145 - Fire Safety Engineering in South Africa and Beyond with Richard Walls

Welcome to the Fire Science Show. In today's episode, I am joined by Professor Richard Walsh of the Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and we're going to have a challenging conversation about what it is to do fire safety engineering in a community which is not able to use as much resources on the fire safety as we do here in Europe, which does not have the fire safety engineering as well established as we have in other parts of the world, and where everything you touch is pretty much a challenge. We're going to discuss this based on some examples of large fires that happened in South Africa. Richard was keen enough to send me a list of fires that we could discuss before the episode and it covers just, you know, a few years of time. But there are so many big incidents track blasts in which 40 people lost their lives, hijacked building in which 80 people were killed in an incident that's like a grand scale of tragedy in terms of lives lost. But I I have not heard about this fire until richard has pointed it out to me. Large wildfire that attacked a tourist region which you would expect would be quite well prepared, to be honest, not an informal settlement and, perhaps most shocking of them all, parliament fire. If you have a fire happening in your parliament, then that's quite odd, right? You could believe that politicians would actually protect themselves from fire. Perhaps they don't even know they need that protection and that perhaps is a challenge on its own, fire not being in the discussion, no fire solutions being done because fire not being recognized as a big enough hazard. Perhaps we'll find out from this discussion with Richard. Anyway, we discussed the challenges. We discussed fire safety engineering. We showcase the differences between the South African context and perhaps the context in Europe. I know half of the fire science show demographic is UK, australia and US, but I'm sure you guys can also take something nice out of this episode, just understanding this fire safety engineering happening in a completely different background. But also even in US you have an invisible fire problem, as brought up in a report that was published some time ago. I'm afraid fires like hijacked buildings and similar will also come our way in a more developed world, so we better be prepared. Anyway, please join me and Richard in their discussion on fire safety engineering. With insufficient resources, let's spin the intro and jump into the episode.

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Hello everybody, I'm here today with Professor Richard Walsh from University of Stambosch. Hey, richard, good to see you, good to be here. Thanks for having me back. You're very welcome back, richard. I've invited you to talk about what happens in a country or in a region, in a community where there's a lack of fire competency around, and I recall your interesting talk on IFSS, on the need to build competency, and then the need to educate a new generation of fire engineers in South Africa, where you reside, but also for the entire African region. And you've also been shooting at me examples of fires that happen, fires that like if I'm sorry, but if this fire happened in Poland, that would be craziness. And here is one after another of really devastating fires. One that caught my attention was a parliament. Did you really have a parliament burned down? I mean, that's not great.

Our parliament is currently being rebuilt. The quite an extensive section burnt beyond repair, so it was demolished and is currently being rebuilt. Quite an extensive section burnt beyond repair, so it was demolished and is currently being rebuilt.

I mean, that's an interesting case study. So what actually happened in the parliament? Why did the parliament building burn down?

I mean just what's in the public domain. So I mean, throughout today we'll just discuss all that that's out there. I mean, you always hear lots of different stories. We've got an old parliament, different sections built at different times, but well over 100 years. Some section and it was about a year and a half, two years ago I mean suddenly it popped up in the news Parliament's on fire and everyone's what the hell's going on here and sort of bits and pieces of information slowly be coming to light.

But the information in the media is ultimately there was what appears to be almost a homeless guy. He jumped the fence there wasn't high security. They jumped over and managed to slip into the building. At the time, it appears, the security staff were on leave. It was 1st of January. Nothing was happening, for whatever reason. Some staff were put on leave so he was able to slip in an open door broken door, whatever it was and he set the building on fire and we still don't quite know. It seems that he is going to be declared crazy. They've been doing psychiatric assessments of him, but it seems like a random, possibly psychiatrically motivated guy set Parliament on fire and then it went down and that was that Okay?

whenever there's a fire story in the media, a lot of focus is put on the ignition source and the arsonist, but usually that's not enough to take down a building you know to just set it on fire. It has to spread, and as much as competency cannot prevent crazy people from setting buildings on fire, competency can help provide this fire safety engineered solutions that actually limit the consequences of those fires. So I assume this is an example of how not actually having good fire engineering in the building case is challenging to fire engineer a hundred year old building. Do you also like assume that that it's more like a systematic issue or a wider issue, and it's not just the parliament buildings but perhaps many, many other buildings who have not been set yet on fire? What's your view on this?

So I mean I think you immediately hit the nail on the head, where you know you say the same comments as I did to the media and everyone's like, oh, it's the arsonist's fault, and you know, okay, everything's fine now. But yes, a building shouldn't burn down, especially not a high-risk national key point where the president and other people are. So it points to challenges in regulatory environments and implementation. So in South Africa we've seen a lot of good. I mean we have got some state-of-the-art buildings, some beautiful high rises that you could put in London and they would kind of fit in or wherever else in the world. So there's a lot of good engineering happening, a lot of very interesting buildings, a lot of development, various good things happening, some good consulting.

