What is FIRE | Definition of FIRE | How Fire Works

What is FIRE | Definition of FIRE | How Fire Works 

A fire is a chemical reaction. Fire requires three variables to initiate: fuel, oxygen, and heat. Fire is the accelerated oxidation of the substance during the exothermic process of combustion, the release of heat, light and as well as other reaction products.

What is FIRE | Definition of FIRE | How Fire Works | Picture of a Fire

Fire is the combustion process of burning. It is a chemical reaction, initiated by the sources of heat energy to join with the combustible fuel substance at a particular temperature. The joining of the heat source and the fuel starts the chemical process, it is called fire. 

When this chemical process is exposed to a direct atmospheric oxygen supply, the chemical process will be continuous. This continued stage of fire is called burning. During this chemical process of burning, the process will emit energies. The energies are in the form of Heat, Light, and Sound. The burning extinguishment will take place when the sources of heat energy are absent or if the heat energy is not having the required level of heat capability to initiate the fire within the combustible fuel substances or the combustible fuel substance is absent or the oxygen supply is absent. 

The building fire is also required sources of heat, combustible fuel substances, and the oxygen supply. The heat sources are available in the buildings are from electrical appliances, gas appliances, oil appliances, fuel appliances, smoking, rubbish burning, children are playing with matchboxes, intentional fire makers and other many unknown heat sources. 

The combustible fuel substance is available in the buildings are in the form of combustible materials (everyday activities required materials). These combustible materials types, the quantity will be different in different buildings. It depends upon the occupancy type or the type of activity or process going inside of the building.


The type of fire, the intensity of heat depends upon this combustible materials storage capacity. The supply of oxygen gets from the atmospheric pressure through the openings. These openings are provided in the walls, which are provided for ventilation or service purposes.  In certain situations, few square meter areas of open spaces are allocated for interactive, ventilation or service purposes.  Highly services-oriented buildings need these types of many openings in the building design.

These three sources are joining together in any situation within the buildings the fire will start. The fire will be extinguished after the fuel substance has been consumed in full by fire. Building fire is observed to emit more heat, light, flames, fumes and other toxic substances as compared to other open fire.

The reason is that the burning process is happening in a closed atmosphere of built form. Building fire creates two types of impacts. The first one is the fire flame will consume all properties which are kept inside of the building. The second one is the fumes, smoke, and other toxic substances, these outbreaks are the directly responsible agents for destroying human lives. Especially in multi-functional high rise buildings, the lives lost will be large in numbers. As per the survey, fire accidents in buildings are increasing every year.

This current emerging problem is existing in all places of the world. Practicable solutions are required to overcome this serious problem. All buildings are provided with all fire safety measures in practice as per the code recommendations. These existing fire safety measures are to be searched and it's counteracting capacities towards fire are to be analyzed.

The results obtained will show the correct position of the current fire safety steps. These results will direct the professionals to implement a possible solution.