because I this way of inhabiting a city, uh, would exist for, for, for decades. but, but now with this like exponentially increasing population and in a way trend to, to get closer to cities, like the organization is a very strong trend worldwide. Is it something you observe like on the rise

Richard Walls: 7:08

it's definitely increasing urbanization is, is, fueling this. If you speak to people who do disaster management and fire services in the more rural communities where they're on formal settlements, but they're, they're not dense, you know, one home and then spread out, fires happen, but. A home goes down, maybe two homes go down. It's not a a, a disastrous incident, but around our cities are, our settlements are densifying fast. So what happens is when a fire does go, it spreads rapidly through the, these areas. And then, I mean, we're even seeing double story and, you Them sprawling out in all directions. Some of it is in South Africa linked to the fact that, we had a apartheid and specific laws where people could and couldn't live. So when apartheid ended, that led to a lot of mo movement of people, which, worsened the whole problem cause many people were short of land. And so the, a host of challenges that go alongside this issue, but it's definitely on the rise and it's going to get worse, not better. I mean, if we look at the statistics for Africa and the. People moving to our cities in the next 30 decades, we'll probably see the settles double in size.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 8:15

Okay. And, the development of technology. Like, you know, everyone has a phone now. Everyone's charging a phone. everyone probably, uh, has a source or, or electrical devices they would use. Does, is it also a trend that works towards the, let's say, increased probability of ignition? Do you observe any of this?

Richard Walls: 8:34

two sides for firstly, in terms of, of actual fire. Cause our data's fairly poor. Simply because when you go out to an informal settlement incident and homes are burned down, it's very difficult to know what actually happened because everything's destroyed and they, they happen so regularly that there's not a proper fire investigation. So the fire department standing there and they say, Okay, what happened? Someone says, Electrical fault. Okay. Yeah, we're not gonna get any better data than that. So it goes on, I mean, if you were drunk and knocked over your candle, you're not gonna say that when all your neighbors have now lost their homes. Uh, so in terms of electrical issues, yes, that's definitely influencing it. And what you also see is that everyone needs electricity. So whether it's formal or informal, there's electricity. And if you have an informal settlement with no electrical infrastructure, They will run cables from, you know, 10, 20, a hundred meters from wherever ly gauge, cables draped over roofs that prevent the fire trucks from coming in that cause short circuits. So, know, overload transformers, you have all sorts of other weird electrical problems. I mean, I've seen poles with, I dunno, a hundred cables connected into it. And then they're running to different people's homes.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 9:41

This, mockup infrastructure like we, we know like electrical, uh, systems are, are a challenge in the building. Like if you want to build a nuclear plants, that's probably number one fire channel. And you would talk about and hear like this, um, Uncontrolled growth of the electrical network can be, can be really? How about water supply that, I mean, you need water to, to fight fires, but I guess that are better uses to water in, improvised, uh, neighborhoods. So probably water is also a, an issue for firefighting at least.

Richard Walls: 10:13

Yep. Water's a big issue. So, uh, firstly yes, they, the, depending on which way you're on the country, some municipalities are doing better or worse. They provide stand pipes, sort of a tap and you can get water from it. So at least if there's quite a few of those, there's some water available. If there are. Hydrants for the fire department, they have their own problems because if you're short of water in your area, then hey, why don't you just build your home over the fire hydrant? Then you get free water to your house and you can even sell the water to your neighbor. So you have many incidents where there are call outs and the fire department cannot find where the hydrants are, especially when it's exposed ones that people can build their homes on. If it's in the roadway and it's. out the way, then maybe it's fine, but they can be tampered with. They can be vandalized. So water supplies an issue. And also most of the communities spring up on land that wasn't really suitable for formal homes because that's why they're there. They weren't built on. And so there sometimes is. Poor or nonexistent water infrastructure, uh, or there isn't sufficient pressure. And where we had it, one of the big, um, fires here a couple of years ago, 2017, where, 2000 homes burnt down. They were hydrants, but also at that stage we had a severe drought. And so they dropped the pressure in the whole network cause of the drought. They were at the hydrant and then they couldn't get enough pressure for their lines. So yeah, water is a big issue as, as you correctly point.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 11:36

I'm, I'm asking these questions to draw an image of how the landscape looks like. We're, we are, we're gonna, in the second part of the episode, gonna talk about potential solutions and how to approach them. But first, I would love myself and my listeners to, to understand what kind of. Environment we, we are in. So, um, to continue this, topic and how do the fire environment in inside an informal settlement looks like? a question that comes to my mind, how big are this, informal settlements, I guess the range in scale, but,

Richard Walls: 12:08

mean, the last time I heard I'm, I'm, I'm gonna lie about the exact number, but it was over 200 settlements in Cape Town, and they range in size from couple of dozen homes to, I'm trying to think what the biggest one, You're talking a few hundred thousand, but often it's, it's difficult to define accurately because even it merges from. Then you've got formal with backyard dwelling. So you've got one formal home and three backyard dwellings, which are shacks. So now is that formal or informal? Cause there's three informal to one formal. So it's sort of this mishmash and then that merges into the informal settlement. So there aren't kind of clear boundaries, it's just this sprawl of urban homes. But I mean, a fire can rip through 50 or a hundred meters of homes continuous and then whatever with.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 12:54

how densely are they packed? Like it's like, I know three houses and then a street, and then three houses, or it's like a continuous row of houses that, that goes through the horizon.

