Episode 303: Global Fire Leadership and the Power of One Voice with Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell

Episode notes

What happens when fire leaders from around the world sit down with one shared purpose: to protect communities before disaster strikes?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy.

Recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) 2025 Conference alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conference in Perth, Australia.

In this episode, Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell reflects on the momentum sparked by the first World Fire Congress and what it revealed about the future of global fire leadership. With 56 nations represented, the Congress was not a conference but a working conversation built on trust, accountability, and shared responsibility. The discussion highlights why collaboration across borders is essential as fire risks accelerate worldwide.

Drawing from recent events in Lahaina and Los Angeles, Dr. Moore-Merrell explains why response alone can no longer protect communities from wildfire initiated conflagrations. She shares why mitigation around homes, community focused planning, and emerging technologies are critical to resilience. At its core, this episode is a reminder that service, humility, and shared learning are the foundation of a stronger global fire service.

So take a listen to hear what she has to share.

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources.

Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn

Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro, live from Perth
2. 1:05 Reconnecting on the Australian tour
3. 1:30 The first World Fire Congress
4. 4:21 World Fire Congress 2026
5. 5:52 Chartering the Congress and the UN
6. 7:44 One voice and sharing research
7. 11:41 Wildfire and community conflagration
8. 16:35 Community risk reduction
9. 17:26 Technology before, during and after the fire
10. 19:01 Words to live by: find a way to serve

Questions answered in this episode

What was the goal of the World Fire Congress in 2025?

Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell says the Congress brought together top fire officials who had never met before for conversation, modeled after the UN with live translation in six languages. The goal was to give every nation present an equal voice and opportunity to engage on issues like structure fire, emerging technology, lithium ion batteries, climate change, and community resilience.

Hear it at 2:10

When and where will the 2026 World Fire Congress be held?

It will be held September 8 and 9, 2026, at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Center.

Hear it at 2:10

What is a wildfire-initiated community conflagration?

Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell describes it as a fire that ignites in vegetation but quickly spreads to structures, where the structures themselves become the fuel. She cites the Marshall Fire in 2021 and the Los Angeles fires in January 2025 as examples, where wind-driven fires moved from vegetation to homes within minutes and devastated communities.

Hear it at 13:06

What mitigation steps does she recommend to prevent community conflagrations?

Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell says fuels mitigation and response alone are not enough. Communities must use fire-resistant building materials for roofs and windows, create zone zero with nothing combustible within 5 feet of homes, and do risk reduction work before ignition happens, because thousands of firefighters could not stop the LA fires once they started.

Hear it at 13:06

What technologies does she see as promising for wildfire response?

Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell mentions fuels reduction technology like Burnbot robots and masticators, AI enabled cameras and sensors that detect changes in atmospheric conditions, military grade drones that can carry up to 500 pounds of suppressant in high winds, exterior sprinklers on homes, and satellite modeling from groups like Earthfire Alliance, Skytel and Windtel, and Embercast to predict where fire will go, not just where it is.

Hear it at 17:26

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 303 transcript

Global Fire Leadership and the Power of One Voice with Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to our podcast miniseries, recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers 2025 conference in Perth, alongside the AFAC, WAFA and the Australian Institute for disaster resilience conferences. With over 28 conversations with fire chiefs, engineers, and innovators, we explored how the fire and emergency community is adapting to a rapidly changing world. a from climate resilience and community-led ad to the importance of mental health, diversity, and global collaboration. These episodes highlight the shared challenges and inspiring solutions shaping the future. Enjoy. [inaudible 0:45]

[1:05] Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell: but right now so maybe that's what happened maybe north in the south but it's always great to see you I love just having conversations with you so you for a inviting me to be part of the Australian tour

[1:18] Kevin Sofen: likewise well I think I've had the fortunate having on a couple podcasts and every. time I was kind of joke that I'm ready to run through a maybe not brick wall but maybe a podcast and just appreciate your leadership and everything so just dive I'm curious now kind of a little bit more than a year removed and now this kind of looking through my camera and snapping these photos and just like just felt like you could feel the magnitude now from the first stone that was thrown with the World Fire Congress. And I know there's 26 World Fire Congress, so tell me more about that.

