Living with Fire Risk !

Memories of the disastrous Grenfell Tower fire in London are starting to fade and so is the urgency of identifying and removing similar fire hazards in high rise buildings in Australia.  It seems that the body corporate people responsible to some apartment owners are facing the conundrum that this is just too costly to fix - and too risky to leave unattended.

There are 300,00 strata buildings in Australia and the material that poses a risk has only been on the market for about ten years.  As a consequence, buildings that are more than ten years old should be risk free - unless they have had an external renovation.  Beware the older building that has had its apartments brought up to modern standards because the exterior may have been given a face lift to disguise its age, bringing it into this new risk category.

Many apartment dwellers are unsure of the exact nature of the risk.  The Grenfell Tower was suited out on its exterior with thermoplastic core cladding, polyurethane sandwiched between two layers of aluminium to give a fresh, modern look to the building.  This is usually fixed to the exterior leaving a small air gap between the cladding and the building facing, allowing a possible fire to spread rapidly.  It is perfectly safe if the " meat in the sandwich " is a non flammable core but it seems that in the interest of gaining market share by way of price reductions some manufacturers opted for a cheaper core by using a flammable material.

Even when this is in place, the risk to a building varies.  That depends on the height and type of building and the placement of inner fire rated walls.  Another factor is whether or not the building has a fire sprinkler system to contain the fire within individual apartments.   One of the tragedies of Grenfell Towers is that a simple unit fire got so completely our of control that it breached the unit containment and spread until the entire outer surface of the tower was a flaming torch.

The use of concrete floor slabs between levels is designed to stop fires progressing from floor to floor. Fire only becomes a danger factor when the type of material used allows fire to travel up the outer surface of the building, by-passing this control measure.  The Grenfell fire was a world wake-up call that gave warning of just what was possible if exterior surface control was not tightened.

NSW Fair Trading has completed an audit of the 178,000 properties at risk in this state and 1011 have ben identified as being potentially affected.  Owners have been notified by letter and urged to take the necessary measures to reduce the risk.   They would be wise to call in the necessary people with the knowledge to evaluate that risk and advise what measures are possible to lower it to an acceptable level.

Obviously, removing flammable material and replacing it with a safer product is one option, but it might be cheaper to install a sprinkler system if the design of the building has lower risk features, such as double glazing reducing the risk of fire escaping an apartment.  This is very much an individual appraisal, building by building to achieve risk reduction at an achievable price.

The other necessity is a reappraisal of the building code to make sure this lapse of judgement is never repeated.  The finger of blame will surely rest on more than one culprit and the potential for legal action for the cost of remedial action has yet to be determined, but fire safety laws on building materials needs to be tightened.   That is an essential necessity !