Alcohol linked to rise in Cape fires

New research from Stellenbosch University (SU) shows that there is a correlation between alcohol consumption and residential fire incidents.

- STAFF REPORTER

The study, published in the International Journal of Fire Science and Engineering, compared fire incident data from 2020 with a five-year average (2015 - 2019).

The researchers, Dr Natalia Flores Quiroz and Professor Richard Walls of Stellenbosch University's fire engineering team, focused on formal and informal residential fires in Cape Town, and compared results to trends in cities around the world.

This site was chosen due to the high quality and availability of the City of Cape Town's long-term fire incident data. The City's extreme socioeconomic disparities also made it an appropriate setting to examine differences between formal and informal settlements.