[2:10] Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell: I love that question, Kevin, because, first of all, thank you for being there, because I know your passion and excitement. Just to be present at this historic event was huge, and it gave me energy. So just you being there as our together, people who had never met each other before, very few, who knew each other, and they sat together for conversations. And as you recall, there was a bit of, I guess, tim timidity in the room to start and people were not as engaged until we just started asking questions. So I sort of set the stage for the Congress here and you're the top fire officials and fire's a problem There's a. I. And I remember calling on the top fire official from Romania and Dr. Arafat and I contact with him and so I just called out to him directly and he was and he was bold enough to just start the conversation and then from there it was like a breath of fresh air because everyone then began to engage and they saw that this was not a conference, this was a Congress, a meeting of top national conversation and so you know we tried to model it much like the UN and a UN meeting we had translators translated in six different languages live and it was important that everyone have a voice you know we had nations that I It was important that everybody that was present was there and that equal opportunity to [inaudible 3:56] continues on as we look toward 26. It's very exciting indeed. And so where is it in 2026? So in 2026, it and it will be on September 8 and 9 of 2026. And it's in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Center, the QE2, they call it. And so that's where it will be. and we really hope to convinced those who came that it was something real. It was hosted by the US Fire Administration, FEMA, and the Department of Homeland and helping helping we're looking forward to really [inaudible 5:06] having it become a substantial entity. I don't [inaudible 5:24] I'm working toward now in my role as a former fire administrator from the US is to charter the World Fire Congress as an entity. We're talking a lot with the UN, a disaster risk reduction, and those conversations are ongoing about how do we get the UN to embrace it much like they've done with the Global Fire Hub. The Congress is more about structure fire, emerging technology, lithium ion, it a more about communities, climate change, all of, all of the things where our firefighters, the local firefighters are any nation, in any community, if you do not have a law enforcement, but if you don't have firefighters, rescuers you cannot possibly have because you're frontline forces that try to stop whatever's happening from becoming a disaster are missing. I taught and their clients and so that's why World Bank has become part of the World Fire Congress because they have so many nations who don't have that frontline resource to stop or help. I mean these natural events are gonna occur. We can't stop for that kind of opportunity, that kind of conversation.

[7:44] Kevin Sofen: and one thing that I took away, and we're [inaudible 7:49] the Australia branch, all these different groups coming together. To b to encapsulates a whole one voice initiative and a lot of continues to a. . I think a lot about from Oklahoma City he's mentioned the quote R&D it's not research and develop [inaudible 8:26] this ball. This ball keeps bouncing. What's your message around that and how do we, continue to just make sure that, the EDUs, how do we keep that energy and momentum alive?

[8:58] Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell: Wow, those are very inspirational words because I love the same aspect of that. The sharing the knowledge and sharing the research that already exists. And I happen to think of, in those moments We were saying that examples of [inaudible 9:14] learn. We don't know everything. We have to relax our egos I think that's what we haven't thought of., [inaudible 9:51] I think in these [inaudible 10:12] You know often now in our nation in the US That becomes America only and that's troublesome to me. I think , I where we can continue to assist other nations and where we can learn from other nations. So these kinds of collaborations, people often are afraid of things or people they don't know or understand. And fear cannot be something that prohibits us from implementing a best practice just because it wasn't ours. we have to drop our egos around the world and understand that we have a real situation with climate change we have a real situation with shortage of water, we have a real situation with things that are happening that we as in the individual nation can not control the goal while we're making our own progress.

[11:41] Kevin Sofen: That's right, we are. And Lori, I again get [inaudible 11:48] in December, but you touch on some of these issues. that we're facing as a global fire service, whether it's climate change, whether it's lithium ion battery issues, whether it's too much data, not enough data. I'd be rem, remiss to not dive into now a little bit of the kind of the challenges but also the ways that we're leveraging technology to address some of these solutions to address some of these problems. Let's first talk about with these climate driven wildfires, wind driven wildfires, the a conflagration issues that we saw from the January seven fires in LA to you're seeing, again, some of these tragic floods and just, you know, too much water and not enough water, em, all these different challenges and words that I continue to hear from these people I'm talking to, not necessarily, I mean, maybe to touch on a little bit of the problem. I'd love the status of your perspective on the wildfire issues within America and around the world, and then a few technologies that give you hope that even with some of the challenges that we can indeed protect lives and protect properties more effectively.