Richard Walls: 13:04

it depends on where you are. If in the sort of more rural areas, further away from job opportunities, then you may have a home bit of land home. Bit of land. I mean maybe they even goats and cattle around and a little bit of farming. And then as you get close to the city, they get denser and denser. The densest, um, settlements right near sort of central business districts and perceived areas of work. It's usually wall-to-wall homes and then there might be a meter or two pathway and. If there's a roadway, then the road's there. But I mean, people's homes can literally be built right up to the road so their front door opens into the, the road and um, maybe they encroach on the road. So it ranges. But around cities we're even starting to see double story going up, along river banks. So, I mean, if floods are, are 50 year zones. So then people build their homes because there's no other homes. And then the flood, then they get flooded once a year or once every five years. So, uh, but fairly dense, normally not continuous for kilometers. Normally there's at least some amount of road infrastructure. break businesses, something every between 5,000, 200 meters or so, depending on where you are.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 14:11

Apologies if I'm asking ignorant white guys questions, but, uh, I just don't know. I honestly never, never been in one, never, never saw one. And then I learned that 1 billion people or so lives in this, this condition. So actually that's, that's quite. Devastating. And I, I had Danielle Antonellis on, on the episodes in the show. And, uh, that was like, wow, that, that was such an impactful, discussion and, and like, almost, making tears because of, of the impact. , like, wow. This things really impacts billions with b in the front. And you've also mentioned you've seen multi stories. I, I guess the, the trend to understand how, how this communities develop, grow and, I guess they have some cycles within them, so, so people want to be closer to the work, to the potential sources of income. This also probably generates a more interest of, of people staying in the proximity of the mold densely populated. So, So it increases also in a way the attractiveness of this particular place because there's more people, more chances, more more stuff. So, So I assume you've mentioned that they start growing up like into multi-story. Is this something you've already seen or is this some sort of new develop?

Richard Walls: 15:24

It's newish, so they, they're starting to appear now. So it's not common. I mean, I understand in India, I mean there, it's, it's common. You have multi-story. Whatever. Different countries are different words they use, it's, it's in other countries it's, it's commonplace Here, it's starting to come. Also, just the materials people use don't often allow them to go multi stories up because it's steel sheeting and light timber. So building double, triple story. But it's, it's coming and we, we did the large scale experiment on a double story, and man, that's, When you've got a double story in formal dwelling, it can collapse anyway. You double the density it, the fire department can't get in there. Suppression. It is becoming an issue. So you can't just run into it like a normal building cuz it's probably gonna fall on you. So just the practicalities of it are an

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 16:12

and to close this part what, what's the population density? Is it a family per dwelling?

Richard Walls: 16:16

that once again ranges. So some areas you for instance, find predominantly single male, so especially when, but then they will often have a room. So what's even have what's called shack farming. So you'll have, a land owner, even though they're not the owner or they're the sort of the, the dwelling owner, and they may have six rooms and each one has one person in it. Sometimes you'll find a family. So a family of four. Then the cousin from the Eastern Cape moves, and then you've got a family of five, family of six, family of eight. So the homes are sort of constantly adjusting as children and family members move around the country for survival basically. So it, it really ranges the, the home size, the family size.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 16:54

and, and now materials, you've mentioned, uh, steel sheets, uh, lightweight timber. So, so it's all improvised from this sort of materials, like whatever's available.

Richard Walls: 17:04

Yeah, people are extremely resourceful. I mean, I'm, I'm quite impressed by the construction techniques and, and the resourcefulness and getting hold of things. So anything that comes out of anywhere can end up in a formal settlement. So there's not like a code of practice. You find timber, you find old sheating steel sheeting. You find plastic, you find nylon curtains and linings and cardboard. Paper and health, you name it, it's there. so there's a, there's a massive informal market for secondhand materials. So scrap getting removed from the construction site or sometimes even just stolen. Uh, so anything can end up there and then is used and reused. So, I mean, from a reuse sustainability perspective, I mean, we have some of the highest recycling rates in the world in South Africa because everything gets

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 17:52

Yeah. And, and materials like, concrete blocks or lightweight concrete blocks, bricks, uh, also, or these are like not very, you don't see them that often.

