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Maintenance of active and passive protection measures is crucial in reducing the number of fire breakouts in the region, experts in the field have said.
Following a series of recent blazes across the Gulf, specialists in fire engineering have stressed that facilities managers must take responsibility to increase the level of safety within residential and industrial areas.
Promat Fire Protection sales and marketing director Mark Lavender said maintenance of compartmentation is vital to prevent fire spread, as discrete fire zones offer perhaps the most effective means of limiting damage.
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“If a fire happens in your neighbours’ building and there is nothing to stop it spreading from their property to yours and many others, as is the case in Sharjah, Al Quoz etc. then this is a real issue.
“We know that when many companies experience fire damage, business interruption can be devastating. Statistics show that many companies never recover after a major fire. The loss of their property, assets and indeed the ability for a company to continuing trading is dramatically affected.”
Last month, Kuwait Tower was ignited by a neighbouring building, leading experts to speculate that poor maintenance and the lack of active protection systems such as sprinklers caused the breakout.
“The older apartment block was unlikely to have had a sprinkler system. In addition, the fire spread throughout the building, which would indicate that the compartmentation was not in place as it should have been or was not well maintained, leading to a far greater break-out than should have been the case,” explained Buro Happold global director of fire engineering Andy Passingham.
Residential fires are often sparked by cooking incidents, cigarettes and electrical faults, while chemical leaks and negligence are the major causes of industrial blazes.
Installation of alarms, fire fighting equipment and fire suppression systems can prevent damage and injury, but this equipment must be continually inspected, according to Garald Todd, associate director for the Fire and Risk Division at WSP.
“Management companies need to take the initiative to keep the fire and life safety systems working in proper order,” he said.
“While the Civil Defence plays a large and important part of improving the fire and life safety conditions throughout the UAE, the onus should be upon the developers, consultants, engineers and contractors to ensure buildings are designed and constructed as safely as possible, and once built, maintained,” he said.
He added that there is also a lack of knowledge among the general public when it comes to knowing how to use the fire fighting equipment: “Basic instruction on the use of these extinguishers can help prevent small fires from becoming a large, devastating fires.”
Passingham insisted that fire safety is “very much on the radar” in the Gulf and a modern apartment building in the region would likely to be fitted out with smoke detectors and sprinklers.
But when it comes to fire safety in the region, the level of standards need to be dramatically increased, according to Lavender.
“The situation is improving but slowly, and not at the pace that should be expected, especially due to the number of high profile fires that are occurring on a regular basis. The need to change the law, introduce legislation or enforce fire safety regulations should all be considered and driven forward,” he said.
The fires that sparked the fears
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FEATURED COMMENT
The issue is not the quantity of fire safety measures installed in a building, the issue is the quality of installation