“My husband tried to use the fire hose but there was no
water. Not even one drop came from it…It is just there for decoration.”
So said one of the residents of Tamweel Tower in Jumeira Lake
Towers, as reported in 7DAYS.
It’s a miracle then that no-one died or was injured in the
fire early on 18th November. Over six hundred residents, but
according to news reports everyone got out safely.
Questions will inevitably be asked about how a building made
of steel, concrete and glass managed to burn so comprehensively. One resident
cited the cladding, which “…is cheap fibreglass and it just erupts into flames…”
Well done to the ‘amazing’ Dubai Civil Defence for dealing with the fire and
then helping to search the building for people and recoverable belongings.
It’s incidents such as this that make me realise how
fortunate I’ve been when living in various apartments. My first place was in a
12-storey block on Al Wahda Street in Sharjah. I noticed that the fire
extinguishers on my floor and elsewhere had pressure gauges pointing at ‘Empty’,
and I expressed my concerns regularly to the building management on the
Mezzanine floor of the same building. Nothing was done. I went and complained
to Sharjah Civil Defence (which is the Fire Brigade) but was told it was the
building owner’s responsibility. I also complained that the fire escape
stairways were completely blocked at ground level by old mattresses and
moribund bicycles. Again, nothing was done. I moved out.
The next place, Grumpy Goat Tower in Sharjah was much newer
and much better appointed in the Department of Fire and Life Safety, with smoke
detectors on each landing, sprinkler systems and a fire alarm. Not that the
alarm was ever tested in the three years I was there, but at least the hose reels
and fire extinguishers had stickers showing that they’d been signed off as
operational. Here, the problem was limited to blocked fire escapes. There seems
to be a habit of parking supermarket trolleys, stepladders, bicycles at the
bottom of the stairs. This might be OK from day to day, but what if everyone in
the building comes piling down the stairs in the dark following a fire alarm at
2am? People will die in the crush.
My place in Doha was extremely well appointed with smoke
alarms in every kitchen, a sprinkler system that extended into every apartment
as well as the common areas and under-building parking, and even a fire main. I
guess that the Qatar authorities mandated comprehensive fire protection in all
new builds.
What about fire alarms? I used to work in a building where
the alarm was tested for a few seconds every Thursday at precisely 10am. If the
bells rang at any other time, or if the 10am bell didn’t shut up after a few
seconds, it was to be treated as a full evacuation. The firm even had appointed
fire marshals whose job was to drag people from their computers (“Leave me
alone; it’s only a drill”) and force them down the fire escape.
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