4.2.4 Fire Hazard Profile
The research was done in the Pope County to investigate the fire hazards and the possible causes, and the following results were obtained. First, the fire hazard is defined as the fire that starts in the residential places and puts people’s lives, the environment, the property as well as vegetations at risk of survival. It goes beyond normal fire, which burns all most everything and cannot be easily controlled once it spreads to several places. It starts from one place, spreads very fast burning all the properties and the people who may be around. It usually starts without any serious sign, it may begin from the house, in the rubbish bin, and from things like cooking gas, the stove, explosions and electrical wires, then it spreads very fast and one can only see through the thick smoke spreading from a given starting point. It is usually started by somebody maybe because of some carelessness or poor connection of electricity. A fire hazard occurs where people and development takes place. In fact, it mostly starts from one house and spread all through the other buildings consuming all the property and putting people’s life at risk. A fire Hazard-Urban Interface (FUI) that occurs in the residential places where people use fire to do their daily activities like cooking, ironing, weldding among others. The places with a huge population are at a higher risk since their activities can cause fire anytime. In addition, the places where people use charcoal, gas, and stoves, there is always some carelessness that leads to the fire hazards.
The Pope County Commission fills the reports of fire complete that is managed an extinguished. The Information given concerning the on a fire report consists of the fire, the main cause, the place, or county, building, and the far it spread. The pope County Commission usually categorizes the origin of the fire into the following 9 major causes burning waste, inflammable devices, lightning, equipment use, smokers, children, campfire, railroad, and miscellaneous. The table below shows some of the causes of the Hazard fire Pope County for 2012. The first two were the most common causes of hazard fire in Pope County in 2012, and this was flammable and ablaze waste (this included the paper piles, burning bush etc.)
Areas Affected by the Fire hazard
Pope County breakdown of area km for the interface and intermix density.
Previous fire hazard Occurrences
Pope County reported 156 fire hazards that burned 1,907 properties with an average fire size of 10.0 acres in the past one decade.
Chances of Future Fire Hazard scenes
Even though the fire happens any time every year in Pope County, but it seems from February to April is the peak. In the county, there is a possibility of the fire hazards to occur in the urban areas as compared to the rural areas. The fire hazards occur regularly though, especially in the urban places at any given time of the year and put many people at risk and damage property. However, it is always controlled before it goes further.
Scale / society Impact of the fire Hazard
The fire hazard is very dangerous since it leads to loss of people’s life, destruction of property, pollution of the environment among others. The study indicates that the air pollution increases with the increase of the people’s activities in the country, especially in the urban areas; there are industries and other domestic activities like cooking, ironing, electrical equipments and wires among others. The fire hazard in the Pope County is very dangerous to the community since people live together and when the residential places begin to burn, they affect people’s property, houses, lives, places of work among others. From a landscape perspective, burn severity is the degree into which the place has been affected by the fire hazard.
