Expert says fire safety system inexpensive<\/p>\n
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
The fact that most high-rise buildings in the city are a fire
\nrisk is due to negligence on the part of building' managements,
\nand not due to the absence of a costly fire protection system and
\nits maintenance, an expert said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Indonesian coordinator of the U.S.-based National Fire
\nProtection Association (NFPA), Placidus S. Petrus, said that the
\nmanagements of high-rise buildings in the city hid their
\nnegligence behind the argument that the cost of providing a fire
\nprotection system was prohibitive.<\/p>\n
"One automatic sprinkler head, that can put out a fire in a
\nfour-square-meter area, costs only US$2. Yet, sprinklers are
\ndeemed the most important equipment prior to the arrival of
\nfirefighters," Petrus told The Jakarta Post at a fire protection
\nindustry exhibition.<\/p>\n
Petrus was commenting on the statement made by chief of the
\nJakarta Fire Department Johnny Pangaribuan, who said that the
\nmanagements of most high-rise buildings, especially those of
\ngovernment buildings, were reluctant to adopt an appropriate fire
\nprotection system due to the high cost it entailed.<\/p>\n
Johnny also said that around 50 percent of the buildings in
\nthe city were potential firetraps because of their managements'
\nfailure to install a fire protection system.<\/p>\n
In the case of maintaining the fire protection system, Petrus
\nsaid that a building management hardly needed to spend any money.<\/p>\n
"What the management should do is to use the equipment once a
\nweek for half an hour as an exercise because the basic principle
\nis that the more you run the equipment, the readier it will be,"
\nhe said.<\/p>\n
What counts most, he emphasized, is the willingness on the
\npart of the management to protect the building inhabitants in
\ncase of fire.<\/p>\n
Petrus also disagreed with the statement that the percentage
\nof buildings that did not comply with fire safety standards stood
\nat 50 percent.<\/p>\n
"I think the actual situation is worse than that because as a
\nperson who has been involved in the inspection of fire protection
\nsystems in almost all high-rise buildings in the country, I have
\nobserved that the condition is much worse," he said.<\/p>\n
He cited as an example one of the plush shopping malls in the
\ncity that did not even have a proper air circulation system.<\/p>\n
"In normal conditions, visitors inside the shopping mall in
\nfact would already run short of oxygen. In the case of a small
\nfire, people standing 100 meters away from the fire would
\nsuffocate," Petrus said.<\/p>\n
When asked about the effectiveness of using helicopters to put
\nout fires that could not easily be reached by fire trucks, he
\nsaid that it depended on where the fire occurred.<\/p>\n
"The use of helicopters would be effective for fires in dense
\nsettlements because there is no aerial obstruction, but there is
\nnot much that a helicopter could do if a fire occurred in a high-
\nrise building given its limited capacity to carry water. It would
\nbe just too difficult and too dangerous for the helicopter
\nitself," he said.<\/p>\n
City administration spokesman Muhayat said on Monday that the
\ncity administration was considering the use of helicopters to put
\nout fires in high-rise buildings and dense settlements.<\/p>\n
The NFPA, a non-profit organization founded in 1895, has been
\npromoting the application of fire protection standards such as
\nthe availability of stationary fire pumps, water hydrants and
\nbuilding smoke alarms.<\/p>\n
Such a campaign, however, has made little progress as most
\nbusiness entities play down the necessity of a fire protection
\nsystem, Petrus said.<\/p>\n
"We also can't do much because the implementation of the
\nstandard is not mandatory," he said.<\/p>",
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