The status of water for firefighting in South Africa

It is mandatory in South Africa that water for firefighting is included in the demand estimates input when designing municipal water networks. To this end, guidelines for determining fire flows for different risk categories have been developed. The most commonly used guidelines are the South African National Standard (SANS) 10090 of 2018 and the Department of Human Settlements (DHS) guide of 2019 (also called the Red Book). The evolution of the built environment, firefighting technologies and approaches, and the availability of freshwater resources all require that the fire flows in the guidelines are current and adequately protect communities from the devastating impacts of fires - this while conserving depleting freshwater resources and contributing to optimal water network design. Currently, empirical research into the appropriateness of the fire flows in SANS 10090 and the Red Book to firefighting efforts in South African municipalities is limited. This paper therefore compares water for firefighting in these two guidelines with some international companions and local firefighting data, and also compares similar data from the six studies published on this topic in South Africa. Some highlights from this investigation include: (i) the fire risk categories and fire flows in SANS 10090 and the Red Book are misaligned, and are contradictory in at least one instance; (ii) when compared with firefighting data, the fire flows in SANS 10090 and the Red Book are conservative; (iii) a significant percentage of fires were extinguished between 30 and 120 minutes; (iv) 10 kl or less of water was employed to extinguish more than 87% of fires; and (v) the frequencies of fires were positively related to dry and/or cold weather conditions.