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safety zones

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Modeling Wildland Firefighters’ Assessments of Structure Defensibility

Year of Publication
2023
Publication Type
In wildland–urban interface areas, firefighters balance wildfire suppression and structure protection. These tasks are often performed under resource limitations, especially when many structures are at risk. To address this problem, wildland firefighters employ a process called “structure triage” to prioritize structure protection based on perceived defensibility.

Wildland firefighter safety zones: a review of past science and summary of future needs

Year of Publication
2014
Publication Type

Current wildland firefighter safety zone guidelines are based on studies that assume flat terrain, radiant heating, finite flame width, constant flame temperature and high flame emissivity. Firefighter entrapments and injuries occur across a broad range of vegetation, terrain and atmospheric conditions generally when they are within two flame heights of the fire.