Fire in the Lab

By Samantha Gleissner

Battling wildfires can be a hazardous business. Wildfires are unpredictable and fast spreading; a single change in wind direction or fuel densities can alter the fires nature drastically. The best way to safely battle fires is to be able to understand how they function and even be able to predict the path that the fire may take.  If you are wondering how on earth it is possible to predict the unpredictable, or understand something that is by definition wild?  Fire science is how! Many scientists are now dedicating their work to learning how to understand and predict wildfire movement and alterations with wind changes. By studying fire in the controlled setting of a lab, fire scientists are learning how to more safely manage and defend against wildfires.

In a fire lab you might find mock structures, fabricated forests, and even wind gust chambers! Models are used to perform controlled fire experiments in order to record and analyze fire movement, combustion rates, and even the point at which a burned home or forest is salvageable. Fire Science is an incredibly important field of study that is necessary to give Firefighter every advantage possible when working the fireline.

When battling a fire, firefighters have to consider the path and trajectory of the burn in order to determine whether a fire crew can safely enter an area to battle flames, if a structure is unsalvageable or unstable a firefighter needs to know when it is safe to enter a structure and when it is beyond saving. Combustion rates can determine how quickly and at what temperatures a structure will become consumed. Having a solid understanding of these statistics, backed by scientific research can help in the estimation of periods for safe entry of a structure, or can help fire crews decide when it is best to allow a forest or area to burn out verses putting the effort into putting a wildfire out entirely. In other words, fire research, can literally provide the basis for life and death decisions.

Fire science in the lab isn’t only about the flames; experiments are done to help determine contribution of wildfires to greenhouse gasses, and potential health hazards such as heavy smoke inhalation. Fire science labs can help determine what levels of smoke are dangerous and what levels they are just an irritant. Fire labs determine the amount of carbon monoxide that is dangerous for humans and then use that data to come up with CO detectors that can detect levels of carbon monoxide before they reach lethal levels. Smoke detectors and fire sprinklers have all been products of fire lab experiments, and are just a few lifesaving tools we can be grateful to fire scientists for inventing.

If you enjoy the idea of safely playing with fire in a controlled setting and experimenting with different settings to asses fire dangers to help protect people and homes from those dangers you might want to consider a career in fire science!

Some fire science resources:

http://www.firelab.org/facilities-a-resources/102-smoke-sampling

http://www.firescience.gov