Fire Science Show

233 - Safety as a moving target with Danielle Antonelis

• Wojciech Węgrzyński

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Fires in informal settlements and humanitarian settings rarely make headlines, but they define daily life for millions. We sit down with Kindling founder Danielle Antonelis to trace a four-year arc from the non-profits early days and ideas to grounded results: a global shelter database, experimental campaign with 20 full-scale burns, and a learning model that puts residents first. The core shift is profound—safety isn’t a box to tick; it’s a practice repeated and refined across homes, lanes, and entire neighborhoods.

We dig into how Kindling translated complex fire science into choices that matter under pressure: where to place a door, how a roof fails, why flames jet from openings, and what that means for neighbors two meters away. Danielle shares how the team balances radical transparency—releasing raw data for engineers—with clear, concise guidance tailored to humanitarians and communities who need to act fast. We also unpack the governance gap: codes designed to protect everyone tend to protect only those who can comply. Performance-based approaches and policy work become lifelines when regulation fails to reach the most vulnerable.

The conversation confronts emerging risks head-on. Secondhand batteries and uncertified devices flow into low-resource markets, creating hazards that standard messaging doesn’t address. Rather than preaching certification, Kindling teaches signs of battery distress, safer charging habits, and context-specific tactics that residents can own. In Cape Town—where informal settlements and service delivery are acknowledged—Kindling is piloting conflict-resolution between residents and firefighters, clarifying the fastest emergency call routes, and coordinating tactics within real infrastructure limits.

If you care about fire engineering, humanitarian response, or how policy meets practice, this story offers a blueprint: open data, resident-led learning, and practical tools that scale. This is also highly relevant to all fire safety engineers - how we communicate fire science, how we reach with our message to key stakeholders, and how we consider what 'safety' really is.

If you would like to hear how it started, check out episode 34: https://www.firescienceshow.com/034-fire-safety-as-a-human-right-not-a-privilege-with-danielle-antonellis/

If you want more context how it looks on the ground: https://www.firescienceshow.com/077-informal-settlements-we-need-solutions-not-gadgets-richard-walls/

Also make sure to check out Kindling website here: https://kindlingsafety.org/

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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.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show, welcome to year 2026. I hope it's a great year for fire safety engineering despite it started with like quite a horrible fire in Switzerland. I hope this year brings us a lot of new knowledge, a lot of new experiences and a lot of new ways to improve fire safety globally. Um four years ago, uh almost 200 episodes ago, in episode 34, I have interviewed Danielle Antonelis, the founder of Kindling. Kindling as a nonprofit is trying to deliver fire safety to everyone across the globe with a strong focus on people in low resource settlements. Four years ago, Danielle has told me about what her vision for kindling is, what the grand plan is, how they want to impact the stuff that has been happening in informal settlements and low income settlings in all across the globe. And today, four years later, uh a lot has happened, and today we can talk about accomplishments and about how the plan has been implemented, what work has been done, what works and what doesn't work. So here I sit down with Danielle Antonelis once again and discuss kindling. It's far like the previous talk. I'm not sure if you listened to that episode. For me it was one of the most moving and uh most important episodes I've recorded. Um it's far more than just talking about how we can change safety in low resource settings. We discussed how governmental systems fail. How safety as defined as an industry standard is actually the minimum acceptable, and there's very little you can offer to people below that level. How that level of safety is inaccessible in some parts of the world, but yet you can still do a lot of change. You cannot provide safety, but you can clearly improve whatever safety level they have. We talk about the importance of education, the importance of sharing data, sharing data in a way that allows meaningful actions to happen, sharing data with stakeholders in mind, and processing curating that so it's useful to them. A lot of that is covered in this discussion along the lines. So even if you are not that interested in the problems of fire safety in informal settlements, I think there's a lot to learn from this episode in terms of how do we provide safety, what is safety, and how to communicate it outside of the world of fire safety engineering. So I guess that's it. Let's win the intro and jump into the episode. Welcome to the Firescience Show. My name is Vojinsky, and I will be your host. As the UK leading independent fire consultancy, OFR's globally established team have developed a reputation for preeminent fire engineering expertise with colleagues working across the world to help protect people, property, and the planet. Established in the UK in 2016 as a startup business by two highly experienced fire engineering consultants, the business continues to grow at a phenomenal rate with offices across the country in eight locations, from Edinburgh to Bath, and plans for future expansions. If you're keen to find out more or join OFR consultants during this exciting period of growth, visit their website at ofrconsultants.com. And now back to the episode. Hello everybody. I am joined today once again by Danielle Antonellis from Kindling. Hey Danielle.

Danielle Antonellis:

Hi, how are you doing today?

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

All good, all good. Uh welcome back to the podcast after a wow, like four years. That's been a while.

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, thanks for having me back.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Yeah, that's now have like five hours of updates on what has happened since then. Just kidding, just kidding. Uh but updates is what I want to get today. And I know Kindling has been uh growing, maturing, building up. How those recent four years have been for you? Are you still uh enjoying it in the same way you did uh four years ago when we started?

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, I can't believe that kindling is becoming what it is. So for as a founder, it's a joy to see the organization grow, to see other people benefiting from it, to see other staff members excited about what we're doing. So we've changed a lot in the last four years. I think four years ago when we talked, Kindling was still this kind of idea.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

It was an aspiration, it was something that you had the plan, like there was a plan.