Richard Walls: 18:01

to some extent, less commonly. sometimes you will see for instance, people who've been there longer, a little bit more resources when they cast a concrete slab for their their home. You do find, once again, I was mentioning the informal formal mix. So you'll often have a brick home that used to be there now with 6, 8, 10, 50 homes in the back. So you do find brick homes in and amongst. Built in the settlements because people often aren't gonna spend the money on upgrading their home where they know they've got a chance of losing their home, it burning down. and various other reasons. So often with lack of, of tenure comes lack of willingness to put money into your home. And there's competing challenges. So there there's less, putting effort and putting resources into formalizing your.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 18:46

It may be quite interesting, when my institute was formed Building Research Institute where I work, it was an effort after the, the second World War. And Poland at that moment was, completely destroyed country. Like everything was either destroyed or stolen, And, because of. A lot of people would resource themselves to use, this improvised materials in, in a very similar way. Um, however, here it would be a lot of clay buildings, a lot of, clay straw composite things, using straw and lightweight timber to, to cover the, the roofs. Uh, actually I think my institute has done a lot of research in its early days. I mean, we're talking 75 years ago, so, so that's quite old research. But I think there was a lot of research on use of, of readily available natural materials in let's say some sort of, of, fairly safe, structural build. Of the whole country. So, so I actually, I must go to the library of itb and, and second, it could be interesting to, to tap into the mind of, of researchers from mid fifties on how a similar problem was, was solved in, in, in middle of Europe. However, I think, I think Clay was one of the most popular materials

Richard Walls: 20:00

Yeah. I think often the problem is the settlements are in cities, so we actually don't have access to those materials. I mean, it's just an open piece of land, so you can't really mine very much. And there's lack of support and just the

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 20:12

No water

Richard Walls: 20:13

Yeah. And then the, the speed the populations are growing at often just means that it, it. It's very difficult to do it. And some of it also comes from, there was a historical, back in 1994 when Mandela came to power, they said, All right, everyone will get a home. Uh, which was great at the time. I mean, it was a, it was a good effort, but the population grew too fast in some management issues and various other things. So the idea wasn't, we're gonna upgrade in formal homes. We're gonna build you formal homes and. As the years have gone by policy, you can start seeing, is starting to change. When there, there's the, it may not be written down, but this acknowledgement is, whoops, we're actually not keeping up and we're not going to get there. We're not gonna be able to provide enough formal homes. So how do we rather do upgrading of the informal? to improve them. So that, that is a subtle quality shift you're definitely seeing, and that's where these sorts of things can come in some amount of brick, better construction materials, at least, you know, concrete slab, that that can help to some extent as that is formalized. But also in a bit of re blocking, rearranging homes, there's better layouts, bit of grid layouts, et cetera. So that's definitely gonna be part of the solution in the coming years, but it's, it's not an easy process doing that.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 21:21

Okay. Now, uh, let's talk a little about fires in, in informal settlements. You, you were guested at the NFPA podcast, and I'm gonna link to that episode where you gave really. Illustrative description of, of how a fire in an informal settlement looks like. And I, I would, recommend everyone to, to take a listen on that one as well. But let, let's give a mini version in here. So, what makes the fire so devastating? Like catastrophe, devastating, and, Under what conditions this fire turns. You said you have an incidence with tens or hundreds of houses every now and then, and then two, three times a year, you would've a one that involves a few thousands. So, what makes this this growth from a 10 or hundreds to catastrophe size? Is it management like the local, conditions, weather?

Richard Walls: 22:14

A lot of things play into it. Often it's, whether it's kind of like a, a, wildland fire. At the end of the day. You've got a continuous sprawl of fuel, and same thing with wildland fires. When the wind gets beyond a certain stage, it's gonna push through that forest and burn it all down the. The settlements do range in terms of resources for responses. Some have better fire departments nearby. Some have virtually non-existent fire departments. The density ranges, so if you have dense settlements with poor access, that's where you've got the biggest headache. Cause also, as I was mentioning earlier, most of the settlements are built out the way, so they have limited road infrastructure and access. And then when a big incident starts happening, people evacuate. So they're trying to save their beds and chairs and TVs. Cars and whatever else there might be there. And it blocks the road, so then the fire department can't even come in. And when you've got lots of fuel all on top of each other, I mean, it just moves from one dwelling to the next to the next. I mean, we didn't experiment with 20 full scale homes and all of them were a light in five minutes. So it literally ripped straight through 20 homes, five minutes. There you go. And you see that it moves. Frightening speed. sometimes it'll hit, let's say if there's a bit of vegetation you might have branding. we think branding occurs. We think there must be, if you've got enough plastics and pretty much everything there, there must be some amount of brands being thrown, but that's never been quantified and we don't have a handle of how much it's influencing it. But just flame impingement. I mean, you have, when the homes are that close, you got flame impingement from one dwelling to the next. Problem is, is the dwellings are permeable, so there's always a hole somewhere. So there's always the, between the wall and the roof, there's a bit of a gap. And then to stop winds, you stick a bit of newspaper or cardboard or nylon there, and then it catches and it sucks it into the home. Flashover. And then next one. So small scale, it kind of looks like a whole bunch of little enclosure fires. On a large scale, it looks like a, a wild land fire.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 24:07

with the 20 dwelling, You, you refer to the experiments in the project IRIS i, I isn't that the paper that got Bigglestone Award?