[13:06] Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell: Love that, Kevin, because that's been the real crux of what I've been doing here is talking about wildfire. Because in my tenure as the fire administrator, we saw three major conflagrations. There was one right before I went in that we didn't call it that yet. The Camp Fire, the Paradise Fire in 2018. And then in 2021, with December, we had the Marshall Fire, as you know, was a grass fire that started in a community that burned 1. It was not a wildland fire, it was not even an interface fire. It was a community, a wind driven [inaudible 13:44] Once they had an ignition and the first structure was ignited and then it's off to the races because the structures themselves become the fuel. So, we watched as that devastated an entire community. They're still going through recovery for two years post, and they're still going through the rebuild. Then we get to January 25th this year, and we saw worldwide what happened in LA. This fire ignited in vegetation, but with 100 mile an hour winds. It was not in a vegetative state more than five minutes before it ignited the first And then it was really off to the races. Thousands upon thousands of homes were burned. Fortunately, the evacuation procedures and the firefighters, the boots on the ground focus on life safety. a minimize the death toll from these fires, but this fire was also fast and devastating. So structures that were lost, the way the fire moved for first time then we have used the Wild Fire Initiated community conflagration. Now that describes every fire I just talked about, but we only now are calling it that because it helps us understand the mechanism of the fire itself. And it also and also helps us understand the challenges to have it not happen again. And I think that's where we focus is yes, wild land, want those people to be successful, do your fuels mitigation, fire on the land, all of those things are important. But if we're going to focus on community that community, which is my focus, we have to do mitigation around the homes and the structures where we live. That means fire-resistant building materials, roofs, windows, it means zone zero, which is nothing combustible within 5 feet of your home. And all of these areas to reduce the risk before we have an ignition. Because our response is today, with over 9,000 firefighters on the palisades and eating fires, couldn't touch it. You could have put thousands more. it wouldn't have made a difference in that fire. The fuel load was too high, the winds were too strong, the drought had been there for months. Every variable that could have been mitigated to stop that from being a disaster had to be done before the ignition happened. And this is the lesson to be learned and what we must not lose focus on.

[16:35] Kevin Sofen: I guess we just got the, we unfortunately, I don't want to say cut this short, but I did want to build on that. I mean, it seems like the community risk reduction and public safety outreach is one of these things that doesn't seem as sexy and those thousand little things that can be done to continue to get ahead of the disaster. And you just spoke about that so clearly. In a minute or two, I'm curious, and just kind of the other technologies that. and you walk around here, I'm seeing a lot of these use of terrestrial cameras, use of satellites, again, this dynamic of there are ones and zeros of data and how we're leveraging different software tools to turn it into insights. quick high-level status from your take right now of technologies you're seeing that are encouraging about how, again, we can take these lessons learned and leverage some of these new tools to allow us to have a better leg up next time.

[17:26] Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell: You know, and I failed to get that in the a sweat. I get wrapped up in the fire. But the technology right now, we must use technology innovation to get ahead of this because we can't see in response mode. That means technology before, during, and after the fire. That is fuels mitigation technology like Burnbot. Amazing technology for fuels reduction. They can do, multiple times more than human, boots on the ground. They have massive robots, massive masticators. It's amazing what they can do. They're in the US, and they are also in Australia. And then we have the ignition sensors. So AI enabled cameras, AI enabled I enabled sniffing sensors that sift the changes in the atmosphere conditions because. massive military grade drones that can carry, you know, suppressant, up to 500 pounds of suppressant. When you can't fly a firehawk, these can still fly. If the winds are too high for helicopters or fixed wing, you can still get these in the air. Amazing technology. We've got exterior sprinklers on homes. We've got new satellite data that help us model and see where the fire's going, not just where it is. And so that's coming with Earthfire Alliance. We've got Skytel and Windtel who are modeling Embercast. And this is the first time we've actually talked about Inbercast and that's because of the community conflagration. So technology is going to be a driver for what we are looking at. If we're gonna match these unwinnable fights because these fires are not the same as we've had in the past, things have changed. The extreme threshold has moved and we must be prepared and technology is gonna have a major role in that.

[19:01] Kevin Sofen: So we're officially being pulled out of the podcast booth and I have like eight other questions I'd love to dive into from Data and then the presentation to give the other day on artificial intelligence and that for one, but we're gonna have to save that for another day. But to finish us out here, I was curious and hearing, is there any sort of in your evolved role outside of the USFA now, or just kind of in general in life, is there any quote or words of wisdom that you kind of think about as you continue to fight this good-fight, Lori, any quote or kind of final thought you could leave us with here today.

[19:28] Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell: You know I have a quote that I sort of live by. And it is what is my driver for what I do. It is, I don't know what you'll do in the world, but those who found a way to serve will be the happiest. And I'm paraphrasing that horribly. But if you wanna be happy in life, find a way to serve. And that is a quote that has served me well. And that is where my passion comes from, is out of a role of service. And my space has been with the fire service. And so I will continue to do that as we move forward.

[20:03] Kevin Sofen: Thank you Lori for all your service. and I look forward to continuing to serve alongside you. I love, I love that, Kevin.

[20:07] Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell: Thank you so much.

[20:08] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, Lori. Appreciate it. And that's a wrap this episode of the Smart Firefighting podcast. If you found value in this conversation, hit like, leave a comment, share it to someone and tell us what you enjoyed most. Take care and thanks for listening.