NFPA Journal - Winter 2021 - 35

attention from fire protection engineers,
fire departments, city planners,
and other government officials. " There's
an urgent need to plan for the growth
of cities in a safe way while also considering
the economic limitations of many
of the people drawn to urban areas, "
said Birgitte Messerschmidt, director
of Research at NFPA. " It won't help,
for instance, to build a lot of expensive
homes if people can't afford them. "
In 2017, when a fire tore through Imizamo
Yethu, a large informal settlement
in Cape Town, South Africa, residents
had little time to escape, let alone save
any of the few belongings they had. The
blaze was one of the most destructive
ever to hit an informal settlement in
the country, leaving four people dead
and nearly 10,000 homeless. Photos
and videos from the incident show
firefighters and residents desperately
struggling to contain the flames as they
leap from one dwelling to the next,
quickly swallowing the particle board,
plastic tarps, and other scrap materials
used to create much of the makeshift
metropolis.
Although an exact cause of the fire
was never determined, experts say the
conditions that led to the rapid fire
spread and destruction in Imizamo
Yethu are present in some form in
every informal settlement, from abundant
fuel loads to numerous ignition
sources, including heating and cooking
equipment and poor or improvised
electrical work.
" Everything you don't want, from a
fire safety perspective, is in one place, "
said Richard Walls, a fire protection
engineering professor at South Africa's
Stellenbosch University, who has conducted
extensive research on informal
settlement fires. Compounding these
issues, Walls said, are layouts that lack
spacing between structures; alcohol
and substance-abuse issues among
residents that can lead to fires set
accidentally; access challenges for the
local fire service, which may also lack
resources; and deficiencies in water
supplies.
Solutions are hampered mainly by
the fundamental poverty that creates
the need for such settlements in the
first place. " If we created more space
between dwellings to create firebreaks,
that would mean removing dwellings
and leaving families homeless, "
said Messerschmidt. " If we pursued
less-flammable building materials,
we'd find they're more costly and often
out of reach for residents. Even if they
could afford them, they may not want
to invest in a property where they don't
have the right to the land they're living
on. "
Even so, promising efforts are underway
to address the problem. In 2020,
Walls and other researchers published
a guide, aimed at the safety community,
to improve fire safety in informal
settlements. The authors hope it will
become a resource for cities bracing
for informal settlement growth in the
coming years. The 135-page document
offers comprehensive guidance on
everything from building relationships
between the local fire service and informal
settlement residents to teaching
residents how to make the exterior of
their dwellings more resistant to fire.
Walls envisions future, updated editions
of the document, similar to a code
or standard.
Key to the document's guidance
is acknowledging the socioeconomic
limitations shared by these environments-and
also understanding that
solutions will bear little resemblance
to what is considered fire-safe behavior
in more developed nations. " Often, it's
simple and inexpensive interventions,
such as increasing the number of water
buckets available to residents, that
provide a more reliable fire response
method than fancy, proprietary
suppression systems that require maintenance,
are expensive, have a shelf-life,
and may not be used correctly, " Walls
said. Studies have shown that the faster
informal settlement residents can take
it upon themselves to drench a budding
blaze with water, the better the outcome,
since fire service response times
can be long.
Experts realize this approach contrasts
with what exists in countries
like the United States, where residents
are told to evacuate in the event of
a fire and call 911. " As an outsider, it
may be easy to critique the behavior
[of residents of informal settlements],
NFPA .ORG/JOURNAL * NFPA JOURNAL | 35
The Numbers
1 billion
Estimated number of people living
in informal settlements worldwide
in 2020
3 billion
Estimated number of people living in
cities who will require adequate and
affordable housing by 2030
Source: United Nations and
World Bank Group
2.5 billion
Number of people to be added to
urban areas in developing nations
by 2050
90
Percentage of that growth
predicted to occur in Africa
and Asia
Source: United Nations
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