Richard Walls: 24:13

Yep. Yep. Thankfully, uh, you, you reviewed it for us and,

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 24:17

it was amazing. I recommend that to everyone.

Richard Walls: 24:20

so yeah, that was, um, yeah, colleagues, colleague wrote and was part of it and done with, Edinburgh, et cetera. So yeah, that was, that was frightening. What it was even great is, you have to admit, even when you're wrong, we were like debating how long is this experiment gonna take? And we're about to sit on fire, we're setting up, thinking, yeah, maybe 20 minutes or so. Bang, banks hit a bump, experiment down five minutes. Oops, that was quick. Um, I think at 17 minutes there was one left standing. And the funniest thing was we thought that was the, the home that was gonna get the toast, most roasted of, or timber dwelling on each side. And, uh, what happened was is that the timber homes are around it burnt so ferociously, no air could get to it. it was just crazy. The, the, it was oxygen staff totally. So it was the last home standing and we thought it was gonna be the one that was the most, uh,

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 25:08

And it, how, how was it propagating? Was it like through radiation? Through through convective heating,

Richard Walls: 25:13

it seems primarily flame contact, flame impingement. Um, especially in that experiment from what we see, it is primarily flame dominated because you have a lot of flaming coming out of the big dwellings and a lot of. Than exposed materials. But it is hard to break up the balance between radiation ignition and not, There must be a combination. I mean, there's always gonna be radiation at the same time. The the items are, um, the flames impinging or you have preheating and then the flame ignites it. So it's, it's between those two. Um, as I said, there probably is some, some branding as well. But if flame impingement appears, in my opinion, to dominate, the, the settlements are so complex and so many materials and so many different flames going in different directions that you would find exceptions to

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 25:59

Okay. but then again, If you could consider single ones from this experiment, uh, how long would one last, like two, three minutes,

Richard Walls: 26:07

Yeah, you're talking a couple of minutes. So often you'll have collapse five minutes, 10 minutes after ignition, especially when it's like timber. I mean, the panel's falling apart, but it, it depends in real settlements, how people have built. Some people, man, they, they build really well, and those, those homes are solid. They'll burn out, but they'll stay standing. Other homes, I mean, People have put access to materials. I mean, they'll fall apart within minutes. And especially when someone, you've got a small dwelling, someone knocks over a para stove, you're talking a minute to flash over from ignition to maybe, you know, 2, 3, 4 minutes, depending on what's ignited first. So it, it moves.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 26:44

that are crazy times. And, I've been to some fires. I've seen some exponentially growing fires. I know what you're talking about that this, this bad way is growing a little quicker than we've expected. You feel the heat and Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Really interesting that this experiments, full scale experiments happen and, It, it's really nice that, that this research also happens when, where the problem is because it gives you like local comprehension of what the problem is. You, you see it every day. It's not, uh, a fancy university from overseas doing, uh, research under polished campus and, doing this, building a going to. Castorama, whatever shops, building shops you have, buying a bunch of good materials and wondering, this doesn't burn that badly as they, as they said, actually, I liked it a lot Now, um, Before we've talked, you've mentioned that, you have worked on a project to deliver some guidance related to building a more fire, safe, uh, environment in this type of, of, of dwelling. So, so maybe let's venture there. How, how does this work started? Like whose initiative was that and who paid for that? That's actually quite interesting.

Richard Walls: 27:55

so, well, a couple of things. So following Iris, I mean we had a project with University Edinburgh, so various work done together collaboratively and then, projects along the way. Then our Department of Human Settlements, the Western cap upon museum, government department, they approached us and well, from a relationship, they said, Well, could we provide some guidance to help address the fire safety of these homes? Cause it's an ongoing challenge. And so, We started and then started putting together and eventually actually became a book that wasn't the, the option at the beginning, but we published a book, it's a fire safety engineering guideline for formal settlements, and we decided to release it free of charge. but to make the project possible. At that time we also had funding from the Lloyd's Register Foundation, so we used that as co-funding to make it possible. The first phase then was a full book. Hundred and 30 pages are results from various, experiments and analyses and all sorts. Put in one place, but it's written for practitioners, NGOs, et cetera. It's not a fire science textbook. and then there was a second phase, which has just been wrapped up, and it's gonna be launched shortly with training videos, brochures and posters. So it's a range of training materials. Once again, everything free. Uh, same also funded by the Waste and Cape Department of Human Settlements and the Lloyds Register. So they, that is going to be, Imminently any day now, probably early next year, South Africa shuts down like totally over December. Nothing happens then. it's, it's it's Christmas and it's our summer holidays. So, Uh. it's, it's the same thing as July. And in Europe or August, So that'll be, be out shortly with a, um, excellent, uh, photographer or, um, videographer, Justin Sullivan, who has real life footage in settlements from when they're burning. So the images you see are, they are frightening when you actually see people running around homes burning Yeah. Real incidents and what's happening. And that's used to tell the story and, develop the training.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 29:47

it's brilliant idea that you not only settle on a book, but go with, uh, videos, instruction material that, that will make the book alive. That, that will make the book, book go on. So, please introduce me like to, to this framework, uh, like where does even one start? When, when they want to, to make. An effect on, on local community or, or want to help.

