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There should have been fire sprinklers in Loafers Lodge, and the fact they were not legally required has exposed a tragic deficiency in the Building Code, says an expert.
At least six people died in a fire in the building on Monday night. FENZ has confirmed there were no sprinklers in the building.
“A building like that definitely should have sprinklers in it. There’s no question about it. Is it required under the Building Code? No it’s not, and that’s a deficiency in the Building Code,” said Dr Andy Buchanan, a structural engineer who specialises in fire engineering.
It was not a legal requirement that all larger buildings had sprinkler systems, though they were compulsory in hospitals, mental health facilities, and other secure places, the Emeritus Professor of the University of Canterbury added.
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”There are a lot of incentives for sprinklers, but sprinkler systems are expensive and a lot of people will avoid putting them in,” he said.
Buchanan said buildings that did not have sprinklers had to meet other requirements.
“Fire safety in a building is not a simple matter. It’s all about alerting people to the fire and there are lots of regulations about the safe path and the safe distance from where you happen to be to the exit.
“If you don’t have sprinklers, there are more stringent requirements about some of these things,” he said.
Buchanan believed sprinklers should be compulsory for buildings of a certain size and height, and depending on its use.
He said any building over five-storeys should definitely have fire sprinklers, as should any residential building housing many people.
“The best thing you can do to make a building safe is to put in sprinklers. There is no question about that,” he said.
“It’s a huge omission in our laws. As far as I am aware you build a 20-storey building and not have sprinklers,” Buchanan said.
“By and large the New Zealand regulations, especially for tall buildings, are very slack compared with the rest of the world,” he said.
Because the building was erected in 1971, there wouldn’t have been a fire engineer involved in its construction who might have considered fire safety “in a cohesive way”, and fire safety would likely have been addressed on an “ad hoc basis” with the building’s changes of use.
All buildings were required to have a fire/smoke alarms, and all buildings were required to meet the Fire Safety and Evacuation of Buildings Regulations 2006, which require building owners to maintain the means of escape from fire in the building.
These regulations are governed by FENZ.
FENZ was asked if the building had an approved evacuation scheme as required by the regulations.
Bruce Stubbs, Incident Controller at the Wellington fire said FENZ was preparing to begin its investigation into the cause of the fire.
“The investigation is expected to take some days, and we will work with our partner agencies as this progresses. While the investigation is underway it would be premature for us to comment further,” he said.
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