Tasmanian buildings at risk of inferno

ON June 14, 2017, the world watched in horror as the 24storey Grenfell Apartment Tower in West London was engulfed in flames, a tragedy that led to the loss of 80 lives.

Sparked by an electrical fault, the flames reached the top floor in just 15 minutes, predominantly because the tower’s external aluminium cladding panels with a highly flammable polyethylene core. Firefighters reported the aluminium cladding panels fell on them like molten lava.

Three years earlier on November 25, 2014, a fire broke out in an eighth floor apartment of the Melbourne docklands Lacrosse building.

The speed and ferocity of the vertical spread of the fire drew attention to the implications for safety and the use of non-compliant external cladding after a highly flammable polyethylene core was identified as the catalyst for the blaze.

Lacrosse was a shot across the bow for Australian regulators. All premiers and chief ministers attended a Building Ministers Forum and agreed that measures should be taken to address the use of high-risk building products such as combustible cladding and a register should be established.

A regulation impact statement for consultation on non-compliant use of External Cladding Products on Buildings was circulated through the Australian Building Codes Board across all levels of government — but in Tasmania, the Hodgman Government failed to make

Jenna Butler

changes to regulating the use of highly flammable aluminium cladding panels.

In the fallout of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull requested all states to initiate an audit of aluminium cladding panels and the Hodgman Government finally was compelled to act on combustible cladding.

The Launceston General Hospital was identified as a building of “high risk” and, a year later, remedial action was undertaken to replace the external cladding.

But the government audit finding that only one Tasmanian building required urgent attention is a nonsense.

The audit confirmed there are 42 buildings that have highly combustible aluminium polyethylene core external cladding. Due to sprinkler systems and the locations of the exit points however, they are classified as “at low risk”.

But so was Melbourne’s Neo200 apartment complex

which caught fire in January 2019 and, despite its low-risk rating, witnesses reported it “went up like a firecracker”. Since this incident, Victorian fire authorities announced that all buildings classified as low-risk would be reassessed.

It is incumbent now on the Tasmanian Government and Building and Construction Minister Elise Archer to do the same. Ms Archer should call for a ban on highly flammable combustible aluminium panel external cladding on multistorey buildings in Tasmania immediately.

“Low risk” buildings are not safe, in fact they are just as unsafe as “high risk” structures and it is time for the Hodgman Government to take decisive action to improve safety.

There needs to be regard taken for the safety of not only people living or working in multistorey buildings in Tasmania but those who will first respond in the event of a fire. The fact that there are 42 buildings in Tasmania that do not boast sufficient evidence of compliance with Australian Standards or the Building Code is ominous. It would be foolish and negligent to simply trust that the external cladding is fire resistant and safe. If the objective of the audit into external cladding was to safeguard occupants, the Government has failed.

On the ABC’s Four Corners, Australian fire safety engineer Tony Enright said: “A kilogram of polyethylene will release the same amount of energy as a kilogram of petrol, and it gets worse than that because polyethylene is denser than petrol too.” Polyethylene filled aluminium cladding is used because it is cheap, easy to apply and attractive.

But it’s not OK that an estimated 51 per cent of buildings constructed in the past decade across Australia have non-compliant external building cladding. It’s not OK the Government has been aware of this important issue since 2014 but has done nothing to mitigate it.

We need to be sure that our building cladding — on residential blocks, on government buildings and other workplaces — is safe.

There is no risk that is an acceptable risk.