June 9, 2006

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Thursday’s fire at a downtown Birmingham warehouse holding 1 million pairs of shoes took place under “best case scenario” atmospheric conditions, said Jason Kirby, Ph.D, UAB environmental engineering expert. The thick black plumes of smoke essentially blew straight up, minimizing the impact on urban air quality.

This might not have been the case if the blaze had occurred in the wintertime, Kirby said, when less favorable atmospheric conditions are more likely to be present. In a worse atmospheric scenario, a cold layer of air lies below a warmer layer of air, which may create a “ceiling” in the atmosphere and trap pollutants near the ground level.

Kirby is teaching a graduate-level air quality modeling class this summer and has integrated the warehouse fire, which was visible from the roof of UAB’s Hoehn Engineering Building, into lecture materials.