Danielle Antonellis:

There was a plan, but we didn't execute the plan, right? Like we were just we were trying to figure out how the puzzle pieces could go together. And now four years later, we've actually done a lot, and now we can say what works, what doesn't work. We're still trialing things. I don't think experimentation will ever leave us. That's part of our identity, but um, but we're to show for for it over the last four years.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And uh the core, the idea, the concept, fire safety for all, is that did that evolve in any way?

Danielle Antonellis:

I think we've gotten a better understanding of what it means, but no. I mean, it's the exact same thing. Fire safety for all is still our mission. We're more dedicated to it now than we ever have been. I think the more we work and the more we get to know people, we realize just how devastating fire is for so many people around the world. Obviously, there's statistics you can look at that show you just how many people are affected. Um, you know, the 1 billion people living in formal supplements are clearly very vulnerable compared to a lot of others. But what I've really learned over the last four years is just how deep the impact of these fires go. In the beginning, I didn't realize how much trauma and mental health would form part of our work, but actually it's such a big recurring theme with people who have gone through this. So, yeah, the mission has never been more important.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

So you evolved from uh a fire safety engineer, uh which is your uh identity, I guess. Uh uh looking at casualties and then the monetary loss, and now you you you understand much better the other side of the equation, which is all the indirect or personal costs of the fires.

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, I mean, I've joked that I'm a recovering fire engineer. Um, so I still obviously have that core discipline and understanding which frames everything that we do, but I very much have learned a lot about social sciences and just society in general, how governance systems work, like more about culture and people's decision making. And so, yeah, it's been a real expansive process for me personally. And also, I think our team is reflecting that learning journey, right? We don't have a bunch of fire engineers working together in isolation. We have a very diverse team and we bring in people that help us understand these complexities.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Were you able to figure out this definition of safety by your stakeholders, like the people who you work with, who you work for, how they understand safety? Because when you were starting, you obviously did not have that much like, you know, uh practical experience on on the ground, you know, working with these people. I wonder if they understand the fire safety in the same way as we fire engineers do.

Danielle Antonellis:

That's such an interesting question. So, I mean, safety is a moving target, right? There's no one version of safety that applies to everybody. I think when we look at like codes and standards, we tend to think that way. We tend to say, like, here's the level of safety you're trying to achieve. If you're doing performance-based design, make sure you hit that or at least, you know, or do better. We can't afford to think that way in the work that we do. We don't have those regulatory systems that are applied the same way. We really have to go off the alert model of like what is as safe as reasonably practicable. Um, and when we think about that in collaboration with residents, they are the ones telling us what is reasonably practicable, right? It's a collaborative process where they're constantly telling us, you know, what they care about, what they're worried about. We're telling them as much as we can about the science and trying to share what we know about the built environment, um, which they also are collaboratively defining with us because we don't know a lot of things and they don't know a lot of things, so we come together and learn more together. And so safety is very much this moving target. Um, we're never going to achieve fire safety for all in the short term, not my lifetime. Not only is the for all part really hard because there's just so many people, but fire safety is not clear. I think when people look at the projects we have, and at the end of the project they say, okay, did you achieve fire safety? Most people will look at it and go, No, that's still not very safe. But if you look at where it was before and the incremental changes that are happening, it is much safer. So it's not the easiest thing to define still. And I don't expect that to change quickly.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And it's not just a function of state that you achieve it and it's there. It's it's has to be maintained, it has to evolve, it has to follow the challenges, right?

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, I mean, fire safety is a practice, not a state. So, you know, we always say this for the communities we work with. Like if we if you learn fire safety principles, if you engage with the project and then you don't think about it for six months, and we come back and quiz you about the concepts, you're probably not gonna remember them. When a fire happens, you may not know what to do, right? It's a practice. We're constantly learning, engaging, seeing what's possible for risk reduction. But also, I mean, think of a firefighter who hasn't touched a fire hose in 10 years. You're not gonna feel the same way picking up that hose as if they pick it up every day.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Absolutely, absolutely. So geographically, uh, where did Kindling land? Like what are the places of the world that you were capable of making impact in? I'm I'm really curious.

Danielle Antonellis:

So when we started, we were a US-based nonprofit organization. We still are, so I'm from Massachusetts, that's kind of where our headquarters are. In 2024, we started a second branch of Kindling, essentially. So we now have Kindling Safety NPC, which is a South African entity. South Africa is our is our other home in Kindling. So that's in Cape Town, and I can tell you why Cape Town is so special. Um, but then we also work internationally, um, not necessarily with kind of offices, but through remote work or travel to different places. So we've done work in Somaliland, we've done work in India, Bangladesh, and a lot of our engagement with the humanitarian sector is very global in nature. So we're talking to people who are responding to humanitarian crises all over the world. Um recently we've been collaborating with someone in Nigeria around just storytelling about what's been going on there with fire and fire safety. We've done work uh to provide some guidance in Gaza, in Turkey, and we have conversations regularly with people who are responding in places all over the world.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Fantastic that this is landing impact uh all over the place and uh creates opportunity to share experiences of what works, what doesn't work, and and perhaps find some you know optimized strategies that can be perfected over the the implementations. Um when I was interrogating you the previous time, uh four years ago, we we have agreed on a framework which was coming from uh from a report that that was published back then where you talked about four core uh areas of activities for kindling. Uh I taken notes uh and I listed them. There's absolutely five of them, Danielle. Like we're horrible, like but yeah, let's let's go through the four or five-ish uh activities back then, 2021. Uh it was research, education, training, advocacy, and pilot projects. I wonder what has been the evolution of those. Uh after we give a kind of general idea, we'll we'll jump into the details.

