Legacy of High-Rise Fire Risks in Dubai

The issues discussed in this article (published June 2013) have since resurfaced numerous times, most recently following the New Year’s Eve 2015 Fire at The Address Hotel, which prompted one fire expert to warn that fatalities were all but inevitable in Dubai given that the problems outlined below have still not been tackled

Cost-conscious developers have left a legacy of fire risk in many of the United Arab Emirates’ iconic high-rise towers. Many fear this legacy will soon cost lives.

Around 70 percent of the UAE’s high-rise buildings are thought to be covered in aluminium composite panels, which have been favoured by developers keen to keep costs down without compromising aesthetics. The problem with the panels is that the thermoplastic core sandwiched in their centre is highly flammable and causes fire to spread rapidly up and down the building.

The panels are thought to be responsible for the spread of several high-rise fires in Dubai and Sharjah over the last 18 months, including the April fire at the Al Haffeez Tower and the fire that gutted the Tamweel Tower in Dubai in November.

Fire engulfs the Tamweel Tower in Dubai in November. Flammable materials
can be seen falling to the ground.Tom Bell-Wright, who founded an international fire safety consulting firm in Dubai in 1995, told us:

These panels suddenly hit the UAE market about 10 or 12 years ago, and I suppose no one here knew about this issue — except, of course, the manufacturers, including some very large firms in the Far East, who apparently chose to keep quiet about it.
We came to know about them after investigating an arson in an unfinished twin tower project in Doha. I remember that there was only one supplier in the market offering the fire retardant type of panel when we started to insist that that type alone was acceptable. This was about 2006.

Ban on panels
The UAE has recently introduced a ban on the panels for new buildings. However, this does not solve the problem of the huge volume of buildings still clad with these panels, Bell-Wright said.

Owners don’t see why they should pay for the expensive replacement of panels which were not illegal when they were installed. There are proposed strategies to protect installed panels where they could come in contact with sufficient flammable materials which, if ignited themselves, could generate sufficient energy to ignite the panels, such as on balconies, near dumpsters, or cars, for example. Another strategy that has been mentioned is to replace the panels on every third or fourth floor, providing a fire break which would contain the blaze.

The panels are inexpensive and come in many durable colours/finishes, so they are an attractive solution for a cost-conscious developer. They may take some time to ignite, but once a fire gets hot enough to burn through to the core of the panel, the fire will spread very rapidly up and down the building, even causing burning droplets to fall from the building and spread the fire to other buildings and ground-level objects such as cars.

In an article in the latest issue of Fire Middle East magazine, Andy Dean of Exova Warringtonfire wrote that the fire spread risk of these panels may not be picked up by traditional fire tests for building facades.

Whether or not the facade of the building has a fire resistance capability, it must also perform in at least two other important fire-related ways. Firstly, the materials used have to limit flame spread — and it is lamentably apparent that some of the materials used on the buildings in recent fires may not have been suitable.

Also, the ASTM E84 and BS 476 Part 7 tests, which are traditionally used to determine a material’s surface spread, are not aggressive enough to challenge ACP panels effectively, Dean wrote. The fire doesn’t penetrate the panel and release “the dragon inside.” He recommends that panels like this be tested using NFPA 285 or BS 8414 to generate enough heat to evaluate fire spread.

In the meantime, fire safety experts will be watching and waiting for the next high-rise fire in the region and ultimately who will take responsibility when and if it results in a fatality.