Dubai: Contractors are circumventing the UAE’s fire safety code by using inferior claddings on high-rise office and residential towers, said a top Dubai Civil Defence official at the sixth annual Fire Safety Technology Forum on Wednesday.
Shoddy workmanship is believed to be the reason for at least a dozen high-rise fires in the UAE since 2012 that forced the evacuation of hundreds of families.
Major-General Rashid Al Matroushi, Director of Dubai Civil Defence, speaking at the forum, said, “There are all kinds of cladding material, some are original, some are poor-quality copies. It is the responsibility of contractors to install high-quality materials that are in line with the [fire safety] code. The existing code already has all the specifications, however, the amendments will make them stricter.”
The UAE Fire and Life Safety Code revisions were expected to be unveiled at the forum on Wednesday, but Maj-Gen Al Matroushi said the release was delayed pending final changes to the document. He said he will meet with senior Dubai Municipality officials next week to hammer out last-minute provisions of the code.
“We are in the final cooking stages,” he said. The revised code should be released in coming weeks, he said.
He declined to elaborate on a Gulf News report that the new code will call for only fire-resistant A2 aluminium cladding panels to be used on new high-rise towers that industry experts say will not allow fire to spread across high-rise facades.
Maj-Gen Al Matroushi, however, downplayed the severity of fires in towers which have cladding. “Less than one per cent of fires in the UAE are major, and in the past year, we have only had five such tower fires in the UAE. However, we are addressing this issue of building materials,” he said.
From their observations, the chief problem they are trying to address is bad construction practice, he said.
An example of bad construction work is when contractors install a fire-retardant door, as per specifications, but the hinges, doorknobs, and frame — for example — are not fire resistant, explained Maj-Gen Al Matroushi.
“This is how they fool the system. We cannot send a Civil Defence official to watch every single step of the construction process. However, Dubai Civil Defence and Dubai Municipality do conduct periodic on-site inspections as required,” he said.
Dubai Civil Defence had a difficult time putting out the New Year’s fire at the Address hotel given the lack of access to some areas of the building, he said.
One of the challenges was that the trucks were not able to access the side of the hotel facing Burj Khalifa, because there is no roadway that accesses that area at the foot of the building where the fire started.
“Thank God, we managed to deal with the fire from inside the building.” Maj-Gen Al Matroushi said, “Even during the celebrations, the firefighters kept doing their job. Furniture and curtains and material were already up in flames.”
He said the Address building was built some 10 years ago, before the first UAE Fire and Life Safety Code was released in 2006, “It was following the US National Fire Protection Association and the European fire code, as there was no UAE code. Those codes did not have a provision about having passageways around the building for fire vehicles.”
Mobile recovery room for firefighters
Dubai: Dubai firefighters are getting a new mobile recovery room that will be erected at emergency scenes to allow them to recuperate in between long firefighting shifts.
The unit, which costs Dh300,000, was on display at the sixth annual Fire Safety Technology Forum on Wednesday.
The air-conditioned portable shelter can be set up in under 15 minutes, and can accommodate 10 beds and between five to six chairs.
“This was one of the takeaways from the Address fire. Firefighters worked long hours and were resting on the side of the roads, which is standard practice, but we thought this shelter would be a better way to give them rest,” he said.
Dubai Civil Defence has asked the shelter manufacturer to install pure oxygen masks to help the firefighters recover faster from battling the smoke and heat.
