Civil Engineering March 2022 | Vol 30 No 2

Civil Engineering March 2022 59 It is understood that the competency carried by the fire protection engineer is used within any sector of the fire safety industry, such as the building industry, oil and gas industry, nuclear industry, forestry industry, etc. Fire protection engineers have an interdisciplinary role of assisting project/design teams (which may include but are not limited to architects, building owners and developers) in reaching life safety, property protection and environmental protection goals. The fire engineering industry requires a wide variety of skilled workers to manage the process from concept, through detailed design to construction. Fire engineering technical capacity signif- icantly affects the ability of a country to keep its population safe, while providing economic solutions. Until recently, South Africa lacked formal university educational capacity in fire engineering for professional engi- neering consultants (Pr Eng/Pr Tech Eng), which has severely limited technical capacity. In many ways a low level of tech- nical competency has severely affected the quality of fire safety infrastructure being provided. An article by the World Bank highlights such concerns for South Africa. 4 FIRE SAFETY INFRASTRUCTURE IN SOUTH AFRICA Available fire incident data Figure 1 presents the number of fires and fatalities reported by fire departments from 2003 to 2020, based on national sta- tistics from fire departments compiled by the Fire Protection Association of South Africa. 5 From this graph it can be seen that there is a continual increase in the number of fire department incidents per year, with an average increase of around 1 000 incidents and 23 deaths per year. In 2020 there were 63 316 incidents and 586 deaths reported. However, care should be taken when interpreting the data as both sets of information are incomplete, with the incomplete number of fire incidents actually being of great concern. Table 1 presents the number of inci- dents reported by five large municipalities in 2020, along with the estimated 2020 population. 6 If the number of fire inci- dents per million population is calculated it ranges from 260 for Johannesburg to 5 368 for Cape Town. Since submitting fire statistics is not mandatory, it is likely that the upper bound statistics are closer to reality, and the lower fire rates are representative of incomplete, or no data being submitted. If the number of fire incidents in the country is estimated based on the incident rates for the five metropolitan areas shown, the projected number of national fires per year would range between approximately 15 000 and 320 000, as opposed to the current number of 63 316. Due to a lack of better information, if we assume that Cape Town has a higher- than-average number of fire incident callouts per million inhabitants (which in fact may be representative) and eThek- wini’s projection is adopted, the number of estimated fire incidents is still around 150 000. This means that the national fire statistics probably underrepresent fire incidents by between three and six times their actual value. It is of great concern that fire departments are not submitting data, which immediately indicates fire safety Table 1 Analysis of the number of incidents in five large municipalities in South Africa Municipality No. reported fire incidents in 2020 Estimated 2020 population [million] 6 Incident rate: incidents per million population Projected no. national fires based on incident rate Cape Town Metro 22 490 4.19 5 368 316 685 Ekurhuleni Metro 3 091 3.57 866 51 084 eThekwini Unicity 9 608 3.8 2 528 149 177 Johannesburg EMS 1 381 5.31 260 15 344 Tshwane Metro 3 787 3.47 1 091 64 390 70 000 60 000 50 000 40 000 30 000 20 000 10 000 0 Number of fire department incidents Number of fire fatalities 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 0 200 100 Years 2003 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 Number of fires Number of deaths Linear (number of fires) Linear (number of deaths) Figure 1 Trends in deaths and the number of fire department callouts 5