Passive fire failure puts lives at risk
New Zealand has been lucky not to have a multiple-death fire tragedy in a high-rise apartment or office block because many buildings’ passive fire systems are compromised.
Delegates at the ‘‘Passive Fire Compliance: What You Don’t Know’’ conference in Auckland on Friday heard that New Zealand had achieved ‘‘deregulation by incompetency’’ in fire safety.
They shared stories of incompetent passive fire design and installation, which is leaving lives under threat and building owners facing insurance-premium rises.
But the Fire Protection Association (FPA) has begun moves that it hopes will drive the cowboys from its industry.
Since the Grenfell Tower fire in London, which claimed 72 lives, a global spotlight has fallen on the adequacy of fire protection systems.
Bryan Tedford from conference sponsor IAG, the country’s largest insurer of commercial buildings, said passive fire system problems existed at about two-thirds of the 5000 commercial and large residential buildings IAG assessed a year.
‘‘We have a vested interest in making sure the design, the maintenance and the upkeep are maintaining these passive fire protections. It’s critical to the safety of our customers, and to the whole of the economy,’’ he said.
IAG had to make ‘‘tough decisions’’, which included lifting premiums or putting exclusions on policies if the building owner did not stump up the money to fix the problems.
Passive fire systems include constructing firecontainment ‘‘cells’’ within buildings – walls that slow fire and keep it out of escape routes long enough for people to evacuate.
But the conference heard that passive fire safety was too often an afterthought in the design and construction of a building, including during renovations.
Fire engineer Alan Page from the consultancy Olsson Fire and Risk said that, during the lifetime of buildings, incompetent tradies were compromising passive fire safety by punching holes through fire walls to pass cables and ducts through, and then sealing them with substances such as flammable foam, or even just leaving gaping holes.
Ed Claridge, principal fire engineer at the Auckland Council, said it was time for passive fire installation work to become a ‘‘restricted trade’’, which could only be done by licensed tradespeople with appropriate training.
‘‘This No 8 wire mentality ... where anyone can call themselves an expert has no place in an industry where we are trying to protect lives,’’ Claridge said.
Lobbying is under way in a bid to get the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to begin work to restrict fire safety work to suitably qualified and experienced people.
Joe Gilmartin, a passive fire expert from Wellington’s Shearer Fire, was working on the FPA project to establish a qualification and training pathway, which should be ready early next year, to pave the way for regulation of the trade.
New Zealand did not lack for competent people, fire-safety engineers at the conference said.
But, delegates said, developers and building owners could shop around for friendly experts to sign off their building warrant of fitness or to certify that passive fire systems met legal requirements even when they didn’t.
British expert Gary Strong from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors is involved in a project to create global passive fire-safety standards for buildings.
Strong, who was involved in the investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire, said it had provided a once-in-two-decade chance to improve global fire safety, before the focus of authorities moved onto new concerns.
‘‘With mass migration into cities, more and more of these tall towers are going to be built.’’
In one case in the United Kingdom, the remediation costs to replace flammable aluminium panel cladding similar to that on the Grenfell Tower was about £75,000 (NZ$144,000).
The costs in New Zealand could be high, too. Ron Green from Fire Group Consulting said one resthome client faced a bill for $160,000 to install fire walls at one of its residences, but had subsequently found similar problems in its other homes.