Tower infernos

All buildings must have a sustainable fire-prevention and protection strategy in place

Six people required hospital treatment after a fire gutted 17 floors of a 33-storey residential building in the Al Nahda area of Sharjah in early November.

Fire alarms sounded throughout the Al Aneeqah Tower as the blaze broke out at 12:50. The high-rise tower was successfully evacuated by fire rescue services before the blaze grew out of control.

Those victims airlifted to hospital included two Jordanian men suffering from smoke inhalation, as well as a Palestinian mother and her three children. No other casualties were reported. The Director General of Sharjah Civil Defence, Brigadier Abdullah Saeed Al Suwaid, was unable to comment on the cause of the fire when contacted by Construction Week.

However, reports from a senior official from the Sharjah Civil Defence quoted in the Khaleej Times daily indicate the initial investigation showed that the fire started as a result of an electrical short circuit in an apartment on the eighth floor.

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High-rise fires pose the biggest danger. Being inherently more difficult for a fire service to tackle, they cause more damage than any other structural fire. Last month, for example, hundreds of families and individuals were forced to evacuate a 46-storey tower in Abu Dhabi following a fire as a result of an electrical fault.

With the number of residential and commercial high-rise towers in the Middle East, precautions taken by facility managers (FMs) can make a significant difference when it comes to fire prevention. “Commercially the FM needs to ensure the reliability and effectiveness of fire prevention and protection in order to sustain and develop businesses,” says Enoc chief fire and safety compliance officer Nabeel Ali.

WSP ME offers a fire consultancy service, providing independent advice on the most appropriate fire safety measures that can be taken, including fire safety management procedures and preventative systems, relative to the risk. “We need to stay up to date with the developments in the fire-protection industry to ensure we are familiar with the latest technologies, particularly due to the change in risks and the development of more advanced solutions,” says WSP Middle East principal fire engineer Robert Davies.

“It should be the responsibility of the FM companies to ensure regular fire-risk assessments are conducted and fire-safety management policies and procedures are developed for each premises,” he says. “[This] will identify potential hazards so these can be mitigated to a reasonable level.”

Though it may seem obvious, water is proving a highly efficient and environment-friendly way to fight fires when opposed to gas alternatives. At a fire safety event held at the Habtoor Grand in Dubai, Tyco described Watermist as one of its mose effective products yet. “It is becoming more and more popular. The Europe and MENA market is somewhere in the order of $300m,” commented sales manager Alan Elder.

Watermist works using a reduced droplet size. When a droplet of water vaporises, it expands some 1,600 times. Because heat absorption is a function of surface area and not volume, smaller droplets mean more surface area and therefore faster heat absorption.When we look at fire-extinguishing system mechanisms in operation, the inert gases work by removing the oxygen level in the enclosure typically to a concentration of less than 12%. Inert gases used at this concentration are safe for humans.

“Chemical systems operate on the principle of removing heat as their main extinguishing mechanism. Traditional chemical agents such as Halon 1301 have very high chemical interaction with flame. Halon 1301’s principal extinguishing mechanism is a chemical, whereas the next-generation products work by heat removal,” explains Elder.