- Author
- Trelles, J. J. | Pagni, P. J.
- Title
- Fire-Induced Winds in the 20 October 1991 Oakland Hills Fire.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD California Univ., Berkeley
- Sponsor
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Contract
- NIST-GRANT-60NANB3D1438
- Book or Conf
- International Association for Fire Safety Science. Fire Safety Science. Proceedings. Fifth (5th) International Symposium. March 3-7, 1997, Intl. Assoc. for Fire Safety Science, Boston, MA, Melbourne, Australia, Hasemi, Y., Editors, 911-922 p., 1997
- Keywords
- fire research | fire safety | fire science | wildland fires | urban fires | fire models | mass fires | wind effects | urban/wildland interface
- Identifiers
- urban/wildland interface or intermix; fire-induced winds; mass fire modeling; Oakland Hills fire, Oakland, California, October 20, 1991
- Abstract
- The winds generated at 11:45 a.m. by 38 fires and at 12:00 p.m. by 259 fires for the 20 October 1991 Oakland Fire are simulated using the Baum and McCaffrey mass fire model. Each house is modeled as having a 50 MW heat release rate at the time of the computation. for each single fire, the flame tip is 15 m high, the maximum vertical velocity is 16 m/s and the maximum radial velocity is 2.4 m/s. At 11:45 a.m., for the mass fire the maximum induced wind is 2.6 m/s. The maximum vertical velocity is 14 m/s. At 12:00 p.m., the maximum horizontal velocity is 13 m/s. The maximum vertical velocity is 26 m/s. Results indicate that the strong fire-induced winds at and after 12:00 p.m. contributed to the post-noon decrease in the fire spread rate in the ambient windward direction.