But I think where the conversation is today is what happens when that isn't there and especially where there are emerging challenges and also competency, especially in government. So, for instance, our government departments managing buildings, they're very understaffed. I mean there are actually some good guys there but they don't have the capacity and if you have a look at our codes, for instance, it doesn't make. Well, there isn't firstly, codes for Parliament and everyone keeps asking was Parliament code compliant? I'm like, well, parliament will never be code compliant because there isn't a code for Parliament. It's a performance-based design. Unfortunately, our government guidelines don't make a distinction between the levels of building. So whether it is a three-story office block or a higher-risk constitutional building, a high court, there's no differentiation. And that to me, comes back to competency of codes and guideline design that we don't take the risk the chance of someone trying to set a parliament or a court on fire is pretty good.

That's not an accidental case that you know is going to happen at some stage in the life of a 100-year-old building. Someone's going to want to burn it down at some stage, and I add points there exactly. And then with that comes higher levels of safety. It's not code-complied Gee, because we have, you know, fire doors and all that stuff have we designed for an awesome attack approach, etc. And that's where I think competency is hitting us. So, yeah, I think you're in the right direction.

How? I think you're in the right direction. How is it regulated in your country? Did South Africa develop its own fire safety code? Was it, like some, I don't know British system that was adopted and then modified to your needs?

I'll try to answer. So it's relevant to many countries. I mean, firstly, we have an overarching constitution and the constitution then tells us you know, people must be kept safe, etc. So that it's ultimately enshrined in the constitution a safe working environment. And then it goes down to the building act and the act describes what a building looks like. You know, no spread of fire, limited spread of smoke, but general sort of functional requirements. And then that's implemented through our building codes 1010, 405t. That historically was quite British based because we're all British colony, and then it's been sort of panel beated and updated.

That code in itself it's not. There's some holes in it, but it's not bad. I mean, if you put that in place, in most cases it would be fine. I think the problem is is that it's as in all countries and developing countries etc. It's okay, but it's not there for emerging risks and it's not there for high risks. And that's where performance based design comes in. And I think when you have a lack of competency, people don't even realize that, gee, I put a 20-story hospital. The code doesn't in the vaguest sense apply to this crazy, crazy high-risk building with hundreds of people who could be stranded. So, and I think that's where the code, not the code in itself it's the application of the code where things really go to their shape.

You're talking about competency, but you mean like, specifically educational fire safety engineers or a broader, like built environment sector, where the structural engineers and everyone else would not have sufficient comprehension of fire problem.

And I think that we, at least in places the UK, usa, etc. People know fire exists and that it must be dealt with, even if they don't have the competency. At least it's part of the discussion when, in countries where it's been less regulated and less enforced I mean, I was a structural engineer who knew nothing about fire before I got into it through my keyword and I remember in industry you're sitting with a structural no one ever really talks about fire. There's this strange person called the fire engineer and anything with fire is their problem. You don't even think about structural fire resistance. You know it says somewhere on a drawing. You know this needs a 30 minute fire aging.

Okay, I assume the fire guy's magically going to fix my building somehow and give me that and you do see these holes when there's a general lack of knowledge. And then also in the building services, we've got some great fire departments doing some excellent work with well-trained people. We've got some others who don't have the technical ability to review a performance-based design and the oversight. So I think that's where the problem is. Yes, it's a broader, sweeping thing where the mechanical, architectural and the whole range of people often don't even know where to start and the fire guys, the person or lady or male wedged right at the end with a budget spent, and let's quickly knock this design out as fast as possible, as cheap as possible, and just give us the lowest.

I try to now put in my mind this against, let's say, even Poland or UK market. Okay, the general competency, I think, is there. We can argue that. Is it great or is it not great? But at least, as you said, the FHIR is a part of the discussion out there and I wonder why it's not a part of the discussion in the system that you see in front of your eyes, Like is it not dangerous enough? Well, I don't know.

I think a lot of it comes down to education. I mean we've just started now a master's degree. I mean that's where this discussion around compass is. So the master's, we're busy reaching it. I mean that's where this discussion around compass is, so the masters were busy reaching it. So it says formal fire engineering on the master's degree, but do anything, courses et cetera. And so we've kicked off. We've got over 30 students in our masters. It's online and I asked a question the other day and there's a lot of South African engineers.

They're working in practice, et cetera. And we had a fire dynamics course two weeks ago. I said again, hands up, who of you have received formal fire dynamics training so far? And this is fire engineers who are working in practice. Office of T 35 people, I think six said hey, I've had formal fire dynamics training and these are the fire engineers themselves and they're also the ones who are now training extra. They're the ones Maybe I mean some of them are a bit younger, so maybe they haven't had a chance yet straight out of university.

When our fire consultants even lack the physics, it's a problem. And I do see that in the more established environments where there's degrees, there's competent people in industry there's courses, and then it filters into architectural degrees, it filters into the civil and mechanical degrees and even at hell they can't, you know, do an ignition calculation. So what? At least they know there's this thing called fire and someone must sort it out at some stage and I think that we've seen major movements now. But in the private sector is moving a lot faster, a lot better, but especially in the government sector where there's a lot less technical ability, that's where they're really. Um, I mean our South African police service, saps, their head office in our main city, pretoria, just got closed for unsafe work environments. So our police headquarters is now empty. There's no one working there. Because it was unsafe, and I'm assuming I know nothing about the bullying. I'm assuming one of the problems was fire safety. That's a problem. This police phone building is not fire safe.

