Fire Dept. acts against fires in abandoned buildings
The Colombo Fire Department will soon issue new, precautionary regulations for abandoned buildings a week after two fires broke out in the abandoned Krrish building in Colombo Fort, causing extensive damage to the building.
The fires spread to four floors which the fire department could not reach at once and required three fire trucks to extinguish.
Colombo Fire Chief P.D.K Wilson told The Sunday Times Business that the department is in discussion with the Urban Development Authority (UDA) on these regulations. “After the discussions, we will set out to formulate a set of guiding precautionary measures and send it to the parties to comply with them in abandoned buildings,” he added.
Recently, the department had a meeting with the Construction and Engineering Development Authority (CEDA), the UDA and the Buildings Department. Mr. Wilson said that abandoned buildings do not come under their jurisdiction in terms of fire safety. It generally comes under the UDA, he added.
According to Mr. Wilson, apart from the Krrish building, there is only one other high-rise that has been abandoned which is the building opposite the Cinnamon Life complex.
Explaining the current regulations, Mr. Wilson said that a builder has to obtain a fire safety clearance from the fire department before constructing an apartment. “They produce all safety standards to us according to our specification and based on that report and an inspection, we issue a certificate,” he said.
There are two CEDA-mandated requirements for safety in buildings, he added. The first is called active requirements which specify the activities which are taken to abstain and to detect fire. The passive requirements are those that are adhered to after the structural completion, such as the height of the step, etc to abstain from fires, Mr. Wilson explained. He also noted that a builder has to submit a building plan to the UDA and the UDA will only approve it after the fire department issues a certificate. Explaining the recent fire at the controversial building, he said the construction of the building was abandoned four years ago. “Therefore, the building’s temporary fire detection system was neglected. These systems need to be evaluated weekly, monthly, and yearly. Because it was abandoned, this was not done.”
Recently, the Commercial High Court had allowed clearing the iron, beams timber etc from the building as these had started falling onto the pedestrians nearby.
Mr. Wilson said that a separate company was hired for the clearance. “They used the frame cutting method where they take Acetone and oxygen to generate a flame to cut the iron at 1500 centigrade temperature. This was done on the 35th floor. The cinders have fallen onto the timber there and caught fire.”
He said as a safety precaution; this company has to have a safety officer when this frame-cutting is done. The safety officer has to issue a ‘hot’ work permit for the frame cutting, he added. He also noted that the subsequent second fire happened due to small cinders remaining after dousing the first fire, which nobody had detected.
He added the safety officer had agreed to do only ‘cool’ work in the building.
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