Danielle Antonellis:

Cool. So those are still very much our core areas of focus, but yeah, there's no longer five, there's four. I think we're counting better now. So we have research and advocacy haven't changed, they're still uh two of the pillars, and then education and training have collapsed into learning. Um, and the last one, pilot projects, has become practice.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Well, it's I mean, is name changes. Uh sometimes name changes are profound, sometimes they're just rebranding. Uh, we'll we'll we'll learn in in a second. Let's let's tackle them one by one. Uh so in the world of research, I cannot wait to talk about this one. Tell tell me what what has been the big things in Qin Ling and what was your research agenda, let's say, for for the last years and and for the upcoming future.

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, so I can't talk about research without mentioning and thanking the UL Fire Safety Research Institute, right? First and foremost. So FSRI, or what is now known as ULRI, has been incredibly important in our evolution over the last few years and being able to fund some very, very ambitious work. And so with research, that meant large-scale fire experiments, first and foremost. We've also been doing work to really understand what those kind of socio-technical challenges are in informal settlements, how risk emerges, how risk is governed. That's mostly work we did with the Royal Academy of Engineering in their safer complex systems program. And so, um, you know, to the non-fire science and fire engineering community, I say we built 20 houses and we burnt them down for science, and that tends to get a lot of eyes pop out of heads, but it is exactly what we did, right? Um, so there's been a lot of technical work as well as kind of research that's trying to understand how fire risk emerges, why it emerges, and what the responses are from a governance point of view.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

In terms of those research, I'm obviously interested that I I was to some extent participating in this, and for which I'm very, very glad and happy to be a little part of this major project. What was the goal of this large fire experimentation? Because I I guess a lot of people, a lot of listeners will be interested. Everyone likes a good large fire.

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, I think we're all um pyros, but in a safe way, in a positive way. So if you look at informal settlements and humanitarian settings globally, you're gonna see an incredible amount of diversity. You're gonna see mud shelters, you're gonna see people using metal sheeting, um, you'll see people using bamboo, you'll see, you know, I'm I'm focusing on materials because that's related to the to the project itself, but you're gonna see a lot of different materials, you're gonna see different geometries, you're gonna see people living in just very diverse settings, right? And so when you look at that from a fire engineering perspective, a lot of questions emerge about how how would fires behave in these different structures, what would fire spread look like in communities built with these structures? And those are very core questions if we want to apply fire engineering into these spaces. Um, unfortunately, we don't have the data sets that we often rely on when we're doing fire engineering design. So this was kind of the core, uh, the core problem that the fire experiments are responding to. How do we start to understand these areas without having to do experimentation on every single shelter type globally, which is just completely so basically we designed a research program focused on trying to find patterns among very diverse sets of shelters, looking, we had a theory or hypothesis about kind of how things might be categorized based off of how things would likely burn, if we would expect compartment fire behavior, if we would expect, you know, burning of the facade system, if we expect the roof to burn through. You know, these things all have a huge impact on um not only the behavior at the shelter level, but on how that shelter becomes a hazard to neighboring structures. And so that was kind of the core idea behind the experiments.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And the diversity uh does it represent like geographical diversity, or is it even a diversity within the, I don't know, Cape Town?

Danielle Antonellis:

So very much geographic, trying to understand at a global level. Um, we developed a database of over 450 shelters around the world from 90 plus countries. That was the first step. Um, trying to see what are the most common shelter types and what are they built of, where are the windows and doors, just trying to see what that looks like overall. And then we were able to kind of cluster those and make decisions about the the program from there.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

There's your video from the burn from your website now going on loop on my page as you talk. I'm I keep looking at that. There's two massive cribs. I assume this was just some general uh fire load. You didn't vary the fire loads within the compartments in that, right?

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, exactly. We were trying to push the compartments to flash over. So that is purely a fuel load to be able to assess the performance of the structure, not uh the actual material. Yeah.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Uh no, two 20 experiments. I know the scale, it it it has been massive. So congratulations on putting that. I know that the stuff is being worked, uh, everyone's crossing fingers for the IFSS paper, and there has been Interflamm paper, right? So something is published already.

Danielle Antonellis:

So we we did present at InterFlam. We were hoping to publish that paper through InterFLAM because they obviously put their papers through. We didn't end up applying to IAFSS just with timelines, unfortunately. But it would have been a great opportunity. Obviously, that's an amazing conference. And so, so yeah, we we have that paper coming out hopefully soon. But I think what we're most excited about is actually just getting some of the data out into the world. So next year, early in the year, we'll be self-publishing a lot of this data and information. You know, scientific journal papers are really important to be able to make sure that this is entering into the academic spaces that it needs to. Um, but the first priority for us is actually getting the information to the hands of the humanitarian development practitioners who are making decisions all the time that either increase fire risk or have the potential to decrease it. And so we're looking at how we can get that information to them first and foremost.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

That's very interesting. Can I pull you on that? How do you curate the data for non-fire experts? I mean, if I think about publishing science and research, I would like it to be raw. I would like it to be literally uncurated, like just data, you know? But I I can uh I can handle uh a thermocouple showing a thousand degrees Celsius and not fainting, while a person not familiar with with fire research, fire science, it's so hard to interpret the data when you are a seasoned fire engineer or fire scientist. I can only imagine how confusing it must be if you've if if it's the first big data set you see in your life. You said you want to get it in the hands of those people. Do you intend to curate the data? Do you do you intend to create like ways for them to to interpret it? I wonder.

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, so there's a lot of different audiences for this research. And so we need to come up with strategies and how to get information to the hands of those different audiences, which means, of course, we want to do all of what you're saying for the fire engineers and the fire scientists.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

We want to give the raw data raw data. Okay.