I've asked do you think it's not dangerous now? Because in my perceived view of the world, fire engineering follows fire tragedy. It's kind of obvious in our world, in Europe and here, that whenever we have a massive fire like, think Mont Blanc and what happened then in tunnels, 20 years later, how much changed Even look at Grenfell, and how much it is changing. We are yet to see the long lasting impacts of those changes, but undoubtedly it causes a significant response. And yet you send me a list of like I don't know 10 fires. Each of them is like yeah, here are 100 people died, here are 50 people died, here are 50 people died, here are some explosions. And then you tell me there's no, the fire is not a part of the discussion. So I really struggled. And why not?

Once again, I think it's competency and time, and I think also we're lulled into the sense of it's code compliant, and you'll see you go to a building if and you'll see you go to a building if people aren't sure you say, is this building biocomplied? And like my fire extinguishers have been checked? And I'll show you a little certificate Like hold on, hold on, that's not that nasty. No, but we even have hose reels. You're like, okay, we're not talking the same language here and I think it's going to be a long-term thing and we're not anyway.

I think that's where this conversation is right is there are a lot of big countries around the world the civil channel. We've got 60 million people, so it's not a small population. But you've got indonesia with 300 million, you've got malaysia, you've got africa, ethiopia, nigeria. There are hundreds of millions of people in countries, many of them with even worse regulatory environments than than ourselves. I mean, there's a lot of progress being made. I'm quite pleased to see some of the movements. There's a lot of problems, but there's movement. And so this I think we just hear about the big fancy ones, but there's a lot of unsafe buildings around the world and as our buildings have turned. We need a lot of engineers in a lot of countries. So I mean, that's why we're starting a distance learning master's, because it's the only way we can reach a billion people between us and Europe in this little place called Africa.

It's not so small. It's much bigger in reality than on a map. Is this something common for other engineering branches related to build environment, like structural earthquake?

No. What we see, though, is your more established environments. There's a much higher competency Structural engineering we've got some very good structural engineers.

good codes mean things happen, mistakes get made but it's a much more knowledgeable industry, and mechanical as well ventilation, electrical. It's just as I said. I mean, I can speak of two people in the country with formal masters in fire engineering, but I'm talking a pool with all the courses et cetera, and both done internationally. I mean, outside of what we've done, there's very little formal training, and that filters through. So you see these crazy ideas sometimes popping up on mining, et cetera. The good thing, though, is that, as things move out into Africa, there's huge mineral resources and general projects happening. If you look at the Zambian copper belt, the Mozambican gas fields, oil fields, uranium, there's huge resources being exploited, and, with the rise in a lot of the big industrial, mining, transportation sectors, they're going to be pulling engineers. So I think we're going to see, in the next 20 years, a very rapid growth in engineering needs, but also skills, on the continent.

I wonder if those skills will propagate. You know, because it's like if you, let's say, build a massive uranium processing facility somewhere and you just hire a bunch of outside engineers for that specific project, the risk is they come in, they do the projects and they go back home right, and then even the impact is just for the facility and what you're seeking. It seems to be a long lasting impact that can spread. There's also a reason why we don't talk about glass skyscrapers, which are world class, and there's a reason we don't talk about the informal settlements, which we've already discussed in the podcast. Today. I really wanted to focus on this middle ground where most of the people would live and work and spend their time in and on one hand it could look like an issue. With a country no-transcript, competency will be most likely different than in the major.

I fully agree. I mean we can discuss LP gas explosions, we can discuss hospital, and it's not that none of these have ever occurred in other countries. I fully agree. I mean it can be the USA. I mean all the incidents we've seen here have occurred in Australia and the UK and USA etc. But I think the frequency is higher where there's this competency. Especially I see the results when there is less competency across the board.

For instance, there's a truck gets trapped under the bridge, there's a truck that gets trapped under the bridge, there's a leak and if the fire services and disaster management aren't familiar and has trained and has capacitated, they're not able to, for instance, clear the area and when the detonation happens there's 40 people who die rather than, say, five people who die. You've got a hijacked building which basically becomes an informal settlement. You've got a hijacked building which basically becomes an informal settlement and when the regulatory power isn't there to clear it, you're going to have 70 gates rather than five. But, point of rightly, things are changing. I mean I'm heading off to the USA later this year at an invitation of Jim Mulkey to speak at an NFPA conference and we were discussing the NFPA sort of a holistic approach to fire safety and for the first time, we can discuss migrant buildings in the USA.

