Occurrence of the Domestic Fire in High-Rise Buildings - Essay Example

Community Safety Introduction Each year, there are an estimated 15,500 high-rise fires in the United States and a greater number across the globe. These fires named domestic fires, and occurring in multi-occupancy high-rise buildings, which are under construction, and provides overpopulated temporary housing for migrant workers cause an estimated 60 civilian deaths, $252 million loss and 930 injuries averagely (Communities and Local Government 2009). Data from fire rescue services in United States indicate that High-rise fires in the domestic housing are even more injurious causing more damage than all other selected structure fires. At least, three-quarters of domestic high-rise fires happen in residential structures causing 25% of dollar loss. It is also evident that the leading cause of all domestic high-rise fires is cooking with an estimated 38%. The damage and injuries are dependent to the property type as well as the extent of the fire. There is also an assertion that 35% of domestic high-rise structure fires mainly originate on the fourth floor or relatively below, on the same note 60% occur in buildings with 43% originating from the kitchen (Communities and Local Government 2009). However, a given high percentage of these fires come from electrical appliances faults with the negligence of the residents counting heavily on the cause of these fires. Domestic High-rise fires are inherently difficult especially for the fire service. This report examines briefly the domestic fires occurrence in multi-occupancy high-rise buildings, which are under construction, and provides overpopulated temporary housing for migrant workers, with a goal of identifying a robust strategy to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities resulting from these domestic fires. Before formulating a strategy to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities because of domestic fires, it is necessary to understand the status of these fires to evaluate how best to deal with them and what is required. Even though numerous high-rise fires majorly occur in residential structures (almost three-quarters), only 25% of high-rise dollar loss is stipulated as incurred on the residential properties (Audit Scotland 2008). In part, this is prominently because nonresidential fires tend to be even bigger and more likely to instigate damage particularly outside of the room of origin of the fire than residential high-rise fires (Doyle 2009). Residential fires tend to be smaller more than those in nonresidential high-rise building, but are predominantly injurious, even more so than high-rise fires in residential structures. Partly, this may be because of the higher population density particularly found in a high-rise (Canter and Frizan 1998, 73-96). In addition, residential fires inflict more injures per every fire than fires in ideal non-residential high-rises. Conversely, the high-rises design tends to actually, allow byproducts and toxic smoke of fire to relatively, spread throughout the respective building injuring occupants who may actually be floors far away from the fire. By contrast, residential death rates are half the ones of residential structures generally. Because the high-rise population is higher, more than in a single-family home, many people may be available precisely to alert residents of a starting fire and possibly assist with evacuation. Another explanation potentially for the disparity in death and injury rates between residential and high-rise structure fires is the relative role of smoke alarms. Many building codes structurally require hardwired alarms for smoke in high-rises. This increases significantly the chance that a fire alarm will activate ideally during a fire. A smoke alarm precisely activates in 69% of high-rise residential fires, as compared to 38% in the common residential significantly fires in general (Audit Scotland 2008). Because of this, people have a higher likelihood of escaping a fire and, even though they may incur an injury, they are less likely to succumb to death than the ones in residential structures in general. In coming up with a strategy to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities because of domestic fires, it is pertinent to note that fires in High-rise structure pose several challenges both to the residence occupants and to the respective fire service. Several of the challenges include by nature of the height of these buildings, smoke movement in the structures is different from the other structures. Temperature gradients end up in unreliable pressures throughout the structure that can allow for the fast, uncontrolled smoke movement as well as the flame commonly referred to as the “stack effect”. High-rises commonly contain multiple occupancies types, among them residential, restaurant, commercial, as well as underground parking (Canter and Frizan 1998, 73-96). The respective type of occupancy poses as a major challenge to the respective firefighters and should have a different approach. By design, the high-rise exits are also limited, therefore, making the rescue efforts difficult. In case of emergency, the people’s movement out of a particular building under fire is chiefly difficult (Doyle 2009). On the same note, the HVAC as well as other utilities in the high-rise structures service multiple levels and ideally can facilitate the eventual spread of flame and smoke through a building. Additionally, high-rises’ fires require considerably more equipment, and personnel to eventually extinguish than do the other, different types of fires. This strain furthers the kind of responding fire department, as well as the firefighter. On the same note, establishing the cause patterns is relevant and it is committed to understand that they differ somewhat purely depending on the high-rise occupancy type involved in the fire outbreak. For instance, in high-rises used for public assembly, the major cause of fires is smoking. Additionally, for educational properties, the major cause of high-rise fires in this case is arson. Nevertheless, the key problem lies in multi-occupancy high-rise buildings, which are under construction, and provides overpopulated temporary housing for migrant workers. For this case, the problems and cause of fire is the irresponsibility of occupants, who alter the electricity/gas supplies to provide several areas for cooking within a single dwelling. This causes overheating and short-circuits dangers in conjunction with an increased life-risk and a possibility of fires (Fineman 1995, 31-60). This behavior is usually common among the residents of high-rise buildings because the space is limited for houses and they are over-populated reducing the spaces available for cooking areas (Forehand et al 1991, 125-128; Graves, Hanson and Jessor 1968). The risky behavior among them is identified as solely altering electricity of gas supplies, an extraordinarily risky act and one that risks