Residential area is where people focus on living and doing business, it is the most popular residential model in Vietnam. Currently, with the speed of urbanization increasingly rapidly, many residential areas are formed, especially those with high risks of fire and explosion.

Residential areas at high risk of fire and explosion are residential areas in which there are many apartments and houses with high risk of fire and explosion, when a fire occurs there, it is very likely to become a massive fire and fall into one of the following cases [1]:

 - Belongs to residential groups in urban areas where has adjacent houses specializing in the production and trading of flammable goods with a total of 30 or more adjacent houses.

 -   Belonging hamlet, village where have houses, ancillary works, roofs, walls made of flammable materials with a total of 50 or more houses; There are craft villages specializing in the production and processing of flammable goods with a total of 25 or more houses.

The residential area at risk of fire and explosion has the following characteristics:

- In urban areas, people often build adjacent houses with a tube house design with only 1 staircase and 1 emergency exit to take advantage of the premises for business, so when a fire or explosion incident occurs, it is easy to spread fire or a big fire, making it difficult for the fire prevention and fighting forces to approach, control the fire, save lives and property.

- Due to security concerns, people tend to weld the wire mesh around the balcony on the floors to prevent thieves from breaking in. However, this is one of the difficulties, preventing firefighters from approaching the house when a fire incident occurs.

- Urban planning is spontaneous and unsynchronized, so the roads for fire trucks are still inadequate. The surface hydrant system is not up to the regulations, other water sources such as ponds and lakes have not arranged wharves to take water.

- Some residential areas have complex traffic systems with many small alleys, more than 150 meters deep, so fire trucks cannot access.

 Residential areas are built mainly for living, but there are also many households that combine living and trading in their own house, some households still use their house as storehouse. Houses that combine houses as places for business, dining, and entertainment ... are at a very high risk of fire and explosion

To raise people's awareness, it is necessary to focus on propaganda and dissemination of knowledge about fire prevention and fighting [2]. As follows:

Diversification of propaganda forms such as:

+ Organizing classes and talks about fire prevention and fighting;

+ Use banners, slogans, leaflets, panels, posters to propagate and guide skills in handling fire and explosion incidents.;

+ Make reports to broadcast on the mass media;

+ Organizing fire fighting drills for residential areas;

+ Organizing professional fire fighting contests for the civil defense force, the security force of the residential area;

+ Organizing contests to learn about fire prevention and fighting legal knowledge for women's associations;

+ Propaganda through social networks: With the current development of information technology, in order for communication to be effective, there should be a combination of the above propaganda methods with the use of social networking tools (facebook, zalo, viber, whatsapp, instagram, ...).

Knowledge of fire prevention and fighting in residential areas should include:

+ Clearly stating the characteristics and nature of danger, the possibility of fire and explosion in daily life of the households, activities of business and services in residential areas, features on architecture, traffic, water sources, types of businesses in residential areas ...

+ The causes often lead to fire and explosion such as subjective and objective causes, due to the violation of regulations on fire safety, the violation in using heat sources, electricity…

+ Preventive measures need to be taken to prevent fire and explosion occurring in households in residential areas.

 + Initial fire-fighting methods and measures, steps to handle when a fire or explosion occurs in houses in residential areas.

+ How to use common extinguishing media such as portable fire extinguishers, hoses

 References

 1. Government (2014), Decree No. 79/2014/ND-CP dated July 31st, 2014 by the Government with regard to regulating specifically the enforcement of some articles of the Law on Fire Prevention and Fighting and Law on amending and supplementing some articles of the 2013 Law on Fire Prevention and Fighting, Hanoi.

 2. National Assembly (2001), Law on Fire Prevention and Fighting, Hanoi.