So that's an issue in South Africa, not necessarily with migrants, but you just got buildings which have changed occupancy and you have, whether you call them migrants, refugees, low-income workers, whatever background they come from. That's now becoming a reality in the USA and so we may do that as case studies, because now, with migrant challenges in many countries, certainly you've got people popping up there in countries that never even thought about it. So, yes, fully agree, it's not just South Africa. Whatever the problem is, these problems may be coming back to other countries as they face socioeconomic problems which they struggle to deal with. If there's not the competency in the fire services, in the approval of people, in the regulatory controls, in the engineers, in everywhere, the guy who put sprinklers under the bed, you know across the board, we can have problems.

We've just discussed that the big projects that are coming and may bring engineers with them, but you're also like producing those competencies and engineers in-house. You're a university that teaches that. How successful you are in keeping them Like, how many of them end up working in an industry locally or at least in a relevant place, and how many go to do engineering in Dubai.

We have lost a good couple. Unfortunately, you guys and Brickman stopped stealing. I just get all the salaries. We cannot compete with us.

You can't in Australia, canada. I mean I've had gate hunters phoning me like hey, want to come to Canada. I'm like that's too cool. Certainly we are losing. And I mean I'm sure Poland's have the same thing and other countries have the same thing. In other countries there is a brain drain.

I'm very encouraged by the number of local engineers who have registered for our masters now and I think we will see some of them immigrate, but many of them will stay. And the more engineers we produce yeah, if we produce five and some of them leave, well so be it. At least we have three left over we never had before. And also, I think where there's a big knock-on effect is when you have a more thoroughly trained person at a company. It knocks on to other people At least. Then they start saying boy, the smoke ventilation, it's wrong.

Go read A, go read B, go read C. And I think you end up creating people who mentor others. So yes, we are seeing some people stay. We are seeing some people go back. I mean we had a PhD student, dr Anenio Wakos, back in Nigeria and I mean if he can get a job at a Nigerian university, fantastic. I mean now we have a little satellite campus, lagos or wherever Someone from Ethiopia here at the moment. But once again, when you're offered a job in Ethiopia versus UK, the UK students get paid more than the Ethiopian academics. Hard to hold on to them, but we will see development. Yes, we will have problems with big internationals coming in building a copper mine and leaving with all their skills. Nothing we can do about that.

It seems like the idea of like centers of excellence, from which the knowledge propagates locally, is a key in the solution of like centers of excellence, from which the knowledge propagates locally, is is a key in in the solution of the fire problems. And, uh, you know, from the context of this discussion, I really see that it's not just having a code, it's not just having legislation, it truly is the competency, communication, you know, propagation of knowledge and putting fire in the correct place within the engineering design. And if we have some listeners who would see similar issues in their countries or in their surroundings and their population, perhaps this is an approach, rather than creating a better code and enforcing it more strongly. If you do that and still lack competency, not much will change that. And still lack competency, not much will change.

One more thing that I really wanted to ask, because we, as fire engineers, already had a lot on our backs and, I assume, in your countries even more. But the world is rapidly changing and that's a challenge, right, and new technologies come immediately, whereas some may not be ready even for the existing technology. So how do you manage that with this rapidly changing world and how much does all like circularity, sustainability, revolution that's very omnipotent in Europe. How does it look in South Africa?

Well, I'll give it as an example. For instance, we have something called load shedding. At the moment, due to some problems and challenges in our national power producer, they don't have enough power for the country, so we have rolling blackouts, anything from two to eight hours a day of no power for the entire country, and you know, you know what time you're getting two to four and six to eight, etc. Ok now, so with that, we I think we are now the fast the country moving to photovoltaic solar technology, faster than anyone else we had. I think it was 2 billion rand of solar panels imported last year. I mean that number may be incorrect, so I have to double check that. But the solar is getting installed at a rate you cannot fathom. I mean we are beating anyone everywhere all at once. I mean the shiploads are just arriving and being installed. So when there's a local challenge, what you can see then is that what is done to deal with it and is there the competency? So I don't think we necessarily always have the competency for solar in terms of high risk. If it's a house, maybe, but we've got warehouses with huge roofs and you ask people oh, is that solar installation, did someone think about fire and they're like what's fire? And so that's where I think the problem comes in. But I think it's also an opportunity.

When we've got a country with some skills and developing engineering, we can also start contributing. It's not that we're watching the rest of the world. We actually need to now start saying guys, we need to move forward, we need to work on improving solar. They can actually learn from us, because we've got four panels and they do so. There's work happening with South African Photomulti-Industry Association, saptia. They've been very positive. We've got a webinar happening soon. You know there's movement there. You know there's movement. There's things happening. It's going to take 10 years, but it it's coming. Same thing with batteries, because all those solar systems are coming with 50 mi batteries. So I am concerned we're going to see some big losses at some stage. It wouldn't surprise me we see a warehouse go down or something happen, from whether it's bad installation problems, poor quality materials, whatever it is, we're going to see green energy problems At the same time. At least there is some sort of training going on and hopefully we can share that with others. But no, it's not perfect what's happening.

So the approach in here is again serve, react, educate and work with the people who are installing that. Is this correct?