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, throw it out there. Um We want to be able to share like much more analytical view of things where we're talking about some of the complexities in a more scientific way. But while we do that, we still do even pay attention in those reports of how would someone enter into this more advanced report if they had no background. So sometimes we'll even have a section of report where we're talking about some of the basics, talking about measurement in a way that, you know, you would never need to read. But at least if there was someone who was quite a maybe technical humanitarian development practitioner, maybe they're an engineer but not a fire engineer, that maybe those became an entry point for them to start to understand. Um, but obviously that's not the majority, right? The majority are people who are never going to read the 135-page technical reports. These are the people who, you know, might have even quite a low attention span because they are responding to very complex crises all over the world, right? So they don't have the time, even if they wanted to, really absorb all that. So on the other extreme side is trying to figure out how you can create short videos and things that get some of the core messages across. And maybe they don't need to understand the data, but they do need to know what the data is saying and why they should pay attention to. There's different steps in between those extremes, you know, the people who want all the data and the people who really don't care or don't have the luxury of finding out, but they're like, what does this tell me and how I change what I do every day? There's a lot of translation for us to figure out, okay, how does this impact decision making, or how could it impact decision making? And how do we make that information as accessible as possible? But we really do want to make fire science. And we really do want to kind of democratize information and data that's often stays in academic spaces and bring it into spaces with humanitarian development practitioners and even with communities, right? And actually, that's probably one of my favorite things about our work is trying to figure out how do you get people who have maybe never been exposed to these concepts to start to actually internalize them and bring them into their daily lives. Film is a big thing for us. Uh, we've been working with an amazing filmmaker, Justin Sullivan, over the past year and a half. And we released the first five on the on the website, but more is to come. And, you know, look, we're trying to figure out social media uh for different audiences, but a lot of it is actually just engaging directly with people and understanding what decisions are they making, how can we influence them and then responding to that to make guidance or tools directly for them, which is an ongoing problem.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And an another end of the spectrum is to create an unwanted feedback because I I can also imagine someone taking twists of the data and showing, like, oh, it's all horrible. You need to install fireball in those shelters, or or uh you have to ban, I don't know, bamboo uh or or touch uh structures, or you have to use this magical spray to fire retard your touch, then it's gonna be great, you know. It's like I understand that uh how someone abuses your data set is not your fault, but it's also about making it kind of you know, uh full safe. So it's it's not really that easy to twist it that much, right?

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, which isn't easy when you're trying to be radically open.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Yeah.

Danielle Antonellis:

So, you know, the data will be available, and if people want to go in, they'll be able to access it and try to create whatever story they want. You know, there's a lot of disclaimers, a lot of caveats that we try to put into our work, but a lot of it is also just about educating residents, practitioners about what good looks like or what kind of due diligence needs to be had before they start to accept these solutions. This is a long road. Okay, this is not gonna happen quickly. But, you know, for example, in here in Cape Town, South Africa, there's always the next trick. There's always the next thing that's like, okay, you put this on the house, or if you do this, it's gonna be the thing that fixes the fire and informal settlements problem, right? Um it frustrates me to no end. And there's absolutely a risk that they could take our data and try to tell a story that we don't want them to be telling with it. But that's also why we engage with governments and other actors to say these are the things that you need to be thinking about, making sure that they're learning so that they can have a critical eye when these things come up. So it's it's not a quick solution with any of this.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

I mean, it's an interesting conversation because myself as a researcher, when I do research projects in within my institution, I don't really care about that that much, you know. I don't find it to be my responsibility, I don't find it to be my obligation, and I I have high trust in the society that it will kind of get rid of those comments. But I have my uh construction product regulations, if you are in the European Union, how much I can uh how much I hate it doesn't matter. It works. You know, C marking works, standardization works, uh all those things work, and I assume you don't have those things in the places you want to make an impact, uh, because the value, the costs associated with this level of standardization is probably way, way, way beyond your alarm and and uh a safety as a moving target, which which you which you used the phrase previously, right?

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, I mean I think there's two conversations that you're opening up for me that are really important. One is about unintended consequences, and the other is about the failure of regulatory systems to reach the most vulnerable. I don't know which one you want. Choose your own adventure, mate.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Choose your uh, do you pick option A or option B? Let's go, let's pick on government. Uh the failure of regulatory systems in in the places where people need them.

