National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) fire protection engineers turned an abandoned New York City (NYC) brick high-rise into a seven-story fire laboratory last month to better understand the fast-moving spread of wind-driven flames, smoke and toxic gases through corridors and stairways of burning buildings.

Three people have died in Western Australia when their vehicles were engulfed in a bush fire.

After recalls and fires involving Lithium-ion batteries, battery manufacturers and scientists have launched an intensive effort to improve the safety of these rechargeable power packs found in dozens of consumer electronics products.

A column of black smoke was towering from a fire at an east London warehouse on the 2012 Olympics site.

General Motors and the GM Foundation are putting in place several efforts to help those persons impacted by the devastating fires that have raged across Southern California.

In response to the Southern California wildfires, AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) today announced mobilized resources for the anticipated largest customer-support and infrastructure-restoration effort in AT&T's California history.

The catastrophic fires that are sweeping Southern California are consistent with what climate change models have been predicting for years, experts say, and they may be just a prelude to many more such events in the future – as vegetation grows heavier than usual and then ignites during prolonged drought periods.

Cleanup and rebuilding teams responding to the devastation across Greece caused by this summer’s deadly fires are getting help from space. A series of crisis map products based on satellite acquisitions of affected areas are being provided to aid damage assessment efforts following the activation of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters.

Crackling embers and glowing firebrands might make for a romantic evening in front of the fireplace, but for homeowners in high fire-risk areas, windborne fire material is the stuff of nightmares. To learn how to mitigate such threats, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers have built a firebrand generator that can be used to study the way firebrands ignite structures.

A new study involving the University of Colorado at Boulder that modeled the spread of forest fires in Colorado and other western states indicates the size and intensity of fires is directly linked with the density and flammability of houses built in the so-called “wildland-urban interface.”

Greece has experienced more wildfire activity this August than other European countries have over the last decade, according to data from ESA satellites. The country is currently battling an outbreak of blazes, which began last Thursday, that have spread across the country killing more than 60 people.

Why do some forest fires spread rapidly over large areas, destroying and damaging many homes, while others are contained with minimal damage?