Facade fire

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Grenfell Tower facade fire
Another view of the fire

A facade fire is an event in which parts of the facade of a building catch fire . The risk of severe facade fires when using combustible thermal insulation composite systems (ETICS) has been discussed by fire protection experts for years. Since the fire in Grenfell Tower on June 14, 2017, the topic has been the subject of public discussion in many countries around the world.

Causes and spread of fire

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Since easily inflammable building materials may not be used in the construction sector , it is usually not possible to ignite polystyrene insulation or other plastics used on facades. However, a “primary fire” can lead to melting after a while and, under special conditions, also to the contribution of the plastics to the progress of the fire.

The fire is about 80% of cases in a lounge in the building, from which flames burst through the ruined window to the outside and lie against the facade. External causes of fire are fires in garbage containers, carports, cars or woodsheds that are located directly on a building wall.

The fire can spread through the windows to other floors if the facade fire penetrates the building through broken window panes . Traditional wooden roof trusses with hard roofs catch fire when the flames ignite the roof box or the exposed rafters of the roof overhang.

Due to the system, rear-ventilated curtain walls have a cavity between the wall and the insulation layer. Flames and hot exhaust gases can rise in this cavity. Fire nests in these cavities cannot be seen from the outside; they can continue to glow for a long time after a fire.

For information on the fire behavior of thermal insulation composite systems and controversies following media reports on facade fires, see thermal insulation composite system # Fire behavior .

Examples

  • May 21, 2005, Berlin : A room fire develops into a full fire on the facade within approx. 20 minutes and the fire spreads to all floors above. 87 people can save themselves or be rescued (including jumping cushions , ladders and hearing aid in use), two people die. The cause of the fire power was the hardboard lining on all walls and ceilings that were infected by a television fire. The fire load per apartment was almost 10,000 liters of heating oil equivalent due to the hardboard and the inventory, while the fire load on the facade was low. The then head of operations Albrecht Broemme (now President of the THW) says the fire brigade “rescued three dozen people, some of them at the last second, from their apartments”.
  • May 14, 2012, Tour Mermoz, Roubaix (France): A fire breaks out on the first floor of the skyscraper. It spreads quickly over the facade made of aluminum composite panels with a polyethylene core to the 18 remaining floors, 1 person dies. The fire brigade needs four hours to get the fire under control; after the fire, the entire high-rise is uninhabitable.
  • July 17th 2012, Polat Towers, Istanbul (Turkey)
  • October 6, 2012, Saif Belhasa Building, Dubai (United Arab Emirates): A fire breaks out on the fourth floor of the 13-story skyscraper. It spreads quickly over the facade, which is made of aluminum composite panels with a polyethylene core, to the roof of the building. There are two injured.
  • November 18, 2012, Tamweel Tower, Dubai (United Arab Emirates): The 35-story high-rise building with a facade made of aluminum composite panels with a polyethylene core catches fire in two places. The fire spreads over the entire height of the building.
  • April 3, 2013, City Towers, Grozny (Chechnya)
  • November 24, 2013, Hamburg : At the “shoulder blade”, arsonists pushed several garbage containers (fire load 7.5 MW per container) into a narrow gap in the building between two fire walls and set them on fire. The fire walls are insulated with polystyrene, although this is not permitted with fire walls. The thermals in the building shaft cause the flames to rise particularly high and the insulation material fire under the plaster develops very quickly.
  • November 25, 2014, Lacrosse Tower, Melbourne (Australia): A fire breaks out on a balcony on the 8th floor of the 21-story high-rise building with a facade made of aluminum composite panels with a polyethylene core. It spreads to the roof of the building.
  • February 21, 2015, The Marina Torch , Dubai (United Arab Emirates): A fire breaks out on the 51st floor of the 86-story skyscraper. It spreads quickly over the facade, which is made of aluminum composite panels with a polyethylene core, to the roof of the building.
  • 14 June 2017, Grenfell Tower , London (England): A refrigerator catches fire in an apartment in the high-rise building. The flames spread to the rear-ventilated curtain wall . This consists of aluminum composite panels with a polyethylene core; the thermal insulation made of aluminum-laminated polyisocyanurate panels. The facade panels also impaired the insulation made of PIR panels, which, however, did not make the main contribution to the facade fire (e.g. in Germany they were approved as fire bars in ETICS). Much of the PIR insulation is still preserved on the facade, and its burn-off increases noticeably upwards, where the thermals carried the hot fire gases up the facade for hours. In the lower fire-exposed parts of the facade from the 4th floor, the insulation panels are almost completely preserved. Serious fire protection deficiencies made the rescue difficult.