Well, the industry is starting to make some noises, develop guides, codes of practice. The insurance industry SAIA, south African Insurance Association is getting involved. So it's not nothing's happening. It's not fast enough for how fast a country is going to be, but this is a multi-sector. I think the big problem is that when it's not in codes and we're not the only one who it's not multi-sector I think the big problem is that when it's not in codes and we're not the only one who it's not well documented in codes I think there are countries who don't have decent guidance.

It becomes difficult to enforce. So our insurers are starting to at least make noises and the insurers have a lot more clout. And when the insurers say, at least get a rational design or sign, that's a big step. So we're seeing some insurers starting to enforce things. It's not always perfect, but at least there is a growing knowledge of regulator environments. In the city of Cape Town all the installations need to be approved by the city, so they're actually regulating it to some extent and that's helping. I think my biggest concern is the really big installations and where, when you don't have guidance on spacing between arrays so the client can run underneath and all those sorts of things that we could have problems in years to come.

It's interesting insurance is getting involved in here. Here I mean in Poland. I mean insurance is to some extent getting involved, but it's still a lackluster force in the entire fire profession because the fire is so strongly regulated in the law and extremely strongly enforced by the fire brigade, you know, and people who are in the positions of power. I don't think the insurance sector is particularly very strong in Poland, for example. So it's interesting that it's paving the way. In your region. You mentioned some professional organization. What's the role of professional organizations in countries like yours? Do you have some sort of IFE equivalent?

We have a local IFE. They're doing some good work here. The thing is, ultimately the regulatory function comes down to our engineering council, the Engineering Council of South Africa. We don't have a specific category for professionally registered fire engineers so that tends to go through almost a parliamentary change to allow that. So in the UK the C-Eng or the American P-E we call our PR-Eng, so we have PR-Eng mechanical, pr-eng electrical. We don't have a PR-Eng by us because also we don't have an undergraduate degree. So you have to have an undergraduate degree to get professional registration. That's a bit of a stumbling block and I think if people can get a professional registration category that would help.

So some of my colleagues have done some excellent work Johanna Frangine, jocelyn Evans et cetera in getting in a category, a professional registration category. At least it's a rational designer, so you're a PR English mechanical, and then it's kind of an add-on. It's a little bit clumsy but at least it's a step and the insurers are starting to ask for that accreditation. The thing is because it's almost a monopoly on accreditation, our engineering council is the council they regulated, but there is some at least insurers and bodies that look to external qualifications. They look for NFPA trainings or SFPE or professional education from other countries. But ultimately, everything resides with our engineering council and I think, you see, that in many countries it's to actually get the council to change, but councils are regulated by acts of government. So if you want to change it, you have to get the government to change. We literally have to get parliament to add fire as an engineering category and I'm like, wow, this is going to take a while.

And only then it's going to really formally take off, because you will have the anchor point in your legislation system to actually enforce that in a way. I mean I assume such a struggle would also be present in many countries. And how about this soft action by organizations like local conferences, webinars, seminars? Is it more remote? I see a lot of what's coming from your group is remote and widely available, which I appreciate because it's great content. I wonder how does it look on the ground, locally?

It depends, I mean we were invited to speak to insurers and there were 500 and something brokers, insurance people in a webinar on FIRE.

I was like, wow, that blew my mind. We did a talk for structural engineers and I thought let's have some clickbait, so we entitled it the FIRE Liability. Structural Engineers Didn't Know they had, and what we scared them, it drew the crowds. They had. And what we scared them, it drew the crowds. We had almost 300 structural engineers attending a seminar on fire and I showed them from the code which is thou shalt check fire and you sort of.

There was a moment of panic in the audience as they realized they hadn't. So, um, we do have it on our structural codes by requirements, just no one knows it there. And so that, I think, is now impacting, because now structural engineers are starting to reach out. They're like I got product x. It says it has 60 minutes. This looks bogus. You know what's your thought. And you and you get like, yeah, this is bogus, and the structural engineers are picking up problems and flagging it. So I think that's quite positive. Same from the mechanicals and other sides. So no, we're a long, long way from where we should be. But I had seen that at least when someone on the consulting engineer knows how to spell consulting team knows how to spell fire, they pick up problems that wouldn't have otherwise been noticed.

I love the clickbaity approach. This perhaps is the way you know if other methods fail and you need to put fire in the correct place of the discussion, perhaps using click-baity titles like that. I mean, it's a real title, that's the truth in it.

The thing is I've seen in legal settings where a structured engineer is actually asked you know, is a structured engineer supposed to check FHIR? And they say no. And then you go to the code and you're like by the way, this is the code you signed off against, mr or Mrs Engineer, and here at clause 8.4.3.2, it says thou shalt check fire. And they sort of turn green Because it's just, you weren't taught it at university. Clients never asked for it. There's some weird comment on the fire engineer's drawing Truck to engineer to ensure 60-minute fire. You go like, hey, it's steel, it'll stand for 60 minutes, cool, and you move on. So I think there is a lot of liability that people don't know they have, especially on the structural side. I think we're going to have a building collapse at some stage and if it becomes an insurance claim it's going to get messy with fingers pointing. Especially often the contractual obligations between the different engineering people is not well defined.

