Fire Following Earthquake – Analysis and Mitigation in North America Charles Scawthorn 1 1 Visiting Professor, Waseda University, Tokyo Visiting Scholar Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California at Berkeley cscawthorn@berkeley.edu ABSTRACT: Fire following earthquake has the potential for catastrophic loss in Japan and western North America (WNA). In WNA, analysis of the problem over the last several decades has led to a number of measures to reduce this risk. This paper first reviews the development and current status of fire following earthquake analysis in the US, including the current methods employed in HAZUS and by the insurance industry. A number of mitigation measures have been employed or are under development in WNA and include:  High pressure auxiliary water supply systems in San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C.  Cisterns  Portable Water Supply Systems, in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Vallejo  Mandated gas shut-off valves, in Los Angeles However, these measures are in some cases still inadequate, so that the paper concludes with mitigation measures that are currently under development. Key Words: fire following earthquake, seismic, ignitions, emergency response, suppression, fire spread, conflagration, loss estimation, risk INTRODUCTION Fire following earthquake (FFE) is a significant problem in countries with large wood building inventories and high seismicity, such as the US, Canada, New Zealand and Japan. In 2011 both New Zealand and Japan suffered devastating earthquakes, the latter event also being accompanied by several hundred fires. This paper focuses on the problem, and more specifically efforts to mitigate this problem, in North America particularly the US and California. Historically, every significant earthquake in California has resulted in multiple simultaneous fires that have strained, and at least in 1906 overwhelmed, the fire service. In both the 1971 San Fernando and the 1994 Northridge earthquake, there were over 100 ignitions. Other disasters clearly demonstrate that massive fires are a problem in California under even non-earthquake ignitions, when Proceedings of the International Symposium on Engineering Lessons Learned from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, March 1-4, 2012, Tokyo, Japan 913