Fire lessons
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We are saddened by the deaths of more than 50 residents in a fire that engulfed a 28-storey building in Shanghai on Monday. Lessons, including fire prevention in high-rise residential buildings, should be learned from the tragedy.
The residential building was being renovated and was surrounded by scaffolding when it caught fire. Preliminary investigations suggest that unlicensed welders, several of whom were among the eight people put in custody yesterday, failed to follow safety procedures and caused sparks to set fire to the plastic sheets on the scaffolds. It is reported that most of the materials on the scaffolding were inflammable.
However, the fire would not have spread that fast and to the entire building had it not been for a strong wind. The disaster could also have been avoided had the welders or their leaders had enough awareness that sparks from welding would very likely cause a fire on such a windy day.
One of the residents says that the building had been in a mess for a month during the renovation, and workers threw cigarette butts everywhere. She complained to the property management office about safety hazards several times, but to no avail.
The death toll would not have been so high had residents living in the buildings been equipped with the knowledge of how to evacuate. Nor would the fire have claimed so many lives had the firefighting facilities within the building been effective enough.
Though the country's most advanced firefighting facilities are in Shanghai, firefighters here still spent four hours putting out the fire. The message is the taller the building the harder it is to fight a fire. So with more and more residents moving into high-rise buildings in cities, there must be enough fire prevention facilities available and residents must be taught how to use such facilities. In addition, residents must be taught how to evacuate efficiently should the need arise.
Controls must be tightened on any high-rise renovation projects. Scaffolds and the plastic sheets used to contain the dust should be fireproof or there must be contingency measures in place to make sure they do not catch fire.
Construction teams must tighten control of their workers. Anyone who has not received enough training or has no license to do such a potentially dangerous job as welding should never be allowed to do it. Even ordinary workers should be informed of fire prevention, such as disposing of cigarette butts safely.
With high-rise buildings now becoming the majority of residences in most cities and real estate projects under construction almost everywhere, it is more than imperative to make construction workers follow rules when it comes to fire prevention. And it is equally imperative to equip residents with enough know-how on how to save their own lives once a fire occurs.
These should be the lessons we learn from Shanghai's fatal fire.