So such a case has not yet happened, at least not on a scale that would create a nationwide impact.

Not that I've been involved with. It's coming at some stage where we will see it collapse and it'll be this typical sort of legal battle where the structural engineer said no, there was a fire engineer, the fire engineer said no, but on my drawing it said 60 minutes. The architect signed off the building and then the lawyers just get involved. And then, once the lawyers get involved, you don't even know what you're fighting about anymore.

A famous drawing from the Grenfell Inquiry, with the web of blame, like everyone blaming everyone else, and there was this massive map of who is blaming who on the tragedy and it essentially ended up with everyone blaming everyone. So, yeah, you can end up with such a situation. Do you have any positive examples like this? Building this competency is leading to a better engineering. I mean, you're doing this for quite some years in South Africa. Can you observe change happening?

We've got the people are making the impact of the guys on the ground. So for instance, one of my old students, dr Antonio Ticciani, you know well. He's got a company in one of our towns and they're picking up work left, right and center and he's hired some of our old graduates. I know now that they're doing a couple of hundred projects. At least we've got confident people doing those projects.

Justin Evans, a colleague of mine, does big work for the mines and often picks up problems and mistakes. And you know you get this phone call hey can I just get a sanity check on this? And you discuss through and you realize this woman is protecting billions of rands worth of assets for the mines. And you know the mistakes are starting to come to light. Problems are being sorted out proactively the mines.

There's been a huge movement in our mining sector and that's been quite interesting. The mines are spending big money on fire and I'm not sure all the drivers, I think a lot of it is risk insurers, compliance. But the mines are putting money into suppression for big. They have big vehicles into their deep because we've got some very deep mines. You have four kilometers underground coal mines and etc. And that's been quite positive because the mining sector when they do something, it expands. One of the big companies they were doing so much firework, they just started their own division. They swallowed up a bunch of and now they've got quite a competent team. So that's where I think there is some good stuff. But unfortunately money doesn't always equal good solution. Sometimes we've thrown 100 million or, let's say, 5, 10 million euros at something and maybe it was an ineffective solution. Especially in a mining environment, you get some weird things popping up because it's not codified. So there's some good, some problems, but general progress.

In our email exchange. You've mentioned also quite some explosions and LPG related hazards. This, for me, was quite interesting because I wouldn't work that much on topics like that. In Poland we had one famous explosion in the very middle of Warsaw like the center of Warsaw in the 70s where methane accumulated underneath a building and that was a massive destruction. But it's not something that would commonly come to my head. And then here on your list there's a few explosions. Maybe we could talk about the one with the bridge, and I wonder what lessons we can get from that one on the competencies.

Yeah, I think. Firstly, I'm just waiting. At some stage there's going to be a court case regarding that. I don't know which way it's going to go. So what's in the media? I mean, one of my students actually just did an analysis using public domain data, looking at what happened.

Basically, a truck got stuck under a bridge and, firstly, we talk about competency, but it's even broader than that. Now the claims are, for instance, that there is a low bridge, it's below what it should be. It's one of those old ones and, for instance, it's alleged that it wasn't well demarcated and the barrier stopping trucks from getting there wasn't in place or wasn't clear, etc. So a truck got into place he should never have been going to start with and got stuck. Then he started leaking. So about 15 minutes from the time, the truck got started trying to clear the area, but people, for whatever reason, weren't clearing, maybe they weren't pushed and then a jet fire started. And then the jet fire burned for about 45 minutes. Disaster management weren't able to control it and eventually had a detonation. I mean it wiped out a train bridge. The train bridge was stuck underneath. Over 40 people died.

So I mean quite a tragedy. A lot of people watching, trying to see what's happening, etc. Where, as I said, I think, general lessons which, without knowing the specifics of what's happening, is just preparedness in disaster management and clearing an area, knowing what could have been and just basic maintenance, may have influenced the fact that the track was stuck there to start off with, and then also the subsequent investigations. How quickly does the investigation? Are there people who are really entrained and able to do that? When you don't, how quickly does the investigation? Are there people who are really untrained and able to do that? I don't know who did the investigation. I'm sure some one was done, uh, but I mean we had a hundred I think it was 150 meter diameter fireball emitted from that thing and it killed people at a hospital a block away.

So it even damaged the hospital. Uh, I remember quickly, one or two people were even nurses. So it was a major tragedy, national tragedy, starting from a truck being in some way it shouldn't and then not, you know, there's the scene control. Yeah, so that was one of the explosions we've had recently. That could have happened in any country. Every country has low bridges.