Richard Walls: 30:07

I think one of the first things is that people think fire safety is about some silver bullet. That there's some magical thing. If I issue gadget A paint B layout C to the community, we can make fire problems go away. And I think the biggest message we're trying to communicate is what fire safety codes have been saying all along, but they've just never said it. To inform settlements is this is not a quick fix, this is not, You can walk in. Do one thing, walk away, and it's done. It requires a holistic, ongoing, intensive effort to reduce the number of incidents. So we can't take a hundred fires and suddenly have zero fires. We can maybe take a hundred fires in our 50, 50 years. We're still way too high, but hey, it's least it's not a hundred. So the idea is, how do we start tackling multiple aspects and. Guidelines are provided regarding looking at all the different aspects you face, whether it's risk of ignition. Now what are, what is causing the fires and how do we start reducing that? How do the fire spread? So how can we improve construction materials? what products do we use? Layouts, What sort of safety distances? In reality often can't get those safety distances. They're just too many people. But if you can, where should you put them? I mean, we were in a community last week and working with the community, looking at re blocking, literally moving little blocks around a community saying, Okay, where, What safety distances do we have? And. Then just realizing it's an ongoing effort from many people, and I suppose a different perspective is what a friend once described her job as is. Sometimes we can just be a hand break on stupidity in that if all we do is stop. Bad solutions from happening. I think it's a step forward because a big incident happens, The politicians are under pressure. So a great salesman arrive, sells the gadget you know, a ball that you throw in and explodes and Hey, it's gonna put out the fire. And we test them. Like, no, it's not. So, even if it's just stopping bad interventions because it's, it's rife with bad interventions and quick fixes, so, well, no, that's not gonna fix it. But hey, let's. Put a little bit of more effort into the water infrastructure, into homes. If we are gonna get smoke detector devices or P detector devices, which homes should they go into? Let's target the high risk community homes, the dense settlements. So big picture, putting it all together and slowly working at it. And also building relationship with the fire department. The fire department are key. They arrive and they get stone. Bricks because of a whole bunch of things we can maybe chat about just now. It's, it's a bit of a mess. And often it's not something they've done wrong, but it's just perceptions about who they are, what they do, and yeah, no, you're not giving us enough. Service. So the, it's a range of things, but I'd say it's, it's a basket of interventions. It's not one thing and it's not quick, it's not cheap. and it's often symptoms of other issues. So can fire be part of the conversation when we're gonna upgrade homes? Can fire be part of the conversation when, Workers go into the community to provide water, to provide electrical infrastructure, to look into the high risk homes, and identify, oh, you know, here's a home with al alcoholism. Where's a big issue? Maybe that's the home that should get the first detector devices, if we are gonna put those in. So those are sort of things that we can start looking towards.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 33:22

And, to what extent the, I don't know even who city, the society. Works on, on improving the conditions in the settlements. Like, like would the city put in, I dunno, a new pipes, a new electrical line that's underground and to, to help fix the issue? I guess Then that's when you can re intervene, Maybe try to change the density, try to build some separations. Is, is this how you intervene?

Richard Walls: 33:47

it depends. Cause I think you make a very good point is who, who's involved. And one of the problems is multiple groups are involved. For instance, you have the Department of Human Settlements who overseas, but then you've got Department of Water and Sanitation. It provides water infrastructure. You've got electrical supply, you have, um, health. So you have. A whole bunch of groups, including communities, and often we kind of miss, we think of this community as this homogenous, all think the same, all do the thing, which is not true. I mean, the, the communities are just like you and me. You know, I vote for you A, and you vote for B and we don't get along. And I'm trying to get my political party now to be the representative so we don't get along. And that influences community cohesion and approaches. So many groups involved. Normally it comes more from your department, human settlements, et cetera, the upgrading, but it, it requires multiple people involved. So that's one of, well, one of the big problems, it's everyone's problem and no one's problem all at once. So it's kinda like, Hey, well it's not exactly my problem, so I'm gonna leave it for the fire department cause it's a fire thing. So they must fall in this. Fight upon, Well, it's spreads so much because it's a home problem, so it's someone else's, it falls between multiple groups, which makes it more difficult to address and slower to address. So that, that's gonna be an ongoing problem we have for forevermore.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 35:03

who, who's the target that you would like to aim with with this knowledge? I mean, is it an individual, owner of a, a household? Is it the local authorities? Is it the fire department? if one in a hundred people redesigned their settlement to, to become safer? This does not, this is your houses that stood after an experiment. You know, it's, it doesn't change the landscape. Then again, uh, if an authority goes and would say, I have to rebuild a square kilometer of, of city infrastructure, roads, uh, water, electricity. There's no money to, to do that on that scale. So which quarter I'm gonna start with, and once they start their probably d density will dramatically increase in that area. Then firefighters with their challenges. So that, that's, Wow, that's a, that's a hell of, political landmine fields, to, to navigate.