Prevention

  • June 27, 2017: The city of Wuppertal has an 11-storey high-rise, which is inhabited by around 70 people, cleared because the facade is clad with plastic panels. This was only recognized as dangerous in the area of ​​the escape routes (arcades) and removed.

Database of the working group of heads of professional fire departments

The fire on May 29, 2012 in Frankfurt am Main caused the Frankfurt am Main fire brigade to document experience reports from fire brigades with similar incidents on behalf of the working group of heads of professional fire services. In the period from December 19, 2001 to June 27, 2017, 107 incidents were recorded. An analysis by the Hessen Energy Institute came to the conclusion in 2017 that the external thermal insulation system actually contributed to the fire in only 29 of these cases . 73% are incorrect entries or minor cases in which the ETICS did not burn or only small areas melted behind the plaster. There is no case in which the burned polystyrene would have caused fire deaths.

literature

  • Nathan White, Michael Delichatsios (2015): Fire Hazards of Exterior Wall Assemblies Containing Combustible Components , Springer 2015 (1st ed.), ISBN 978-1493928972

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Peter Bachmeier: Energy-efficient construction methods - consequences for fire protection? ( PDF , 1.15 MB). Retrieved June 19, 2017.
  2. ↑ Oliver Wainwright: Architects urge change in attitudes towards safety after Grenfell fire ( English ) The Guardian. June 16, 2017. Accessed December 31, 2017.
  3. ↑ An example: On May 17, 2016 in Duisburg, a fire that broke out on the ground floor set the ETICS on the facade on fire, ignited it quickly to full height and killed a woman and her two children on the top floor (list of fire incidents in connection with ETICS in Order from AGBF-Hessen, AGBF-Bund, Deutscher Feuerwehrverband eV , p. 27); NDR.de May 22, 2016
  4. ↑ Energy-efficient construction methods - consequences for fire protection? , Working Group of Heads of Professional Fire Brigades (AGBF).
  5. ↑ Polystyrene insulation: high risk of fire. NDR.de, November 5, 2014, accessed December 31, 2017 .
  6. ↑ france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr (French), with video (also on YouTube )
  7. ↑ Nathan White, Michael Delichatsios (2015): Fire Hazards of Exterior Wall Assemblies Containing Combustible Components , Springer 2015 (1st edition), ISBN 978-1493928972 , p. 33 ( online )
  8. ↑ Fire in Istanbul skyscraper - hundreds evacuated. WELT.de, July 17, 2012, accessed on December 31, 2017 .
  9. ↑ a b c Fire Risks From External Cladding Panels - A Perspective From The UK . Probyn Miers. 2016. Retrieved June 15, 2017.
  10. ↑ a b Nathan White, Michael Delichatsios (2015): Fire Hazards of Exterior Wall Assemblies Containing Combustible Components , Springer 2015 (1st edition), ISBN 978-1493928972 , p. 36 ( online )
  11. ^ Douglas H. Evans: High-Rise Façade Fires - A World Wide Concern , Society of Fire Protection Engineers; see also : Grozny-City Towers .
  12. ↑ Güven Purtul: Thermal insulation: ignorance of the danger of fire . NDR.de. December 10, 2013. Accessed March 30, 2018.
  13. ^ London Fire: Melbourne skyscraper fire, caused by shoddy cladding, may have been a warning for London . news.com.au. June 15, 2017. Retrieved July 15, 2017.
  14. ↑ Cladding in London high-rise fire also blamed for 2014 Melbourne blaze . The Guardian. June 15, 2017. Retrieved July 15, 2017.
  15. ↑ Dubai Hotel Smolders as Firefighters Tackle Last Gasps of Blaze . The New York Times . January 1, 2016. Accessed March 30, 2018.
  16. ↑ Alubond stops making plastic-filled cladding used in The Address Downtown Dubai . The National. June 13, 2016. Retrieved July 15, 2017.
  17. ↑ New fire code requires builders to reduce cladding flammability in UAE buildings . The National. January 23, 2017. Retrieved July 15, 2017.
  18. ↑ The owners of the high-rise in Wuppertal respond . FAZ.NET. June 28, 2017. Accessed August 31, 2018.
  19. ↑ Information on the "Thermal insulation composite systems" project of the Frankfurt am Main fire brigade , accessed on July 15, 2017
  20. ↑ Compilation of fire incidents in connection with combustible external facades on behalf of AGBF-Hessen, AGBF-Bund, Deutscher Feuerwehrverband eV ( PDF , 1.75 MB), as of December 2, 2019
  21. ↑ Energieinstitut Hessen - Burning insulating facades. Retrieved November 10, 2017 .
  22. ↑ Werner Eicke-Hennig: ETICS fire list without value . expansion + facade. November 2, 2017. Retrieved April 12, 2018.
  23. ↑ Table of contents and extracts online