Informal settlements (ISs) are a high-risk environment in which fires are often seen. In 2019 alone, 5544 IS fires were reported in South Africa. One of the main problems, when investigating an IS fire, is determining the fire cause. In the last 15 years, approximately 40% of the fire causes were classified as ‘undetermined’ in South Africa. Furthermore, the cases where the fire causes have been determined, do not provide the necessary information to comprehend why the fire started. This paper seeks to gain better insight with respect to fire causes by analysing the fire risk perception of IS inhabitants. To this end, a survey that was conducted in 2017, consisting of data from 2178 IS households, that were affected by a large-scale fire, was analysed. The survey consisted of questions relating to the fire risk perception with regards to the settlement in general, to the inhabitants’ own household, and about measures that could reduce fire risk. The analysis suggests that (a) the survey’s risk target had a strong influence on risk perception, (b) the inhabitants’ fire risk perception of their settlement is similar to that of firefighters in previous research, (c) the risk mitigation demands are more focused on decreasing the consequences of the fire than on the occurrence of a fire event, (d) the national fire statistics are not capturing the causes of real fire incidents, and (e) improvements to the documentation process after a fire event could provide critical information for the implementation of prevention measures.

Globally, the number of informal settlement dwellings are increasing rapidly; these areas are often associated with numerous large fires. Unfortunately, until recently, very little research has been focused on informal settlement fire issues leaving any attempts to improve their fire safety lacking the evidence base to support effective-decision making. However, over the past 4 years, a limited number of researchers have looked at better understanding these fires through full-scale experimentation and numerical modelling; starting to provide the necessary evidence base and future research directions. It is with this background in mind that this paper seeks to provide a more fundamental understanding of the effect of dwelling separation distance on informal settlement fire spread based on full-scale experiments and analytical equations. In this paper two full-scale experiments were conducted. Both experiments consisted of multiple dwellings, with the main difference between the experiments being the separation distance. Fire spread times, heat release rates, door and window flow velocities, ceiling temperatures and incident heat fluxes were recorded and are reported for both experiments. Theoretical neutral planes are derived and compared to the experimental neutral planes, which show relatively good correlation. The paper continues by calculating the expected incident radiation and time-to-ignition, using the flux-time product method, of the two fire scenarios (i.e., the two experiments) through means of analytical equations, and these findings are compared to the experimental results. Through configuration factors, the paper shows the effect of separation distance, dwelling height and dwelling length on the times-to-ignition, where it is clear that the heat flux received by an adjacent dwelling decrease approximately exponentially as the distance between dwellings increases, and consequently, the time-to-ignition increases exponentially as the separation distance between dwellings increases.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, roughly 980,000 people live in the Cox’s Bazar region in Bangladesh, making it the largest and most densely populated refugee camp in the world. The number of fires in this settlement rapidly increased in 2021. On 22 March, a large fire event occurred, where 15 fatalities and 560 injuries were reported, and more than 9500 homes were affected leaving 45,000 homeless. This work seeks to reconstruct this incident based on firefighters’ statements, information found in the media, and satellite imagery. The study shows that (a) the fire spread extremely fast, with linear spread rates between 79 and 310 m/h and an average areal spread rate of 92,850 m²/h estimated, (b) the firefighters performed two main operations, firefighting and the creation of fire barriers, (c) the residents self-evacuated, deciding when and where to evacuate, and (d) the residents’ actions were similar to what has been observed in residential fires, with several people mentioning looking for missing family members. Fire spread is analogous to wildland fires where conflagrations spread across large areas of combustible material. This work can be used in planning for future large-scale fire incidents in tented camps, and proactively seeking ways of mitigating their impact. This is the first detailed documentation of such a large-scale refugee camp incident in the academic literature.