Progress made during the first year of NIST Grant No. 60NANB8D0849 for the period ending August 14, 1989 is reported here. The overall objective of the grant is to understand the basic mechanisms of upward flame spread and to develop a methodology to predict the flame spread on practical wall materials, appropriately verified by experiments. In this report, progress made on the following tasks is described in individual sections, upward flame spread experiments, mathematical model, local mass loss rate apparatus, heat conduction in the interior of burning walls, and Gardon heat flux gage calibration.