Richard Walls: 35:56

If in terms of targeting, what I'm hoping is that the work we've produced will influence different groups. Firstly, as I said, Your government departments, human settlements, water and sanitation, et cetera, NGOs, there's a lot of non-governmental organizations, churches, different groups, active in communities, and they're not fire trained. But hey, if there's some basic things that they can at least think, gee, maybe putting a spray on polyurethane on people's walls is a bad idea cause that has been done. So, you know, let's, let's spray on basically petrol on people's walls and see what happens.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 36:26

A petrol petrol that produces cyanide when burns a better kind of petrol.

Richard Walls: 36:31

I, we literally had this conversation with a, uh, an organization. They were doing it to offset carbon emissions. So they were insulating people's homes and they had a spray on polyurethane. And as they said, I was like, Wow, this is a bad idea. And, uh, the thing is, there's often no testing because it's a deal system. You have. Informal is, is inherently informal. There's no testing and no requirements to roll out something in a settlement. It, and you also, you can't develop a dual standard system. You can't say, okay, formal homes require the following standards. Hey, now we've got the second code for informal settlements. So it's like a subclass, because then you're actually saying it's okay to have substandard safety. Which doesn't exist. So either it's everything or nothings developing something in between is virtually impossible because then it, it calls into question the entire code.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 37:22

From the low framework perspective.

Richard Walls: 37:24

Yep. So that, that's why

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 37:26

but then again, you said that, uh, you know, you cannot solve a hundred out of a hundred fires, but even if you solve like 50, that's

Richard Walls: 37:32

Yeah, that's why we intentionally call our work guidelines. You can't actually call it a code or a standard because it can't be a dual running, code environment. And people have proposed, Hey, let's have a code for testing such and so like, nope, not gonna work. You can at least have a guideline like, Hey, testing this is, and you get such and results. Is is bad. We had discussions with guys working in Bangladesh on the ground, doing excellent work in Cox's Baar, and they said, We've been issued the following material. How can we test it? We don't have a standard that it has to adhere to, but we gave them some guidelines, us and, Jim Milke from Maryland, some details went through and they sent us videos and they did some excellent work. Um, Paul Chamberlain and the guys on the ground there. It was just some quick testing and went, Wow, this is probably as worse than we thought. It didn't fail the test, cuz there isn't a test. But at least they could go to the decision makers and say, Guys, this we're, we're looking at problem we're putting in sheeting. That is combustible. It's got hydrocarbons in. Look at the flame spread. Bad idea. Can we reconsider? So those are the sort of things that at least if the work can have some impact in advising on what is probably a per choice of materials, per choice of devices as it also, I mean, throwing devices. It was great. I mean, a company was selling these little. little ball, you throw it in, it's got a dry chemical powder and basically blows up. And, I mean, I've seen them, They, they look great on the internet, man. You throw it into a little contained box and bang, the fire's gone. And so we did, we built a full scale home. We threw in 10 of these things and it didn't even vaguely put out the fire cause we'd knock it locally. Everything was above spontaneous ignition, so the fire just kept coming back and, and stuff like that at. Shows to decision makers that that may not be effective for what we want. For a small fire, when you've got really good aim where you can throw like a baseball player, you know that, that's fine, but if you're under pressure and you miss and it's a big fire, you're, you're basically wasting your money. So that's where we're hoping the guidelines have impact, that it can inform. Any decision about fire safety devices, decisions, layouts, et cetera. But it's not gonna be a miraculous thing. It's not gonna happen quickly, and any impact is at least more than than we used to have. Um, that that's our hope.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 39:43

now, now you started talking about fire brigade and the challenges, they face like How, how big is the possibilities on the intervention side? Like to what extent you can even intervene in there uh, like if I, my house was burning, I would expect 15 minutes later there's a fire department at my house. 30 minutes into the event, it should be under control because they already have water inside. They have recognition sounds that they know what's happening around that. That's what I would. In here, I guess the expectation in an informal layout, like to start even with, to what extent they know the layout of the, of the informal settlement, because it's, it's live, right?

