Koray Korkut
Koray Korkut is the Fire Department Director (İtfaiye Müdürü) of the Karabük Municipality Fire Department, appointed to the position in 2020. Born in 1984 in Karabük, Turkey, he began his career as a Firefighter with the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Fire Department in 2007, transferred to the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality Fire Department in 2010 where he served as Firefighter Sergeant and Fire Officer, and was appointed Fire Department Director at Karabük in 2020. He has responded to 1,000+ structural fires and 10+ major incidents including earthquakes, large wildland fires, and hazmat emergencies. He has been awarded the State Distinguished Service Medal of Turkey (Devlet Üstün Fedakarlık Madalyası). He holds an associate degree in Emergency and Disaster Management (Acil Durum ve Afet Yönetimi) and a bachelor\'s degree in Public Administration from Anadolu University. He is a certified Level 4 Fire Instructor and Level 2 Work at Heights Instructor.
Articles by Koray Korkut
How Wildland Firefighters Decide When to Fight and When to Let It Burn
Not every wildfire gets fought. The decision to commit crews to suppression — or to pull back and manage the fire's perimeter while it burns — is made through a risk-benefit framework that weighs the probability of successful suppression against the risk to the crews, the resources available, and whether the values at stake justify the exposure. LCES is the safety framework. The Ten Standard Firefighting Orders and Eighteen Watch-Out Situations are the decision boundaries. When a fire exceeds the resource capacity or the safety conditions required, the correct tactical decision is not suppression — it is management. This covers how that determination is made, what it looks like in practice, and the historical incidents that define the boundaries.
How a Strong Wind Can Turn a Routine Fire Into a Deadly Trap
Wind-driven fire does not follow the rules that residential fire training is built around. Fire moves horizontally, advances toward entry crews, and can spread faster than PPV can compensate for. This covers what wind does to fire physics, the 2005 FDNY wind-driven fatalities that changed high-rise tactics, door control technique, why PPV makes it worse, and the size-up indicators crews need before committing to interior operations.