And there was also this methane buildup on River Street. I saw some YouTube videos. The video was, let's say, very interesting. I'd never seen something like that, like explosion and basically collapse of a street. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

When I first saw that, I mean my eyes went wide and for anyone listening I'd say, go and search Bree Street, B-R-E-E or otherwise, johannesburg gas explosion. There's a new name, bree is the old name, but most people still seem to use it and what happened was is there was an electrical tunnel under the road, so I mean it was still carrying power, some big power lines in it, kind of two meters by three meters sort of rough dimensions, and about a meter, meter and a half below the road, and somehow there was a methane accumulation over quite a length. About 500 meters blew up. So there was some spark with all the power sources. It's not surprising. We pretty much could have ignited it and it detonated. So I mean the overpressures, I mean we did some rough cokes. That may have been eight bar or something. We don't have very much information about what went down there. I'm fairly sure we had a hypersonic shockwave that went through and it literally lifted the whole road. I mean there were big buses on top that just picked up. It's amazing. Only one person died and it blew. I think it was a thousand tons, can't remember the number, but I mean it lifted a very large section of road up and quite a few things contributed to that.

Now, personally, the source of the methane hasn't been found as far as I'm aware, and I don't think we will ever find it Once again, quite tight scene control should have been done, and I think everyone was in such a state we weren't ready for it. So everyone ran in there to fix it and sometimes in the process of fixing and trying to secure maybe that in the evidence for damage. So I don't think we'll ever know for sure what happened, where the source was. It could have been from a big sewer line. There's some natural gas lines in the area. The, the natural gas company, says it wasn't theirs and they say they have evidence to prove it. There is old mining, a lot of mining that happened in the area, so there could be mine deposits.

And one of the things that also influences it in our electrical sector is that you have a lot of copper theft. I think this happens in many countries, so you want to make sure the copper thieves can't get in there to these big power lines. So it seems that some of the manholes were welded shut or sort of quite heavy-duty manholes put out, so there wasn't ventilation. So then you can, because methane is lighter than air, so normally it would have vented. If we had some manholes along the way it may have escaped. It ought to have been sort of a very limited deflagration rather than a detonation, so that likely had some influence.

Also, it seems that the geometry there was ups and downs in the tunnel that might have influenced it. But combination of socioeconomic that we can't vent on tunnels because we were too scared to because the criminals might get in there. And then some source, yeah, I think lack of preparation in these sorts of incidents. When it goes down, no one's quite ready and so there needs to be policy and procedures. How do we shut off the area? How do we investigate? It been dealt with Because it affected a lot of people. Then quite a high amount five to 10 million euros, depending on what you included of damage.

Definitely the build up with the specific issues that you've mentioned are very interesting. To go for the last one, I wanted to talk about this one's in a relation with wildfire urban interface, because you also had significant fires coming from the environment to your cities and towns, and this is also an emerging trend we see worldwide and no country is actually safe from that. We had these fires happen in Greece, Portugal, in the US, in California, so it's clearly a global challenge. If I may, how did it look in South Africa? I know you've seen a fire which was a massive one.

So, about 2017, we had a big fire in a place called Nisnitz, a tourist town, a beautiful lagoon, lots of forests around and there was quite an extensive preceding drought, so everything was dry, dry, dry, dry, dry. And what also happened is there was a big what's called cold front approaching the Cape region and they thought it was going to wreak havoc in Cape Town. So most of the disaster manager resources were focused on Cape Down. But then, ahead of this cold front, there were high gale force winds and so there was an ignition that started then a couple of hours east of Cape Down and then, with these gale force winds pushing it and it's a bit of a history of the ignition there actually appears a maybe lightning strike and there was a bird smoldering in the undergrowth and then, when the winds push in, it converted it a long-lasting smoldering fire into a crown blaining but. But it literally pushed her and went straight through this town. Um, there were other ignitions of piers as well, and it wiped out over a thousand homes and I mean went straight through large areas, jumped lagoons, jumped rivers.

Colleagues of Colleagues of mine from CSI did some mapping. They picked it jumping a mountain range about 2.6, 2.8 kilometer brand ignition Instead of satellite overpasses. They actually picked up a spot fire that could only have jumped from a certain place so it made major spotting and ember attack and huge devastation. And I mean we haven't had those fires historically so we weren't ready for them. I mean, I know the old fire chief who was in Knysna at the time. I think he had a couple of fire trucks at his disposal and then, you know, everyone turns around and blames the fire department. The fire department never had an open hell. That thing was going to beat them. The best thing they could do was just try to get out.

At least one thing that highlighted it was of such a magnitude that we realized, hey, our incident command system is not rich. We haven't had such big incidents and they put a lot of effort into developing incident command systems and proactive wildfire risk reduction, et cetera. Problem is is our high-risk wildfire belt is spreading. So it used to be some regions around the Cape and some other places in the country, but colleagues at CSR have done mapping and those belts are growing. So we will see another town being wiped out and what worries me is some areas of the country, the incident command fire department of Fofofofpura and the region of Gneisner, and we will see it in the town, just decimated. It's nothing new. It's happening in California and all these other places, as you note, but it's coming to places where we're not used to having it, especially with prolonged drought.

And your response to that again education and building competencies or some very specific actions that you're taking?

One interesting thing is that our insurance industry sometimes they go involved and they sponsor quite a big project on learning from the knives of the incident. So as insurer who put the money for the investigation, insurer actually set up a disaster resilience round table which now has got people from all sorts of different backgrounds sitting in. They're trying to actually fund it to be able to fund research and proactive things. So it's not actually an academic led thing, it's an industry insurance. So we've got various wildfire groups represented on and there's a response from them, the municipalities some are proactive, some not so much, but it's a multi-sectoral. From a university perspective, we've got a project now with Japan and Botswana to try also to develop more guidelines and recommendations.

