Researchers warns of possibility of disastrous Fires

The devastating fires that ripped through Knysna in June 2017 have not been forgotten

as a new paper analyzing the fire event concluded that they formed South Africa’s largest wildland fire disaster in terms of the number of structures lost and economic losses – and that such fires would become increasingly more common.
Local Cape researchers who conducted the study found that the annual maximum fire weather risk approximately doubled in the last 35 years and that more fires of this nature could be expected in the future.

The paper was titled “Analysis of the 2017 Knysna fires disaster with emphasis on fire spread, home losses and the influence of vegetation and weather conditions: A South African case study”, by lead author Natalia Flores-Quiroz and others from Stellenbosch, UCT and Vulcan Wildfire Management.

Flores-Quiroz said: “Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fires are becoming more and more common globally, this is due to, among others, population growth, people wanting to live near natural areas, climate change and fuel build-up.

“Even though these events occur all over the world, most research has been done in the US and Australia. However, there are many factors that can influence fire spread and home survival. For this reason, it was important for us to study South Africa’s most destructive WUI fire.”

Full Article… CapeArgus