Vinh Street apartment building is in fear of fire
(Baonghean.vn) - The subjectivity and lack of responsibility in fire prevention and fighting (PCCC) work of investors and the poor awareness of residents in high-rise apartment buildings in Vinh city are currently very alarming.
Most high-rise apartment buildings, after being completed and handed over to customers, do not have safety barriers on the windows and balconies of the apartments. The investor explained that this is due to fire safety design regulations: windows and balconies must be left open so that in the event of a fire, people can escape through the balcony or window, and rescue forces can easily access to put out the fire and save people.
However, most households believe that leaving the balconies and windows open like that is unsafe. Firstly, thieves can easily break into the house, secondly, it is dangerous for children. There have been many cases of children accidentally falling from high-rise buildings while playing and dying because the balconies and windows have no barriers. Therefore, after buying an apartment, people have to make iron and stainless steel barriers for the windows and balconies, creating solid "tiger cages".
This leads to the risk of fire and explosion. If the main door is stuck and cannot be opened or the outside hallway is on fire and filled with smoke, people will accidentally lock themselves in the house with no way out. It will be difficult for rescue forces to enter or take too much time to save people.
The solution to the "tiger cage" problem suggested by some construction experts is that when making protective barriers, people should not weld them shut but should make an emergency exit door that is locked during normal times and can be easily opened in case of fire.
According to fire safety regulations, the doors of the escape routes must not have locks so that they can be opened freely. For buildings with a height of more than 15m, these doors must be solid or made of tempered glass and must be equipped with a self-closing mechanism and a sealed door slot to ensure that the pressure outside the corridor is always higher than the outside to prevent smoke from entering when a fire occurs.
With such a function, the door from the hallway to the emergency staircase must always close automatically when no one is going in or out. However, according to a survey by reporters, in many high-rise apartment buildings, after a period of use, these doors have damaged the self-closing part and have not been repaired. Therefore, the door blocking the smoke from entering the emergency exit is left wide open all day. People even use bricks, stones and sometimes even fire extinguishers to block the door so that it is always open for convenient movement. This leads to the risk that if a fire occurs, the entire emergency staircase will be filled with smoke and the emergency exit will become useless.
In addition, in apartment buildings, many households “occupy” hallways and stairwells to store their belongings. This hinders rescue vehicles as well as the ability of residents to escape in the event of a fire. The older the apartment building, the more common the situation of “occupying” hallways and exits becomes.
Although the fire safety regulations clearly state: "Evacuation exits must not be blocked by any structures or obstacles leading to the outside", in most high-rise apartment buildings, investors and management boards always lock the doors at the emergency exits to the rooftop.
When asked, the investor replied that because there are water supply equipment on the rooftop, it must be locked to prevent vandalism, and also to prevent children from playing on the rooftop and falling, endangering their lives.
It should be noted that according to practical experience, when a fire breaks out, if the fire is on a lower floor, people on the upper floors are advised to run to the roof via the emergency exit to avoid smoke inhalation and to be rescued. In the fire at the Carina apartment building in Ho Chi Minh City, many people died unjustly because when running to the roof, they got stuck in the locked door, and ended up getting stuck and suffocating from the smoke.
Therefore, to protect assets, investors should use other solutions, such as building a separate protective wall for assets, and to ensure safety for children, build a surrounding wall. According to fire safety regulations, the emergency exit to the rooftop must always be open.
Currently in Vinh city, there are a number of apartment buildings that violate regulations on construction density, apartments are built in inappropriate locations, infrastructure is not guaranteed, the campus is too narrow and there are even apartment buildings where investors take advantage of all the land to build buildings dozens of floors high without any campus, no space for fire trucks to approach in case of fire.
Speaking to Nghe An Newspaper, Colonel Le Xuan Hoai - Deputy Director of the Provincial Fire Police Department said: "The subjective mentality of the majority of residents and investors is still an alarming issue in high-rise apartment buildings in Nghe An. Although over the years, the Provincial Fire Police Department has been very active in propaganda work and organized many training sessions, violations of fire prevention and fighting regulations are still common. In many cases, when a fire breaks out, the fire department comes to put out the fire, but many fire hydrants in the apartment buildings do not have water. It takes a lot of time to send fire trucks to bring water from other places and does not ensure timeliness to reduce damage to people and property."
According to the assessment of the Provincial Fire Police, the existing problems in apartment buildings in Nghe An are: After the project is put into use, compliance with maintenance of fire prevention and fighting equipment and means has not been given due attention by investors and building management boards; Especially when the investor "ends its responsibility" and hands it over to the local management, it is very difficult to mobilize regular financial resources to maintain the fire prevention and fighting equipment system according to prescribed standards.
Even on the morning of March 28, Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee Huynh Thanh Dien and leaders of the Department of Construction, Department of Natural Resources and Environment, and Vinh City People's Committee inspected the PVNC2-CT02 apartment building of Thanh Vinh Investment, Production and Trade Joint Stock Company (under Nghe An Petroleum Minerals Corporation) and discovered that this apartment building had not installed a fire prevention and fighting system but still allowed people to live there.
In the face of the situation of many fires occurring continuously in recent days in many places across the country, comrade Nguyen Xuan Duong - Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee has issued an official dispatch requesting the Provincial Fire Police to preside over and coordinate with relevant agencies to organize inspections of fire prevention and fighting work at apartment buildings in Nghe An and request relevant organizations and individuals to strictly implement fire prevention and fighting measures; Correct and strictly handle cases of violations and non-implementation.
