Crisis Time !

When breaking news brought vivid pictures of a twenty-four story London apartment tower encased in flames in June of 2017 we were blissfully unaware that hundreds of similar buildings in Sydney faced a similar fate.  Grenfell Tower was a concrete building, but its outer surface had been reclad with an attractive urethane and aluminium facing and when fire escaped from a unit it travelled up the exterior until the entire tower was a flaming torch in the night sky.  Seventy two residents were trapped in their apartments and died at the scene.

Very quickly this disaster brought a review of tower cladding in Sydney and it seems that this combustable cladding was common on both new buildings and others that had undergone renovation.  It did not comply with the relevant building code and from a safety point of view it needed to be removed and replaced with a safer alternative.

The stumbling block to furtheer action was the cost.  In most cases the developer had taken their profits and gone and the actual builder didn't have the asset base to deliver a remedy.  The quotes to do what was needeed were running into million dollar figures and it looks like the people who bought in good faith are stuck with the bill.

Here we are, five years after the Grenfell Tower disaster and little work has actually progressed.  Thousands of people are living in what can only be called " fire traps " and now two hundred and ninety nine aparrtment owners are receiving notices from the city fire department.that will end their right to occupy their home because of this fire danger.

This cost spotlighht is now shining on the New South Wales Government.  In Britain the rectification cost is being partly met by the United Kingdom government and in Victoria where similar dangerous cladding is also widespread the state government is also contributing to recification costs.  No such moves are underway in NSW and individual owners are facing crippling bills that run into thousands of dollars and this is coming at the worst possible time with many out of work because of the coronavirus problem.

The NSW approach seems more concerned with improving the building code so that similar problems can be avoided in the future.  The councils which have the job of applying the building code claim to not have the funds to help with this rectification work and many apartment owners are facing penury.  We simply can not let families continue to live in buildings which have the potential to become another Grenfell Tower diaster.

We have been lucky, so far.   Several cladding fires have been caught in time and extinguished, but that luck will not hold indefinitely.  At the very least, the state government is expected to offer low interest, long term loans to spread that rectification cost within the owners ability to pay.   Now that these fire department threats are appearing in letter boxes that relief is becoming urgent.   Only the state and Federal governments have the deep pockets to fund a disaster of this magnitude.