Rethinking fire resilience in the built environment: A comparative review of post-earthquake and WUI fires

Historic urban conflagrations such as the Great Fire of London (1666) and the Great Chicago Fire (1871) helped shape modern building codes, construction materials, and fire safety practices. In the decades that followed, fire safety advancements improved urban fire resilience, fostering the perception that the “fire problem” had been solved. Today, extreme weather events, expansion of communities into fire-prone areas, and aging infrastructure have reintroduced fire as a pressing resilience challenge. This paper examines resilience of the built environment to fire across scales, from individual structures to entire communities, and through two scenarios: fire following earthquake and wildfire impact in wildland-urban interface settings. Although both scenarios can lead to conflagrations, they differ in hazard dynamics (individual ignitions versus an advancing fire front), affected building typologies (dense, multi-story urban environments versus interface and predominantly residential areas), and suppression challenges (damaged water networks versus largely intact systems). The paper identifies key differences and shared challenges between these scenarios, outlines actions to reduce fire risk, and highlights future research directions to strengthen fire resilience in the built environment.