Resilience Live Episode 9: Urban fire as a hazard and urban fire regimes in Manila
Date: May 30, 2024
Speaker: Dr. Greg Bankoff
Bionote: Greg Bankoff is a historical geographer who focuses on the way societies interrelate with their environments over time, especially the way people adapt to frequent hazards. For the last 30 years, he has focused his research primarily on Southeast and Central Asia, the Pacific, and North Sea seeking to understand how societies learn to normalise risk and the way in which communities deal with crisis. He is a Research Fellow at Ateneo de Manila University and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hull. His most recent publication is a co-edited volume, Why Vulnerability Still Matters: The Politics of Disaster Risk Creation (2022).
Presentation Abstract:
Urban fire kills over 300,000 people annually and leaves millions more injured and homeless. It is the world’s fourth largest cause of accidental injury. Yet urban fire is largely “invisible,” hidden because most of the people it affects are out of sight, residents of the sprawling informal settlement of the rapidly growing cities of the Global south. It is not even listed as a hazard in the ICRC’s annual Worl Disaster Reports.
Urban fire is also unique in that it possesses a set of properties that distinguishes it from all other hazards. Its ignition entirely depends on human actions. As such, urban fire should not only be considered only as a physical hazard but is also a politically and socially constructed one as well. Fire is not only a material condition dependent on ignition, combustion, and fuel, but is embedded in the history of a location, its governance and class structures, and its people’s specific cultural attitudes towards risk. This presentation first examines the nature of urban fire as a hazard, and then discusses its occurrence in Manila.