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, so I mean, regulatory systems are at their core about protecting people, about protecting society, right? Nothing in them discriminates about who should be protected and who shouldn't be protected. We have obviously very different regulatory systems around the world. Sometimes um we have a more performance-based regulatory system, which says if you do these five things for fire safety, you'll be good. If you make sure people can evacuate, if you make sure fire doesn't spread, if you make sure, you know, et cetera, et cetera. I love them. Those are great. Um, you know, other times you have just a regulation that basically just refers to a code and says if you do these prescriptive things, then you're considered to be good. First of all, the performance base offers so much more flexibility for making sure that it covers more people and more parts of society. Um, so I'm a very big advocate for performance-based regulation. Um, I'm sitting on the International Code Council Performance Code Committee. We're really reimagining what that looks like, uh, what performance codes look like, and rewriting the code itself. That's with Brian Meachum at the helm. And in that group, I'm leading a subcommittee on low resource settings. So, how can performance codes be useful for low resource settings? And, you know, we tend to think about the extreme, which is, you know, informal settlements in places like Cape Town. Um, we tend to think about refugee camps who are which are completely operating outside of regulatory systems normally. Um, but it's also like rural towns in the US where they may not have access to the same resources, um, they may not have the same governance structures. So low resource settings is actually quite a big flexible term on purpose. And it's trying to address this core issue, which is that even though regulatory systems are meant to be for everybody, we know in practice they're not. In practice, if you can't meet the code, there's nothing that is there for you below that, right? You either meet it or you don't. You're either formally regulated or you're not. Um, you know, we can talk about a whole bunch of other issues which came up through our work in the invisible US fire problem, where we looked at the regulatory system and said, actually, there's multiple levels where you have completely unregulated, which is the extreme, or you have kind of under-regulated, uh, which includes like under maintained buildings, for example. You have different levels through to kind of protecting everybody. But ultimately, there's a real failure in governments to protect everyone because we just rely on this binary system of you're either in the system with codes or you're out of the system. There's been some great work by the World Bank looking at building regulations for resilience and how you can make regulatory systems accessible and actually focus on bringing everybody up with the system, but we can't rely on just the more traditional methods. We need to think differently about this problem. So, I mean, at the core, this is what kindling's about. Kindling's about how do we help vulnerable communities where regulatory systems fail. They either fail because they're not fit for purpose or enforcement is challenging, but we tend to flip it around and look at the buildings or the people who aren't complying as the problem. I don't agree. I think the problem is the regulatory system itself.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Well, yeah. I often say that that you know, uh fulfilling a clause of the code doesn't necessarily make your building safe, it makes it compliant. Like safety is is defined elsewhere, it's defined by the physics, by the properties, by by the way how it was built, by the quality of maintenance, by the administration. There's so so so so many layers for that thing to do safety and ticking a clause of the code just made it legal. That that's the that's the thing that you ticked. Like if you have a compliance system or regulatory system, it's about making stuff legal and prevent that that's why it's binary. That's why you're either compliant or not, because you're either legal or illegal, which is not very helpful.

Danielle Antonellis:

I mean, Gerbal Rain always says that in one other situation is like the industry standard, which is compliance.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Yeah.

Danielle Antonellis:

Like what happens when you just go a little bit below the industry standard and you could end up in jail killing people. Oh, I mean, people could die, like you're saying, one way or the other. Safety isn't necessarily fitting this. But he always talks about how um, you know, if you're just a little bit below industry standard, it's illegal. So why are we setting industry standard at compliance? Why aren't we thinking about what safety actually is and how we can push that?

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Yeah, well, it's obviously a very challenging discussion uh uh in the whole world. It's not just uh the uh low uh low uh resource settlings that would have uh issue with that. I would say is it's a general problem. And also, you know, uh if we are doing too good job with fire safety, those uh levels are getting wiggled and moved a little bit, and eventually we end up with a catastrophe. So it's also like uh you know a time problem. Or in one hand it has diminishing returns, so the more you put, the less safety, whatever you define it get you get. But on the other hand, it also can erode uh with the time, right? Oh, that that that's a banger. And the the technology changes so much. Like in five years, in my world of building fires, I've seen so much change with the the batteries and and timber primarily. But I guess batteries are interesting. Do you have a battery problem in formal settlements right now, which you didn't have in 2020?

Danielle Antonellis:

Absolutely. Um, you know, do we have something that's traceable in the data? No, we don't have that level of data. But do we have more devices in communities? Do we have devices that are not certified, not regulated? Yeah. You know, the problems we talk about all over the place of you know, make sure you have appropriately certified products, the biggest challenge is in the places that we work where people can't necessarily afford the best products and they're buying things secondhand, and there's huge issues with those batteries.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Yeah, I think uh one of the places if I uh sorry to give you advice, uh one idea that is very strong in my head is that currently in Europe we we go through a lot of batteries, you know, and those batteries will approach their end of life in here and and they will go somewhere. And my real worry is that they will go literally your way because if there's money to be made on you know repurposing uh used batteries and sell them somewhere for a fraction of the price, someone will make that money. That's why I'm really supporting actions like the battery passport, so we trace the battery so so they don't get out of the system accidentally. And and I think to solve the problems that will be coming to the world of low resource settlings, we have to act at high-resource settlings, which will be generating those items. That's a huge worry for me.

Danielle Antonellis:

You're you're touching on this idea of like trickle-down issues, and Rigita Meterschmitt from NFPA always talks about trickle-down fire safety and how it doesn't work, and that's a whole nother episode in itself that we could have. But I think what we're talking about now is like this idea that actually we have problems trickling from one place to another, right? We tend to like to frame things as you know, Western countries provide aid and supports to African countries, or the global north helps the global south. I don't like these narratives, by the way, terminology, even. But actually, a lot of times the these areas are much worse off because of the influence of of other countries. The waste system is very much managed in Africa and Asia for a lot of a lot of European countries, for example. So, yeah, that that globalization can't be just like it can't be ignored, right? I mean, even if you just talk about this, it's kind of outside of the same conversation, but it's an important point in globalization. If you look at, you know, what's happening in Pakistan and Bangladesh with the garment sectors and fast fashion and how we have such massive production of clothing, you know, who made the shirt I'm wearing, I don't know, but it could have been someone that I met in a factory in Pakistan. And when I go through that factory and I do an inspection and see the conditions and what um, again, where that regulatory system is failing those people, we can't think of that as just a Pakistan problem. It's a global supply chain problem. Um so waste and global supply chains are very, very critical when thinking about how fire safety reaches everybody. And fire safety for all isn't just about fire safety for everyone in their home. It's about fire safety in your workplace, fire safety on your commutes, fire safety in general, right? And so we need to think about it in a much wider lens.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Yeah, for me, the like the aha realization was that wow why would we like to utilize the batteries? Because for the gain in energy they give, they're too perhaps unsafe to use for us, you know, and we have everything in place to protect us from the consequences of those fires. And those are not acceptable for us. And the solution is to send them to someone who doesn't even have a fraction of you know systems in place and then assume that that's gonna be fine for them. Jesus Christ, that's that's such a horrible concept.

