This book covers the four forms of fire: diffusion flames, smoldering, spontaneous combustion, and premixed flames. Using a quantitative approach, it presents an ideal introduction to the scientific principles behind fire behavior. Individual sections thoroughly discuss such vital issues as heat transfer, ignition, flame spread, fire plumes, heat flux as a damage variable, and more. Formulas help the student examine fire from a quantitative standpoint. While explaining the science of fire with a precision found nowhere else, the text applies that science to fire safety design and investigation. An excellent book for courses in fire science, architecture, and engineering alike.

“Alma Mater, Dexter darling, do re mi–O dear! It’s much harder to write than I supposed. I wonder why! When your heart is full of love, why should it be hard to express it?” Catherine Smith, sitting on the top step of the porch of her home, Three Gables, bent her red-gold head over the pad of paper on her knee and wrote painfully, her forehead puckered earnestly. She had been a year at college and was just beginning her summer vacation. All through the busy year, full of delightful new experiences, she had looked forward to the leisure of summer, in which she might adequately declare her devotion to the college which had been her mother’s and was now her own. From the day, the June before, when she had gone there to visit her friend, Hannah Eldred, she had felt a keen sense of “belonging,” especially pleasant because her frail health had compelled her to lead a somewhat secluded life at home, and she had not felt really acquainted with the young people in the little town of Winsted, where she had always lived.

Product Description: In most cities today, fire has been reduced to a sporadic and isolated threat. But throughout history the constant risk of fire has left a deep and lasting imprint on almost every dimension of urban society. This volume, the first truly global study of urban conflagration, shows how fire has shaped cities throughout the modern world, from Europe to the imperial colonies, major trade entrepôts, and non-European capitals, right up to such present-day megacities as Lagos and Jakarta...read more

Product Description: Toxic fire effluents are responsible for the majority of fire deaths, and an increasing large majority of fire injuries, driven by the widespread and increasing use of synthetic polymers. Fire safety has focused on preventing ignition and reducing flame spread through reducing the rate of heat release, while neglecting the important issue of fire toxicity...read more

Product Description: Toxic fire effluents are responsible for the majority of fire deaths, and an increasing large majority of fire injuries, driven by the widespread and increasing use of synthetic polymers. Fire safety has focused on preventing ignition and reducing flame spread through reducing the rate of heat release, while neglecting the important issue of fire toxicity...read more

A collection of essays exploring dangerous situations discusses wildfires in the western United States, the diamond trade in Sierra Leone, war zones in Kosovo and Afghanistan, and a hostage crisis in Kashmir.

Explains why fires are so deadly and describes devastating fires throughout history.

Whole World on Fire focuses on a technical riddle wrapped in an organizational mystery: How and why, for more than half a century, did the U.S. government fail to predict nuclear fire damage as it drew up plans to fight strategic nuclear war?U.S. bombing in World War II caused massive fire damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but later war plans took account only of damage from blast; they completely ignored damage from atomic firestorms. Recently a small group of researchers has shown that for modern nuclear weapons the destructiveness and lethality of nuclear mass fire often―and predictably―greatly exceeds that of nuclear blast. This has major implications for defense policy: the U.S. government has underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons, Lynn Eden finds, and built far more warheads, and far more destructive warheads, than it needed for the Pentagon's war-planning purposes. How could this have happened? The answer lies in how organizations frame the problems they try to solve. In a narrative grounded in organization theory, science and technology studies, and primary historical sources (including declassified documents and interviews), Eden explains how the U.S. Air Force's doctrine of precision bombing led to the development of very good predictions of nuclear blast―a significant achievement―but for many years to no development of organizational knowledge about nuclear fire. Expert communities outside the military reinforced this disparity in organizational capability to predict blast damage but not fire damage. Yet some innovation occurred, and predictions of fire damage were nearly incorporated into nuclear war planning in the early 1990s. The author explains how such a dramatic change almost happened, and why it did not. Whole World on Fire shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't do well, may build a poor representation of the world―a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences. In a sweeping conclusion, Eden shows the implications of the analysis for understanding such things as the sinking of the Titanic, the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and the poor fireproofing in the World Trade Center.

Ten stories full of drama and desperation look at some of the most destructive fires in human history, including the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, London's 1666 fire, and the 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires. Simultaneous.

Product Description: Fires can start in many different ways and spread rapidly. When a fire gets out of control, people often panic. Fire disasters described here include London Bridge, the Great Fire of London, the Morro Castle, the Great Fire of Chicago, Iroquois Theater, and Warwick...read more

Looks at tragic fires throughout history discussing their causes, damages, and rebuilding efforts.

A collection of stirring, hair-raising tales of adventure takes readers deep into the heart of firefighting, from chemical fires in Manhattan to the firestorm that devoured a third of Yellowstone Park in the late-1980s. Original. (view table of contents)

Examines the causes and events of some of the deadliest fires in the world, how they were fought, the effects on those involved, and what steps were taken to prevent similar disasters from occurring again.

Shows different ways fire can be used.

Describes the causes and consequences of forest fires, the three different types of forest fires, and the modern techniques and technology used to put out forest fires. (view table of contents)

Explains how fires start and describes their good and bad effects. (view table of contents)

Explains how to leave a building safely during a fire, emphasizing staying low to avoid smoke and using alternate ways out

Describes how to react safely if your clothes are on fire, by stopping, dropping to the ground or floor, and rolling to put out the fire

Discusses the importance of having smoke detectors in the home, the different kinds of detectors and how they work, and what to do when they sound