U.S. buildings, NFL stadium check panels amid fire fears
In promotional brochures, a U. S. company boasted of the “stunning visual effect” its shimmering aluminum panels created in an NFL stadium, an Alaskan high school and a luxury hotel along Baltimore’s Inner Harbor that “soars 33 stories into the air.”
Those same panels — Reynobond composite material with a polyethylene core — also were used in the Grenfell Tower apartment building in London. British authorities say they’re investigating whether the panels helped spread the blaze that ripped across the building’s outer walls, killing at least 80 people.
The panels, also called cladding, accentuate a building’s appearance and also improve energy efficiency. But they are not recommended for use in buildings above 40 feet because they are combustible. In the wake of last month’s fire at the 24-story, 220-foot-high tower in London, Arconic Inc. announced it would no longer make the product available for high-rise buildings.
Determining which bui ldings might be wrapped in the material in the United States is difficult. City inspectors and building owners might not even know. In some cases, building records have been long discarded and neither the owners, operators, contractors nor architects involved could or would confirm whether the cladding was used.
That makes it virtually impossible to know whether such structures as the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront hotel (identified by Arconic’s brochures as wrapped in Reynobond PE ) are actually clad in the same material as Grenfell Tower, which was engulfed in flames in less than five minutes.
At a Thursday news conference after the publication of the AP story on the use of the cladding material in the U.S., Cleveland’s chief building official confirmed that panels on the city- owned Cleveland Browns’ football stadium are “similar if not identical” to those used on the doomed London tower, but said they pose “zero risk to the fans.”
Thomas Vanover said the panels were installed differently and that the venue’s overall cladding includes many materials.
“From these panels and this installation, there’s no risk of anything remotely close to the Grenfell tragedy,” Vanover said.
The International Building Code adopted by the U. S. requires more stringent fire testing of materials used on the sides of buildings taller than 40 feet. However, states and cities can set their own rules, said Keith Nelson, senior project architect with Intertek, a worldwide fire testing organization.