Effects of Firefighting Activities Performed by Local Residents to Mitigate Fire Destruction Damage and Human Casualties in Large Earthquakes

Fire-spread prevention activities, which are performed by local residents in an early phase of fire, play an important role in reducing the destruction damage caused by fire in large earthquakes. However, few studies have focused on the fire-spread prevention activities that are carried out in the confused situation immediately following a large earthquake. Therefore, to date, there has been no sufficiently comprehensive discussion regarding the effectiveness of such activities. In this study, we estimate the possibility that local residents can prevent the spread of fire from the building of fire origin to an adjacent building by using equipment such as stand pipes. For this purpose, we utilize the agent-based simulator of property damage and human behavior at the time of a large earthquake that we developed in an earlier study. In addition, we demonstrate the effects of some measures for increasing the success rate of preventing fire-spread by comparing the simulation results under the following assumptions: (1) The percentage of streets blocked by the rubble of collapsed buildings is decreased, (2) the number of stand pipes is increased, and (3) the time before a fire spreads to an adjacent building is lengthened by planting trees between two buildings or the implementation of flame-retardation measures inside a building. Furthermore, on the basis of the simulation results, we discuss the requirements for successful fire-spread prevention activities by analyzing some factors (structure/area of buildings, time for fire-spread, time before spraying water, etc.) related to the activities.