Danielle Antonellis:

And there's such a lack of awareness. So we're working with a community in Cape Town in a place called Kyoliche, um BM Section A Kilecha, for anyone on the call or joining who knows Cape Town. And when we started talking about battery fires with them, they were completely shocked. They had no idea that a battery could start a fire. And so I remember during our fire school, we had 15 residents and we played videos of battery fires just from phones and things. And like their jaws are on the floor. A fire can start from a battery. This is crazy. So there's just a complete lack of understanding that a battery can pose a risk in the first place, let alone the particular risks that we see with the current battery. We just created a a small video, an educational video on battery safety for some of the communities we're working with. And the other thing is that the messaging we use in the US, for example, we can't always just take it and apply directly into Cape Town, into the informal settlements, because you know, yes, we would prefer them to use certified products, but what does certification even mean? And is that even realistic for them? So we have to focus a lot more on signs that their battery might be damaged or aging to a point where they need to replace it and good practices around charging. I mean, the FSRI's campaign around take charge for battery safety has been really helpful. NFPA obviously has good resources, but there's a lot of adaptation that we need to do to make that relevant.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And energy generation, like uh are PV panels popping up in those uh settlements every now and then?

Danielle Antonellis:

Or yeah, I mean, in the places we're working now, we haven't seen so many, but over the years, definitely we've seen them. Um in India, I worked with an organization for a while that was selling PV, small, very small PV panels to charge solar lights. And you know, fire safety wasn't a big part of their their focus. They were more focused on interior kind of breathing, like basically what the air quality issues were related to paracetapes and things. And so I came to them and I was like, actually, you have fire safety issues here. On one side, you're doing something great, you're removing candles and lamps and reducing emission sources by having a battery-powered lamp. On the other side, you're charging a Phoebe panel. What does that mean? Right. So it's it's a really important point that is not part of these conversations at all right now.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Okay, learning. Let's go. How did this aspect change? Because we've already touched a lot of how you talk with the communities, but uh you you said you've merged the education and training into learning. Let's perhaps discuss like what why you think this shift in nomenclature is was necessary for your um definition of your mission. I guess to go down to four again.

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah. So we have really focused on what the difference between education and learning even is. So learning is an outcome, education is a process. We're very focused on what is learning, what are the different ways that people learn. Obviously, there are times that formal education can contribute to learning, but there's a lot of informal ways that people learn. And so it's really just acknowledging that more emergent nature of learning and trying to find creative ways to encourage learning in general and not just focus on very formal, top-down ways of teaching and training.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And uh in terms of going with this knowledge you got into the communities, it is this the only thing you do, or you also like give those people like basics of fire science, fire engineering. Like I know you you teach them about triangle of combustion and layers of safety or stuff like that, or yeah.

Danielle Antonellis:

Absolutely. So I think to answer that question, I need to talk about practice a little bit. So I hope it's okay if you're supposed to go. Okay. So we do fire risk assessments and fire risk reduction projects in communities. Um, we've had a pretty large pilot over the past year and a half in that community I just mentioned. And one thing that was a big, big challenge with the team of social scientists and engineers debating on how to make this project happen was do you go in saying this is what you need to know and how to think about it, which is the kind of classic engineering approach of like this is everything, right? Or do you go in and just ask questions? Do you go in to say, how do you understand things? What are the risks in your community? And the social scientists won that battle. I think it was by far the right thing. Um, so one of my favorite compliments Kindling has ever received is kind of a weird one. And someone said, you know, they're really different. They came into the community with blank pieces of paper and pens. They didn't give us a manual, they didn't show us what we should or shouldn't be doing. They just came and listened. And that's really different than how most organizations work, right? So we spent the time to really understand what fire was from the perspective of the residents. What were their experiences, challenges, what knowledge do they have, what were they struggling with? And that built up a understanding collectively of what the fire problem was. Then once we had a clear understanding of the fire problem, then we were able to start introducing key information and knowledge, like the fire triangle. Um, we're not gonna be on video, but if I do this, which looks very similar, um if I will not describe this, yeah. There's no way I'm not gonna anyone in the community you work with, they know exactly what I'm doing. And that means that flames come out of openings and compartment fires.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Okay. I don't know. Okay, that's that that's a reasonable uh explanation, but I'm still not doing it.

Danielle Antonellis:

Um if I do this, they know Okay, there's a triangle.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

That's that I can describe making a triangle. Yeah.

Danielle Antonellis:

Um because the fire triangle is such a helpful tool to talk about fire prevention, fire response. So absolutely, these things are very much uh our focus in trying to make sure that people understand these concepts and how they can apply the concepts. Um, but it's not something where we come in and just immediately tell. We're really listening, understanding, collectively, building an understanding together. Um, we hire community-based researchers. We actually hire people from the community to become researchers with us throughout this work. And so it's a very collaborative process.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

I I like it because it kind of fits my definition of fire safety engineering, which is applying global knowledge to solve your local fire problems. So it's not about, you know, telling people what kind of fire resistance class you have to have in your building to be safe, it's about figuring out what's the problem and finding out the fire safe way to go around the problem. Um, how big of this learning is guided towards responders? How much uh do you work with fire? You must work with fire responders, right? Like fire, like okay. The first question is does does even fire fire service exist?

