The past Friday 8th of February we the first 2019 seminar organized by the SFPE UQ Student Chapter and it gave the attendants the opportunity to take a look to fire safety engineering from a different perspective. On that day, Justin Francis joined us to share his vision of fire safety in high-rise buildings and the challenges that many of us will have to face in the future as fire engineers. Justin has 23 years’ experience as a firefighter in Australia and his experience is heavily focused on crisis management including major Cyclones, significant flood events, wild fire campaigns and a huge variety of Fire/Chemical/Rescue type incidents.

During the seminar Justin addressed many of the issues present on high-rise buildings and the lookout for these and other emerging issues, based on his research and travel in 2017. His findings were product of the Churchill Fellowship and allowed him to take a close look to many complex high-rise buildings around the world. The session was an extremely good complement to the classical approach to fire safety lectures and gave young students an opportunity to understand the fire issue from the fire fighters perspective.