NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 62

Perspectives

An aerial view of the Moria Camp taken shortly after
the devastating September fires that left thousands of
asylum seekers homeless. Worldwide, tens of millions
of people live in similar camps in often desperate
circumstances, beset by uncertainty and a host of
persistent threats, including fire. GETTY IMAGES

training, research and development, and strategic projects to support fire safety improvements in
specific contexts.

nfpa.org/
perspectives
Read a November/
December 2018
NFPA Journal feature
article on a project
to install smoke
alarms in an informal
settlement in South
Africa.
Read more about
Danielle Antonellis's
work at Arup on fire
safety in informal
settlements.
Learn more
about Kindling at
kindlingsafety.org.

What do you mean by "more inclusive"
fire-safety approaches?
Our work as fire safety professionals needs to
reflect the needs, desires, and experiences of the
people we are designing for and, importantly,
with. We need to work collaboratively with other
disciplines, such as social scientists, to better
understand the impact of diverse cultures on risk
perception and human behavior. There's a long
history, a long legacy, of fire safety codes, standards, and practices being copied and pasted from
one place to another without being contextualized, and we know that's not effective. In many
developing countries, this has largely been influenced by frameworks introduced during periods
of colonial rule. Inclusive fire safety means developing approaches that are locally achievable and
appropriate, and that reflect the local political,
economic, sociocultural, technological, legal, and
environmental context.
How many people worldwide are living in
slum conditions, informal settlements, and
refugee camps?
Globally, 1.6 billion people live in substandard
housing, including 1 billion in slum conditions,
meaning they lack durable housing, sufficient

living space, easy access to safe water and sanitation, or protection against arbitrary rent increases
or evictions-what's referred to as secure tenure.
Where secure tenure is an issue in a settlement,
we call it an informal settlement. From a humanitarian perspective, the United Nations Refugee
Agency reported there were 79.5 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide at the end of
2019-26 million are refugees and 45.7 million are
internally displaced persons, which means they
are forced to leave their homes but still remain
in their own country. There are also 4.2 million
asylum seekers, as well as 3.6 million displaced
Venezuelans living abroad. The total number of
forcibly displaced persons has almost doubled
since 2009. Some spend years living in refugee camps or in what are known as internally
displaced persons camps.

Have there been more fires with this
increase in displacement?
I believe so. But, unfortunately, I can't back that up
with statistics. There is a significant lack of data on
fires and their impacts in both camp settings and
informal settlements. While some humanitarian
actors record information about major fire incidents,
such as those with fatalities, I have not heard of any
processes in place for systematically investigating
and tracking all fire-related incidents in the humanitarian sector. While some cities do a better job of
tracking fires in informal settlements, there are

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NFPA Journal - November/December 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - November/December 2020

Contents
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Cover1
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Cover2
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 1
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 2
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NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Contents
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 5
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 6
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