Danielle Antonellis:

Like, well, who is a fire responder is my first question.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Perhaps everyone, right? But uh yeah, everyone, yeah. But that I mean, I think that's one of the most important things that actually I would narrow it down to professional fire responders, people whose job it is to attend those fires.

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, so that very much depends on the place that we're working in, right? Some places simply don't have fire services. Um, we had a webinar last week on Northeast Nigeria, and for some of those refugee camps or actually internally displaced persons' camps, the fire services are 100 kilometers away. Okay. So yeah, we can imagine what type of impact they can have by the time they get there. So there is definitely an opportunity in places where the fire services are local in Cape Town. You know, they're often responding in seven, 10 minutes to the communities we're working in. So there's a huge role that they play in fire response. Um, but there's a lot of challenges that emerge. And so, you know, there's a lot of tension that often exists between firefighters and residents in these responses. There's a lack of information on who to call and how to call them, right? So people might know, okay, we want the firefighters to come, but they may call a phone number that is not gonna get them there very quickly. So there's a toll-free number in South Africa that's the national number, and it can route the call to Johannesburg and then take quite a long time to get to the right department in Cape Town. There's a number in Cape Town, and I'm gonna say the number in case someone on the call is in Cape Town, okay? Um, there's a number that we really promote in Cape Town, it's 021-480-7700. I won't sing the song that the community made up on that number to help them remember it. But even just getting the right number into Great Ant is actually so critical because when they call that other number and it takes a half hour for the fire services to arrive or longer, that builds a lot of frustration. And then the fire services arrive, they don't have the hydr infrastructure often to be able to use the water infrastructure. So they end up having to bring their own trucks. Sometimes the water truck comes after some of the fire trucks that don't have the resources. So then residents see them standing there, not working as fast as they would expect them to because the infrastructure is not there for them. There's a lot of kind of layers of frustration that builds, and residents don't understand the reality that firefighters are going through. Even just when you arrive on a serious scene, the the initial work is actually just trying to understand the scene and come up with tactics on what are you going to do. There's not a lot of understanding on the community side on that process. They just don't see, they just see firefighters that aren't putting water on the fire and they get very frustrated. So a lot of our focus on working with the fire services is trying to build relationships between residents and firefighters, which means doing educational videos of the fire services about the right numbers to call, the process, what actually happens behind the scenes, the firefighters to get on scene and to be able to respond effectively. How can residents actually help that process? How can we build collaborative ways of working? Um, we're hoping in the next year to do kind of conflict resolution sessions between firefighters and residents because there's also a lot of trauma that exists. I mean, when I say tension, I this isn't abstract. Like firefighters get rocks thrown at them and fire trucks burned. I mean, there's some serious violence that happens against firefighters. Hoses often get cut because people think if they put the water on their house, it will protect their house. So even if their house isn't where the firefront is, they'll they'll take the water there. And so the hope is that we'll be able to really understand these decisions that are being made and the perceptions and come up with strategies for communities to be collaborative first responders with firefighters and to really help firefighters understand the social dynamics that they're walking into and help them upskill to be able to enter that spaces safely.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

I I would refer listeners to uh an episode with Richard Wallace, which I'll link in the show notes, because with Richard, like he went in depth on that, exactly on that aspect of uh working with with the fire brigade and and and in general the situation uh down in Cape Town. Uh you said uh Cape Town is special. Why it's so special for you?

Danielle Antonellis:

So it is special. I mean, not only is it one of the most beautiful places on the earth, but it's special from a fire safety perspective because the fire problem is very well acknowledged here. And a lot of other parts of the world, even informal settlements themselves, aren't well acknowledged. It's a very political thing, right? If you go to Dhaka Bangladesh, where we've done some of our research, everyone's talking about in government, everyone's talking about how the solution to the slums, as they call them, is to get rid of them, right? There's no acknowledgement that they're there to say, that they're part of the fabric of that city. And in Cape Town, there's a very strong acknowledgement. You know, certainly South Africa has a very progressive constitution. After the apartheid ended in 1994, the constitution said that every person should have rights to a house and to service delivery. We could tell a whole long story that I'll skip, but basically, the footnotes or the kind of short notes are that the housing delivery was incredibly uh ambitious and actually successful to some level. There's been huge amounts of houses built in Cape Town and South Africa at large, but never enough to accommodate everybody, of course. And the informal settlements are growing and there's a lot of migration into cities. And so, because of this governance failure, there's acknowledgement that the informal settlements are here to stay because the housing problem isn't going to be solved anytime soon. And therefore, with that acknowledgement that the informal settlements are here to stay, there comes acknowledgement that the government has responsibility to deliver services, whether that's electricity, water, sanitation, or fire services response. That acknowledgement means that there's a system ready to engage around what can be done for fire safety. That's quite special. I'm not saying there's nowhere else in the world, but that is quite special. There's also just been a huge amount of investments. I mean, there's social scientists, engineers, other researchers that have been studying the fire problem in Cape Town. There's better data systems than we have in most other places. I mean, you can't talk about Cape Town and Formal Settlement Fire in the fire engineering community without talking about David Rush from University of Edinburgh and Richard Walls from Salambosch University and the incredible work they've done. And so we're we're standing on their shoulders and working with them directly as well, of course. But it's also about just how Cape Town is primes to figure out what is possible. Doesn't mean that what we do here will directly transfer to other places, but it's a it's a place to really push boundaries and see what's possible.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

I I guess they're kind of pushing on the definition of informal settlement because if it becomes acknowledged, like is it informal at this at this point? Like it's kind of interesting dynamic. Um we're running out of time, and let's have a few minutes on pilot projects and then perhaps wrap it up.

