Purpose: This paper aims to present a literature review on the problem of fire following earthquake (FFE) as a potential hazard to communities in seismically active regions. The paper is important to work toward resilient communities that are subject to extreme hazards. Design/methodology/approach: The paper lists and reviews the historical FFE events (20 earthquakes from 7 countries), studies the available analytical tools to evaluate fire ignition and spread in communities after an earthquake, discusses the available studies on performance of individual buildings under post-earthquake fires and summarizes the current literature on mitigation techniques for post-earthquake fires. Findings: FFE can be considered a potential hazard for urban communities that are especially not prepared for such conditions. The available analytical models are not yet fully up to the standards that can be used by city authorities for decision-making, and therefore, should be further validated. Limited structural analyses of individual buildings under FFE scenarios have been completed. Results show that the drift demand on the building frame increases during post-earthquake fires. Despite the mitigation actions, there are still urban cities that are not prepared for such an event, such as certain areas of California in the USA. Originality/value: The paper is a complete and an exhaustive collection of literature on different aspects of FFE. Research in earthquake engineering is well advanced, while structural analyses under fire load and performance of communities under FFE can be further advanced.

Structural risk assessment against fire requires robust material models that take into account the uncertainty in material behavior over a range of elevated temperatures. Such probabilistic material models can directly inform performance-based design procedures for building fire safety. The objective of this research is to quantify uncertainties in retained strengths of steel and concrete when exposed to fire. First, hundreds of experimental data points covering a temperature range of 20°C–1,000°C are collected from literature. Then, different distribution candidates and modeling approaches are used with the collected data to identify probabilistic models for temperature dependents strength of steel and concrete. The proposed models are continuous probability distribution functions, with simple mathematical representations that are easy enough to arrange into systematic code for implementation in analytical and computational frameworks. Additionally, the proposed stochastic functions consider continuity in reliability appraisals during transition from room temperature to elevated temperatures. These models are applied to probabilistic evaluations of structural performance of three steel and two concrete columns, and the influence of the model choice is compared using fragility curves. Finally, the proposed probabilistic models, developed using different approaches, led to close results when characterizing the performance of structural members.