Japan Archives - Wildfire Today

Thousands of residents in northern Japan were forced to flee their homes as a record-setting wildfire burned near their properties.

Crews from the nation’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA) began fighting the fire on Wednesday. Three days later, it officially became Japan’s largest wildfire in the last 30 years. The fire burned nearly 3,000 acres (1,200 hectares) as of Friday, along with threatening 1,755 homes and 4,263 people southeast of Ofunato City.

The agency also said one person has died and over 80 homes have burned.

The wildfire surpassed the previous burned area record of 2,545 acres (1,030 hectares) set in 1992 in Kushiro, FDMA said. That makes this fire the largest wildfire since the nation’s Heisei era, which lasted from 1989 through 2019.

Crews fighting Ofunato wildfire. Credit: FDMA

FDMA said 17 fire brigades made up of 2,569 people were fighting the fire as of Friday afternoon. The brigades include a command support team from the Tokyo Fire Department and helicopters from Fukushima Prefecture Disaster Prevention.

Japan Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba dedicated “maximum effort” towards firefighting activities to prevent the fire from further spreading into residential areas, a statement from Ishiba’s office said. He also advised crews to work closely with local governments to provide evacuation assistance and the recovery of affected residents.

Any fire that burns more than 25 acres (10 hectares) is considered a “large” wildfire, according to Tohoku University combustion researcher Samuel Manzello.

The frequent high winds that Japan experiences can cause massive conflagrations, but despite that, the nation has only taken minimal concrete steps toward preparing for future fires, according to Manzello.

“Japan is not prepared for the (Wildland-Urban Interface) fire threat, as there have been no major efforts to address it here,” Manzello told Wildfire Today. “At the same time, in Japan, fire researchers believe a wrong impression that WUI fires are a problem that only bothers famous people. In general, WUI fires are often reported in the Japanese news media from the perspective of famous Hollywood people losing their homes.”

Urban fires have plagued Japan for generations, the most notorious of which killed nearly 45,000 people.

A strong earthquake and tsunami claimed thousands of lives around Tokyo and Yokohama in 1923, but then came the fire. The region’s wooden homes, cookstoves, and ruptured gas lines ignited fires that extreme winds worsened, soon setting the entire city ablaze. Most people were immolated by a 300-foot-tall funnel of fire known as a “dragon twist,” according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Japan’s tragedies drove the nation to become a leader in urban fire and combustion research, an expertise it still fosters today. It’s now sharing that knowledge with researchers from South Africa and Botswana.

Dragon twist representation. Credit: National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo

The “dragon twist” representation above may be one of the oldest artistic representations of the firebrand showers. The phenomenon happens when large amounts of embers from a fire get blown airborne, igniting possible fires elsewhere.

The 1923 tragedy and others like it pushed Japan to study the phenomenon, leading to the nation building the world’s first large-scale wind tunnel for fire testing, nicknamed the “Dragon”. The research replicates building and vegetation ignitions during firebrand showers, according to Samuel Manzello, a combustion researcher at Tohoku University’s Institute of Fluid Science.

“Our firebrand research using the Dragon had become very well-known across the world,” Manzello told Wildfire Today. “In Japan, you could conduct experiments on actual, real-scale building components. In the USA, there were no such facilities to do this type of research.”

Tohoku University‘s firebrand research would go on to catch the attention of researchers in Southern Africa, who have dealt with numerous firebrand shower disasters. The joint interest led to the Japan Science and Technology Agency launching the AfriWUIFire project in 2023 to bring together experts from both regions to help mitigate firebrands’ global threat.

The joint research would also help establish international testing methods and common testing methodology, Manzello said. The vast difference in vegetation types in both regions benefit researchers in determining the propensity of each vegetation type to produce firebrands, which can then be used in numerous countries.

“Through years of research in Japan, we have developed experimental methodologies to better understand and quantify the dangers of firebrands, so exchange of information is important,” Manzello said. “At the same time, there is a need to develop globally accepted international standard test methods for firebrand quantification from vegetative and structural fuel combustion. The project affords the ability to independently compare test methods across multiple countries for disparate vegetation types, to develop such international test methods.”

AfriWUIFire researchers from Japan, including Manzello, traveled to South Africa in April to evaluate local fire hazards and then attended an Africa-Japan Collaborative Research workshop in Botswana. Soon, AfriWUIFire researchers from Africa will visit Japan, in part to conduct full-scale vegetation combustion experiments and quantify firebrands using the Dragon.

Click here to read more about the partnership.