But I think the wildfire problem, as you know, is everyone's problem and no one's problem. So it's not my problem, so someone else will fix it. We are behind there, but some of the forestry guys are starting to do things. Some of the big vineyard owners are starting to then get in consultants and do some landscaping to get rid of the invasive species, the eucalyptus etc. So we're not ready for the next big one and I don't know where the next one is being, but the industry itself is putting proactive measures in place and certain government departments which get disaster management and others are taking proactive steps, and incident command is critical. So that's been great.

I think we're going to stop on this one. I think going through all these examples we've shown from hijacked buildings to LPG wildfires and as well your parliament that we've started with it truly demonstrates challenges are everywhere and competency If it's not there, the events are much bigger and more severe. Because I think all of the events that you've said that you've mentioned, you know. Awesomeness in your parliament building, sure it can happen anywhere. Lpg truck being stuck somewhere sure that can happen in any country. Wildfire it happens everywhere. It's just you know the scale. How it ends up is slightly different depending on what actions were taken before the fire. And I think this is where the competency and education can really hit on and where places like South Africa and many other places in the world, poland included, should really invest in, because that's going to give you the best return in safety, I guess.

Yeah, I think the more competent people. I fully agree. None of the incidents we have seen here are unique to us.

I think that where you see, the lower the competency, the lower the resources, the more frequent these things they happen. So instead of having one, you have two, instead of having five, you have 20, you know that sort of thing. So I am worried we're going to see a couple more big incidents. I am a little scared I'm going to get a phone call one day while a big building is burning and they need urgent help. But we're doing what we can and hopefully I think the students, the graduates, are making the big impact. They're the ones who are really changing the country to competent people on the front line in the municipalities in our place. I mean, one of our students works for Western Cape Department Health.

I mean that's fantastic. He's doing his master's thesis on evacuating hospitals and he's the guy in the hospitals making sure it can happen to Mike. That's when you have success, not when an academic publishes a paper but the guys on the front line can do it themselves.

Fantastic. On this note any advertisements that you want to put up and perhaps you can find some new recruits or new people to speak at your events.

I think it's fantastic that there's an opportunity now. So we're training, we took an office group, we've got a master's program, so the next intake will be January 25 and we're working with as many countries as possible. So you're welcome to reach out to me if you're sitting in Nigeria or Scandinavia well, Scandinavia, you may not need us for that the various countries around the world, Indonesia and Ethiopia and everywhere else, the Middle East so I think we need a lot of universities and a lot of people and a lot of places to train a lot of people and we'll see some reduction in fire losses. So yeah, excited, good things, lots of challenges, but all is well.

I also think you know when I would build up a system in a country that doesn't have one, would build up a system in a country that doesn't have one, perhaps basing it on your case, which is more relevant than, let's say, uk system, which is 200 years old. It's much easier to copy yours fresh and working examples. So thank you for leading by example and, yeah, thanks for sharing the fire safety as it looks, in a little different setting than many of us and many of the listeners of the Fire Science Show would normally see. Thanks a lot. Good luck with all your work and all the shows. And that's it.

That was Professor Richard Walsh from the Stellenbosch University in South Africa. It was inspired by his IFSS talk to invite him in the Fire Science Show. Richard was part of the diversity and equity inclusion session at the IFSS, where he had a very similar speech. Out of that speech, one message that stuck with me was more or less stop stealing our trained engineers, you rich bastards. Richard was highlighting very clearly that it's not just about creating competency, but keeping the competency local and making sure that this competency is put into good use in the location where it is truly needed. So thank you for coming.

Richard, this was a pleasure to talk with you, the challenges that you've mentioned, the cases of the fires, obviously very different than what we would see in Poland or in Europe in general. But in the end you can have arsonists everywhere, you can have a truck everywhere. It's just the scale of those incidents and the frequency, how often they happen when the competency is not where it should be. So I hope for listeners it was interesting experience. I'm not sure how much you have learned out of this episode, but it's nice to understand that the world of fire science it's not just big skyscrapers in Europe, australia or in US. It's. The world is much faster and fire engineers are needed everywhere. And there are some future challenges. You know sustainability and all the challenges related to new materials, new energy sources, energy conservation, transport. This is something that we are battling with. But the guys in the communities which do not have as much resources and as well-established field of fire safety engineering as we do, these guys will have a really hard time. I hope we can make it a little bit easier and if you want to make an impact, perhaps getting involved with such communities, helping them out, helping spreading knowledge, helping educate perhaps this is a way how you could contribute.

Anyway, on this note, I'm gonna end this recording. Thank you very much for listening to the Fire Science Show. Have a good Easter time. I think it's Easter right now, so have a good easter time. I think it's easter right now. So have a good easter time and see you in the fire science show next wednesday. Cheers bye. This was the fire science show. Thank you for listening and see you soon.