Have you purchased a new apartment? Living in a 14-15 storey building built in recent decades? In preparation for Lag B’Omer, we have compiled tips to help you be sure that your apartment and building are safe from fire and that the safety systems are indeed functioning properly. • The tips are courtesy of Yitzhak Ovitz, a fire safety expert from Isotest Laboratories
From time to time, fires break out in apartments in tall buildings and can cause great damage and danger to life. Just last January we witnessed a horrific incident of burning a residential building in the Bronx neighborhood of New York. 17 people perished in this fire, including 8 children.
New apartments and new buildings include a large number of fire safety components aimed at preventing such disasters. The developers and contractors must pass mandatory standard tests, without which the building will not be able to receive Form 4 (Occupancy Form).
Standard requirements for fire safety, before finishing construction, include installation of sprinkler systems, smoke detection systems, fire doors, castors with fire hose, fire pipe inspection, smoke evacuation systems, integration tests and more.
If you purchased a new apartment from a contractor in a tall building or if you live over 42 meters high, built in recent decades, you should make sure that the safety systems in your apartment and building are working properly, and meet fire safety standards. It is important to understand that safety systems must be maintained on a regular basis in order for them to work in the moment of truth. Even if the systems have passed all the certification approvals at the building occupancy stage, they will not provide an effective solution without strict maintenance and constant maintenance.
Yitzhak Ovitz, a water technology practical engineer and certified inspector for fire extinguishing systems at Isotest Laboratories, lists some simple steps that anyone can take to protect themselves and their families from fires:
Sprinklers
If you live in a building of about 14-15 floors or more, there are sprinklers inside your apartment. Do not modify or move a sprinkler without the assistance of a qualified professional. Any change in the sprinkler system may delay the system response time to a fire event. The sprinklers are designed for an immediate response of water spray when the fire is very small and controllable. Delaying the sprinkler response time may result in an inability to control the fire while in hostility.
Fire doors
At the entrance to the stairwell and in other places such as an elevator lobby and warehouse areas, fire doors are installed. The door should close immediately, or close during a fire. The function of the door is to confine the fire and smoke, and not to allow the products of the fire to pass between different areas in the building, thus allowing people to escape safely from the building during a fire, and to allow people who can not escape, additional stay until rescue forces arrive. Make sure that all the doors can close automatically and that no various objects are placed in the doorway, blocking it.
Fire detection coordinator
A fire detection hub is installed in the lobby of your building. All system accessories are connected to the hub, and it receives reports from all components and operates in accordance with a plan prepared by the safety consultant. As soon as a fire breaks out in the building, one of the automatic safety components such as a sprinkler or detector, or one of the manual safety components such as an emergency button, will report to the hub that there is a fire in the building – the hub will go into action immediately and all emergency components will start. Closing fire doors, lowering elevators to the ground floor and more. Therefore – make sure that the hub is on at all times. If there are warnings about faults or alarms in the hub, do not neglect them and do not turn off the hub just due to the annoying beeping noise. Ask the House Committee to deal with faults without delay.
Staircases and common areas
Your building is designed to allow you a reasonable escape during a fire event. Each building has two protected and sealed stairwells, separated from the rest of the building by fire walls and fire doors. Once you enter the stairwell, you are on the safe path to escape from the building unscathed. However, stairwells and public areas sometimes become a kind of additional warehouse for some of the tenants. The danger here is twofold: during a fire event thick black smoke will make it difficult to see and therefore the risk of encountering obstacles in the escape routes is critical, also if a fire breaks out as a result of materials stored in the stairwell or lobby, the escape route will be completely blocked. Therefore – make sure that the public areas and stairwells are completely free, and require your neighbors or the house committee to maintain a stairwell free of any obstruction and storage.
Systems maintenance
All safety systems have maintenance standards, which set different dates for maintenance and routine maintenance operations. For example, an electric fire pump must run for 10 consecutive minutes a month, and a pump with a diesel engine must run for 30 consecutive minutes every week. In contrast to the situation in elevators, where the issue of maintenance is regulated by law, and each elevator undergoes a maintenance inspection once every six months, the state of maintenance of fire safety systems is not regulated. Some devices are not enforced at all, and some devices are under unclear warranty in terms of laws and regulations. Also, there are areas in the building where maintenance is not the responsibility of the building, and unfortunately there are irresponsible people who completely turn off the sprinkler systems or detectors inside their apartment intentionally or accidentally, thus endangering all the occupants of the building.
- Require the House Committee to sign contracts with maintenance companies that have a high quality reputation. Do not give in to the cancellation of sprinkler systems inside apartments, and explain to your neighbors the enormous danger that such an act may cause.