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Fire Prevention Week takes place during the week of 9 October, the date of the great Chicago fire. Fire prevention in the narrow sense refers to precautionary measures taken to prevent the outbreak of fires. In books, articles, and other materials on the subject, however, fire prevention often encompasses the broader terms of fire science, fire protection, and fire safety.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how fire services use social media to educate the public about safety and fire prevention.

Grounded theoretical methods were employed in a rigorous qualitative analysis of five significant fire services’ Twitter accounts in Ontario, Canada.

Seven main themes emerged from the data, with an overarching conclusion that tweets made by fire service organisations and professionals do not focus primarily on fire safety.

This paper addresses a gap in the literature in terms of understanding how social media communicates information about all three lines of defence against fire, with a focus on the first two: public fire safety education, fire safety standards and enforcement and emergency response.

The authors suggest that fire services need to employ a more segmented approach to social media posts with an objective to engage and educate the public.

This paper is the first extensive qualitative analysis to consider the particulars of fire services’ social media presence.

In recent years, there were several incidents of fire in secondary schools in Malaysia. A study conducted by the Ministry of Education has found that there were outbreaks of fire in 22 primary and secondary schools and in institutions of higher learning for the year 1999 resulting in losses of RM 534,400. This study was carried out to identify fire safety conditions in residential colleges in a local Malaysian university. An audit approach as well as the use of questionnaire was adopted to collect primary data for the study. The audit results show that the overall fire safety condition was at 76 percent compliance level. The survey results showed that only predisposing factors such as knowledge, attitude and belief have a positive relationship with the fire safety behavior and lifestyle (p<0.5). The survey identified six important elements for fire safety and in ranking order they are: belief in the importance of fire safety, perception on the need for immediate response to fire incidence, knowledge in fire safety, attitude of occupants, social influence, and feedback on fire safety issues.

There is increasing recognition amongst healthcare providers on the necessity to improve fire safety management in healthcare facilities. This is possibly not yet satisfactory because of recent fire incidents in Asia. This paper set out to analyse the literature because of the paucity of systematic reviews on fire safety management of public healthcare facilities and proffer preventive measures.

Thirty related studies were identified with the support of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses via Scopus and Web of Science databases.

Influencing factors, hindrances to fire safety management and preventive measures for fire-related occurrence in Asian hospital buildings were the three themes that emerged from the reviewed. The factors that influence fire in Asian hospital buildings were categorised into technical, management and legislation factors.

The recommendations of this paper were based on literature that was systematically reviewed but does not compromise the robustness concerning fire safety management in hospital buildings across Asian countries. Much is needed to be known regarding fire safety in healthcare buildings across Asian countries. This paper recommended exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach as part of the implications for further studies. This will allow in-depth face-to-face interviews and increase the generalisability of future findings concerning fire safety management in hospital buildings across Asian countries to a larger population.

As part of the practical implications, this paper recommends fire safety management plan as one of the practical possible measures for addressing technical, management and legislation factors. Also recommended is training and fire safety education of healthcare staff in collaboration with safety firefighters to address major issues that may arise from management factors. The government should upgrade the safety technology equipment in healthcare facilities as part of measures to mitigate issues concerning technical and legislation factors. Also, the identified factors are part of the theoretical contributions to the advancement of knowledge and this brings to the front burners new opening.

This is probably the first systematic review paper on fire safety hospital buildings in Asia.

The objectives of this paper are to present an assessment for the consideration of fire safety during the design stages of school facilities in Saudi Arabia; and to present the development of a fire risk assessment survey tool whereby existing school facilities can be evaluated for the purpose of identifying and eliminating fire hazards, and meeting the minimum requirements of current legislation.

The paper classifies the factors that make school facilities a high‐risk type of buildings to fire; reviews causes of fires in schools and identifies potential high‐risk areas to fires in school facilities; and reviews design and operation factors controlling fire severity.

Investigating the consideration for fire safety in the design phase of public school facilities in Saudi Arabia indicated that the design office at the Ministry of Education is active in providing the following fire safety requirements: fire detection and notification systems including smoke detectors and fire alarms; fire suppression and extinguishing systems including automatic sprinkler systems, standpipe and hose system and portable fire extinguishers; and means of egress and evacuation systems including exit doors, emergency lighting and directional signs. The fire risk assessment survey tool developed in this paper consists of 61 items to assess fire protection equipment, exitways/stairs, interior decorations/interior finish integrity, fire hydrants and lanes, electrical wiring, laboratories, and maintenance measures.

