Flame out

Students in the Fire Protection Engineering Department’s undergraduate course Fire Laboratory, taught by Assistant Professor James Urban, set fire to miniature model wildland urban interface communities to understand how wildfires spread when the flames enter populated areas.

The class, which is focused on the fundamentals of fire behavior measurement and research testing, requires four teams of five students to develop and perform experiments that study these damaging fires. Their design involves running multiple tests using a wind tunnel and a burn table to see the variability of wildfire spread under changing scenarios.

The students used cardboard and paper to build miniature trees and scale models of houses—some with heat-resistant tape on them—and used twigs, sand, and soil to create their environments, which they set ablaze for their experiments.

Research into wildland urban interface fires has gained added importance after an increase in unprecedented and devastating fires, such as those in Los Angeles in January 2025, and in Lahaina, Hawaii, in 2023.