Danielle Antonellis:

So pilot projects are now practice. I've already mentioned a few things, but I think what we really need to focus on is how do we actually make tools and resources available to practitioners so that they can make better decisions and really do fire safety programming well. And we can't do that unless Kindling gets its hands dirty and actually gets in there and figures out what it means to be a practitioner. I'm a fire engineer, I'm a practitioner by background, so I love this part. This is my favorite pillar if I was going to be biased towards one. So that means that we're in communities actually doing the work. So, in that community, I keep mentioning Kylicha, um, we've spent a year and a half with them going through the identification of fire risk factors, you know, hazards and vulnerabilities. We then developed problem statements and solutions that can respond to those problem statements. And now we've been doing implementation with them as well as trying to refine strategies. So, I mean, practice might not always be glamorous. Practice for us meant that for three days in June, we picked up trash with babies and nappies because that trash was next to the community in this large open field where vegetation and illegal waste dumping often led to fire spread into their community. So we picked up nappies. Um, and we're looking at how that land can be better managed. Practice sometimes is looking at how we can really engage with government and other practitioners around policy and trying to influence the ways that people respond, not only to the fires, but to the disaster that is created by the fire. So thinking about relief and recovery. In Cape Town, we have something called the Cape Town Community of Practice on Fire Safety and Informal Settlements, which is a space that brings together governments, NGOs, academics, residents, and private industry on a quarterly basis to talk about the kind of current practice and how practice can be improved, again, from policy perspective as well. Um so it does link into advocacy quite strongly. Um, we also have a global community of practice on focus on the humanitarian sector through the global shelter cluster. And so that is similarly looking at um how there can be kind of learning and sharing of practical ways to improve fire safety across different actors. Um, so practice is where everything else converges, advocacy, learning, and research don't really matter unless they actually influence practice.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

So fantastic. Yeah, I I would love to pull pull more on that, but I guess we'll we'll meet again in in the podcast soon, uh where especially when we discuss the research in more details, and then we can talk about how that influences practice. Let's wrap it up, uh Danielle. Where where are you going? What's the next five years gonna look like for Kindling?

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, so we're teaching we're expanding our learning, we're trying to figure out how advocacy can go from kind of ideas that influence actors to actually pushing the policies themselves and really trying to understand the governance system. So, for example, how can we get white papers that can directly go into policy here in South Africa? And practice is expanding not only in the number of communities we're working with here, but also in the global geographic reach. So, you know, five years ago or four years ago when we talked, we didn't have a theory of change. We just were, we were kind of, we had something called a discovery strategy. We were trying different things, trying to understand the problem, not really sure what worked and what didn't. Now we're at a place where we have a pretty strong opinion of what works and why it matters. And so this is the next five years is all about scale. First five years we're trying to figure out what what we should do. Now we know what we should do and how do we make it reach as many people as possible.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Fantastic. And I'm I hope uh that this goes on as you intend. There will be challenges, but uh there there will also be a lot of uh fun on the way. And I am looking forward. Uh and we need to catch up, maybe not in five years, but definitely, uh definitely sooner. And I uh something tells me we will be having uh an opportunity to to discuss more in-depth research and and this and this practical uh aspect quite soon. So looking forward to that. Uh Danielle, thank you so much for for coming to the fire science show. Uh it's Christmas, Mark Christmas, everyone.

Danielle Antonellis:

Yeah, Merry Christmas. Thank you so much for the opportunity and looking forward to future chats.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And that's it. Thank you for listening. I'm always moved when I discuss these things with Danielle because indeed this is a fire problem that touches one billion people on this planet. I don't think there's any other fire safety uh problem or case in which more people would be vulnerable to to the fire. We always tend to, you know, highlight the huge fires that happen in the West, however you define West. But yeah, there were huge fires in informal settlements around Christmas, and you probably have not heard about them because it's not something uh widely covered by the media. Anyway, I think uh given that again coming back to the episode 34, it's not that those societies have power or financial uh resources or or even urgency to fix those things for themselves. I think the work of people like Danielle and Kinling is is highly important, and the fact that we have a lot of experienced fire safety engineers who can assist in in solving those issues when guided correctly, I think this is really, really great. And uh I see a huge need to participate in those projects. Actually, I I am participating. I since the previous episode uh I've been talking with Daniel a lot. When they proposed the large experimental program, uh we were bidding for it, we were working with them on the experimental outline. Now we're working together on the data analysis and uh processing the stuff that has been created in those 20 large-scale burns in uh South Africa, so it's useful for both scientists and non-governmental organizations. So, yeah, that's the future podcast episode that we will definitely have about the outcomes of those experiments. But I I feel there's a big need to contribute and everyone to their own, everyone can contribute in one way or another. Uh, one more thing, Kindling has uh went through some sort of rebranding. Uh, like they have a new website, it's packed with information, packed with resources, and I have a feeling they will implement more and more into that new website. So definitely you will uh be able to check a lot more information on the practical information, practical guidance on providing fire safety to uh low risk settlings uh across the world if you ever find yourself in a position where you can actually contribute to the fire safety of those uh spaces. Um I hope this was an interesting episode for you. It was clearly for me. We will need to reconvene with with uh Danielle and Kin Link soon, and probably not after four years, definitely sooner, and you'll get more updates on how uh battling fire safety in this part of the world looks like. That would be it uh for today. I hope you enjoy your week and I hope that next week you come back to Fire Science Show for another Fire Science episode. Thank you for being here with me. Cheers, bye.