Richard Walls: 40:23

So there, there are a couple of things. Firstly, one of the big headaches, and I'm hoping our country can fix it soon, is we don't have a unified 9 1 1 number. So, There's actually a 10 digit number you're supposed to call, for instance, uh, for Cape Town oh 2 1 4 8 0 7 oh. And if I asked you to repeat that number to me now, you wouldn't be able to repeat what I just said. so most people don't know the fire department number. There is a shorter version, but sometimes that doesn't work for, from cellular phones. A regular headache we have is people phone the police, then the police are obliged to go out, investigate it and relay it to the fire department. So that may add 15 minutes or 20 minutes. And so that is something that we have to solve from government level, a unified. Call out number independent of that, then Yes. Are some fire departments are very good. They respond quickly, they're well trained. Um, they lack resources, but they're really doing a good job. I mean, I've been very impressed with a lot of what city of Cape Town, Brita Valley are, are doing. Other cities, they have six fire trucks for population with a few million. it's frightening the, the level of, services that they're able to offer. When they arrive, the timeline looks a little different because normally you arrive at an address, but imagine you get called out to a settlement and you can see the fire in the distance maybe, but you like, How on earth do I even get there? Because sometimes there isn't formal infrastructure to get there. If now also the community phone, the police department, the police department came, You are now. 30 minutes late, you may be three minutes from call out, but you're 30 minutes late according to the community. So they start throwing rocks at you and now you're trying to defend yourself from the community and you know, run hoses and you can't find the hydrants. Then you're trying to get the trucks in and you've got low hanging electrical lines. You actually can't get your truck through or you just have to drive through electrical lines and hope you don't electrocute yourself. And then, You set up your hoses. You ran your hoses, and a big challenge they find is that people are desperate and so they see a hose, but the fire department is strategically putting out fires, but not your home. My home's burning, but they're putting out a home Two away. I see the, see the hose, I've got a knife. I wanna save everything I own. So I slash the hose and I turn the hose onto my dwelling. Suddenly the water is everywhere. You drain the tanker, it's a total mess. You gotta run new hoses. So cutting of hoses is a big deal, and it appears, it's mainly just out of desperation. There's, there's no data on it. I mean, I saw a very interesting one further just in terms of life safety that a colleague of mine, or friend of mine is a firefighter, and we've recently had a lot of blackouts in the country. So a entrepreneurial community resident was selling gas bottles into the community. So they had about. 20 LP gas bottles in their home and that home caught fire and I have pictures of the home afterwards. I am amazed that it didn't level the whole area. Somehow the, emergency relief valves must have. Been triggered. I mean, somehow they didn't detonate. Cause I've seen other incidents where the LP gas is detonated and it's frightening. And, but that's the sort of thing the fire department may have to respond to when you've got 20 LP gas cylinders in one home, nos burning, you probably don't even know this when you arrive and you're fighting it and then suddenly, boom. Um, it, it's a real safety challenge. And then you have homes collapsing onto you and yeah, you name it, it, it goes.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 43:55

and you, if you put it in, into the, context of your experiment with 20 dwellings, with this extreme fire spread, I mean the fire may be like three blocks away when, when you arrive, when it's, uh, when it's really a really bad day. Uh, in, in such a fire, I guess the extinguishing is, is option anymore.

Richard Walls: 44:13

Yeah, you, you're trying to contain, So I mean they just on the, if they can get hose lines to it, they can normally do a lot of damage. Cause there are. They are enclosures, but it, it just is the question of can they get enough hose lines close enough? And if you've got a winding settlement, it can spread around you or can jump. I, that's a, it's something we want to study is the branding issue. And it, it definitely does jump. We're just not sure how much, And then, then you're chasing the fire or it's, it's on both sides, you and around you. So, the fire department does a good job. They can kill the fire, but getting there and access is a huge. And so roadways, accessways are, are important and they get blocked, but you do have anecdotal cases where the community helps in, in multon there's one in, in an area called Noon, there's one community that's. Particularly proactive. There's a leader there. When a fire breaks out, she makes sure that they clear the road. And so actually moving people's possessions out the way to make sure the fire truck can get in. And that is a huge thing. it might sound really simple, but it, it could result in many more homes being saved if the firer can actually get access. And, and, cause I mean, people are desperate if, if you're trying to save everything you, and you're not really worried about the track access, but at least if there are enough people around and they move stuff it.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 45:32

and sharing good experiences, as this, is it even possible between the, the communities?

Richard Walls: 45:37

it can be, and I think that's gonna be an important aspect, central aspect going forward is that community engagement. There needs to be budget allocated for people to be ongoing in the community training, doing work. I, I really wanna build a little mobile. Dwelling that the, fire department can arrive, take it off the truck, burn it down with the community around, engage with them, train with them, and then leave. If you leave it there, it'll get stolen normally.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 46:03

Mm-hmm.

Richard Walls: 46:04

actually have to do some mobile fire training.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 46:06

it. Burn it. before his stolen

Richard Walls: 46:08

and then, and then you pick it up. You make it a steel frame, take it away. so. Community engagement will always be key, but also it's not something quick because communities change, people come, people go. The more that's done the better. And once again, our target is from a hundred fires to 50 fires, not a hundred to zero. or any reduction in damage we can do is, is

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 46:28

I think that's a powerful way out this, maybe not the way completely out, but. Towards, a better solution, better environment. now for the end, I, I had Danielle in, in here. We were talking a lot about NGOs and what can be done, how they engage, and I absolutely love the work that they are doing. You as a scientist, how, how do you see like the research gaps? Like where can. Fire science, fire, academia come in and, what would be the most important research gap you see?

