069 - Challenging fires at the wildland-urban interface (WUI) with Michael Gollner

Why so many researchers are spending their time tackling fire issues at the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI)? What is so challenging about this? We always lived near nature, why today this emerges as one of the 'hottest' topics of fire science? As my today's guest Prof. Michael Gollner says - you need a very bad combination of weather and vegetation conditions to create a really bad fire. However, these conditions are occurring more and more often - in California they are not even considering fire seasons anymore, but wildfires become a threat all year round. I don't want to jump to unsupported conclusions, but damn, the prominence of wildfires seems to be the consequence of climate change that we will see soonest, and will hurt us a lot.In this episode, we take fire engineers into the world of WUI. We try to narrow down WHY fires coming from the outside are so dangerous and so different from threats we know. We discuss the paradigms of fire safety engineering and WUI preparedness, including defendable zones, threats from firebrands and the effects of wildfire smoke on the occupants. Finally, Michael shares with me his own experience with evacuating from a wildfire - a disturbing and interesting perspective of a fire scientist experiencing this first-hand. Please take a look at these wildfire and WUI resources:Michaels Fire Lab group webpage (with an endless amount of useful stuff in it)IBHS Wildfire Preparedness Guidance NFPA Wildfire Division----The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.