The paper provides practical value to design professionals of school projects and school staff and facilities managers responsible for the day‐to‐day operation of school facilities.

In intervening to prevent recidivism by adult firesetters, there is a dearth of standardised interventions and relatedly of controlled outcome evaluations. Although education is a common firesetter intervention, it is unclear if this changes behaviour of adults; a research situation the current study aimed to address.

The rate of actual fire recidivism of participants of a standardised educational programme was compared using Cooke’s (1989) equation to expected rates based on the firesetting history of 93 referrals.

Results indicated a significant large effect for the difference between the frequencies of expected and actual firesetting re-offences.

Limitations of the one-group pretest–posttest design are discussed with respect to potential confounds.

This paper adds to the literature on adult firesetter interventions and lends support to the use of fire education to prevent fire recidivism. It provides the first empirically validated example of a structured education programme for adult firesetters. Of interest to services piloting new intervention programmes, it reports an operationally efficient methodology for preliminary evaluation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first reported outcome study of a fire safety education programme for adults. The methodology adopted represents a means of preliminary evaluation in safety-critical areas where traditional evaluation designs are infeasible.

Fire-related offences are costly in human and financial terms. Fire education is widely used with juveniles and with adults in forensic psychiatric settings; however, with prison/probation clients there has been a lack of focus on its potential. This study asked participants of a structured fire education programme for adults how they experienced it and its impact on their feelings about firesetting.

Participants were 15 programme completers, including ten males and five females. All were adults that had attended the programme during their sentence, either in the community or whilst in custody.

Using an inductive thematic analysis this study interpreted the following themes: a supportive and responsive approach, impactful learning materials and methods, a new way of thinking, and picking up the pieces. This study proposes that the intervention may activate change through its powerful methods including fact-based arguments and support from legitimate experts.

Firesetters’ Integrated Responsive Educational Programme (FIRE-P) is a novel example of a specialist structured fire education programme for adult firesetters. This is the first paper to outline its structure and content. Understanding how change occurs in FIRE-P has implications for intervention design and delivery with this client group.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first qualitative study of a structured fire education programme for adults and provides researchers and practitioners with insight into the ingredients of a successful fire education programme.

This paper aims to present exploratory research on how people in Aotearoa New Zealand experience and learn about fire, and how they think and feel about fire as adults.

A qualitative survey with a sample of 40 young adults aged 18–23 years in Aotearoa New Zealand were recruited through Prolific Academic. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to construct themes across participants experiences.

Four themes were constructed that described participants’ learning about fire and were named influence of context and internal responses to fire, development of normative beliefs about fire, learning how and when fire can be used and learning about fire safety. Two themes were developed that described participants thoughts and feelings about fire as an adult. These were named knowledge is power and emotional congruence with fire. Results highlight the significant role of parental modelling, reinforcement and sensory experiences in the way individuals experience and learn about fire.

Understanding fire learning is important for establishing which experiences may lead to appropriate and inappropriate fire use which in turn can inform fire prevention initiatives.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research represents one of the first studies to directly examine fire learning in the general population.

The general principles of fire safety are reviewed and these are related specifically to libraries. The major elements of fire safety (people, buildings and fire) are examined and the specific components of these are discussed as they affect, and are affected by, library use and design. The contents of libraries in relation to fire protection are considered.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the design and operation factors that affect the provision of fire‐safe student housing facilities, and to present the development of a proposed operational framework for fire safety evaluation of student housing facilities.

The paper identifies the causes of fire accidents in student housing facilities and classifies the factors that make it a high fire‐risk type of facility. It identifies several common design deficiencies contributing to student housing fires and reviews measures to prevent fires in student housing facilities. The paper also presents a series of guidelines for use by facility managers for the provision of safe facilities.

The proposed operational framework for fire safety evaluation in student housing facilities consists of five sequential processes, namely: archival and document evaluation; development of an audit worksheet; commencement of the walk‐through inspection; reporting of inspection findings; and development of a plan for remedial actions.

This paper serves to increase the awareness about fires and their devastating effects in residential university facilities. The paper provides practical value to the design professional of student housing projects, student housing administrators, and facility managers responsible for the daily operation of student housing facilities.