Richard Walls: 46:58

the, the the most important people are those making the difference on the ground. Be it the NGOs, be it the Fire Departments, Department of Human Settlements, they're, they're really important. I sitting in my office, in my university ivory tower, it's very difficult to make a direct impact. However, the. If we can provide the tools they need for simple assessments, cuz people aren't trained in fire safety. So just working with a community, um, NGO last week and I I, they're like, Oh, what distance must we put these homes in? I was like, well, nothing really. It's always gonna jump eventually, but, you know, one meter, it'll always spread two meters in most cases spread by three meters. You're starting to get to a stage where you might have have stopped at four meters probably. Tools to help the important people, is where I think the research will be valuable and assessing any intervention. So that's why one of the papers we did was assessing suppression methods. What happens if we have these throwing gadgets? How do they work? How do they not work? If we have detected devices, what's the limitations of them? Nuisance alarms, rollouts, sensitivities, artificial intelligence, building those in, uh, GIS mapping risk assessment. So it's, it's providing. To the people that matter most.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 48:16

I also think this, what you said about this gadget is like debunking myths, adding credibility to solutions, like showing real impact of, of things measuring, quantifying, I guess this is something that NGOs will have difficulties in, in, in having, and they, they need to receive us from us. when we arm them with, with good weapons, like, like knowledge, I guess some, something good can come out of that. So I, I really enjoy this answer. And now for the end, tell, tell me how's it going in, in Stallenbosch? I I'm super impressed by how your group is going and, all the staff happening around you, all the courses that you go that are so well attended, it's

Richard Walls: 48:55

So, so we, we are growing. We are going, it's, it's been a chaotic ride the last few years, but we've been very fortunate. We've had good support. I mean, we've worked with, with various organizations starting out with Edinburgh and then recently a variety of, of groups. But what's. Positive is that there's a big need for fire engineering education and research. And so there was a bit of a void and an African void. And what's really been nice is the team that has developed, I mean if you look at our PhDs at the moment, we've got someone who's gonna go back to Nigeria or hopefully set up research group there. We've got people from Zambia, Ethiopia, India, Chile, and. Attendees at our courses from all sorts of different countries. So what's nice is it's starting to get a developing world and especially African flavor in terms of training the trainer. And so hopefully long term the people from here can go back and establish courses across. And we've, we've had, generous support as at Royal Academy of Engineering, Lloyd's Register, um, had the Almond Bursary recently supporting developing world and moving. So we've had a couple of hundred engineers trained in structural fire, fire dynamics. I think we're getting a new lab. Very exciting. Um, so we've got a little 400 square meter lab. Hopefully have a large scale hood and whatever we can afford, we'll get

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 50:15

That's massive, that that's massive improvement.

Richard Walls: 50:17

Yeah. So bit by bit all is moving. We, we kind of figure it out as we go. We, we. Privilege to have an ITB or a Maryland WPI Lund Edinburgh education, but we just sort of muddle along and figure it out and stuff. And afterwards what we just burn. So it's.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 50:35

observing it from the side uh, you are doing it the right way, even the right way than many of, the uh, noble associations and the noble institutions. So congratulations of, of that. If that's an instinct, you have a good one. Just keep following it, that Richard, it works.

Richard Walls: 50:52

Yeah. No, so it's all as well. But thanks. Yeah, it's been good. Good being here today.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 50:56

Thank you Richard, for, for, this interview. I, I, I hope we've touched, uh, many important, things about a problem for 1 billion of people from an engineer's perspective, that there has been a lot in, in this interview, but that's the environment you have to navigate that there, there just is that many aspects of the same problem and one. Gun powder ball will not, uh, will not solve that for sure. Thank you so much for coming to the show.

Richard Walls: 51:21

No, thanks. a lot. Good being here.

Wojciech Wegrzynski: 51:24

And that's I always find them informal settlement, fire, subject. On one hand depressing on the other hand. chance too. Really deliver fire safety to so many people like it's really meaningful. You know, I always had this feeling, especially when I talked to Danielle some time ago, like, you know, we, we do all this fancy modeling, all these crazy. Efforts to improve. Safety over skyscraper, which is already super saved by like 1%. And here, people are without fundamentally any fire safety. changing any through some BS. Way way bigger. Impacted. me you will ever have. In, in our modern, beautiful world. That's yeah. Well, The pressing, but an opportunity to really make an impact for sure. Thank you, Richard, for, for making the impact. Thank you for your research. Thank you for thinking as an engineer. Thank you for providing answers and guidelines Building resources. So people can battle the problem. Uh, it was a very honest and, At points. Difficult conversation, but I'm very happy. I'm very happy. We had that, even if I don't sound like that. I'm the breast. Well, that will be it for today's episode and as usual, what. I remember about the QA. I still need the questions. And, I need you to come here next week and see you there then by.