severe fires and heavy damages in such environments (Doyle 2009). The Local Government in any country holding multi-occupancy high-rise buildings, which are under construction, and provides overpopulated temporary housing for migrant workers involves in Community Planning. Community planning is generally a difficult process, in which a local authority as well as other organizations plans in partnership on the matter regarding the fire outbreaks (Jones, Ribbe and Cunningham 1994, 117-122). The whole idea is to promote and provide the well-being of the respective communities (Doyle 2009). Community Planning Partnerships facilitation is through the local authorities in a given country and majorly involves several public sector organizations, which are statutory partners. The organizations include Police, Health, Fire, Enterprise as well as the Transport Authorities. Without the coordination of these parties, the possibilities of handling issues to do with fires are minimal to succeed. Additionally, to the statutory partners, Planning Partnerships in the community may involve other voluntary, public, and private partners from different sectors. Fire and Rescue Services additionally are involved in many trilateral or bilateral joint-working initiatives majorly across the respective country. This work is generally, conducted ideally after recognition of a local need of addressing a particular safety issue in the community and can be, linked directly to individual relationships among members of distinctive partner agencies (Kolko and Kazdin 1991, 535-550). Fire and Rescue Services are also better involved in several community safety activities different in size, cost and duration. The activities generally are, planned locally, delivered and targeted to eventually, meet the respective local risk profiles. When looking into the case of Scotland, it experienced approximately 50% long-term reduction ideally in fire deaths because of the locally established strategies and collaborations (Audit Scotland 2008). The Scotland’s Rescue and Fire Services are therefore, involved in delivering seasonal campaigns that broadly cover the ideal subject matter seeking to achieve like outcomes. The duplication requires majorly, the Scottish Rescue and Fire Services to re-examine own cross service joint arrangements working to handle the fire issue. These become more effective and efficient prior to Scotland’s Rescue and Fire Services engaging fully with other respective agencies with a general view of delivering community safety. Fire and Rescue Services also better focuses its significant and substantial resources in enforcing fire safety legislation particularly in non-domestic premises especially those under the scope of the Fire. Despite the fire deaths, low number reported and in records in non-domestic premises, the Fire and Rescue Services should not become self-satisfied in the enforcement of the established legislation and continue to suitably balance resources and risk in terms of their own community safety enforcement and engagement activities (Kolko and Kazdin 1994, 114-122). For instance, the high-rise is commonly known to hold considerable population of delinquent children who set up fires regularly without genuine reasons (Moore et al 1996, 4-20; Slavkin 2000). The rescue service can put its resources in handling and educating the delinquents and other arsonists on the dangers involved in fires (Sakheim, Vidgour, Gordon and Helprin 1985, 453-476). The solution lies permanently on adopting a fire-safety management plan. In the developing process of acquiring an acceptable fire safety level, several steps need a through consideration. The first step is identifying Fire and Life Safety Objective (Doyle 2009). This is predominantly indispensable for any fire rescue mission. In this case, it is appropriate to know that, the strategies are subject to reducing the fatalities, injuries and deaths in the overpopulated temporary housing for migrant workers (Scottish Fire & Rescue Services 2005). The objective, therefore, will need to incline on assumptions that the overpopulation is a significant cause of the many deaths and severe fatalities. The other prominent and decisive step in this strategy is collecting all the critical information on building layout, staff organization, and measures present for fire protection (Office of the Deputy PM 2004). From this step, it is possible to come up with the appropriate measures and assess their relevance in reducing the injuries and deaths. From the assessment, it will be possible to make it clear as to what should be done to improve the weak approaches and what new strategies should be introduced (Doyle 2009). Information sharing is one part of the same to help build the layout of the best possible strategy to reduce injuries. Particularly, information sharing among Health Services and the Rescue Service is vital. The shared information with Authorities in the Health will help counter the fatal injuries and possibly put down measures to counter the same (Opinion Research Services 2009). Given the ideal nature of the factors contributing to the injuries as identified in a Scotland Fatal Fire Survey some outstanding issues for instance mental health, alcohol, mobility, disability, and smoking are critical and foremost relating to the recognition of the individuals or even groups that have a higher likelihood to be at risk most from fire. Therefore, in this case, the parties involved can ascertain what can be done to protect these minorities and safeguard them from fire risk, in the end, handling the fire injuries and fatalities. Making a first assessment against the respective local requirements as well as life and fire safety objectives is the other objective. This is like a comparison of the new and the already present strategies to help bring out the best of the approaches (Doyle 2009). For instance, in a Scotland survey, the major causes of the severities are High levels of deprivation, as well as other social issues for instance, the number of people particularly living alone, the increase projected in the Total of older population as well as the number of people under social care in the community (Opinion Research Services 2009). The assessment of such local requirements is what the fire rescue needs to know what the community requires in terms of equipment and resources to handle fire situations and reduce the number of fatalities from these fires. After this step, if the evaluation indicates deficiencies or relatively unclear situations, actually, two options can be, chosen to include Performance-based compliance and Prescriptive compliance. The earlier is best applied in the mission of bringing a solution to the high-death rates and injury risks. The strategy involves Design criteria, Scenario selection, Impact assessment, Fire safety measures, and Equivalence. All these stages are critical to come up with a specialized approach to handle particular situations and probably reduce the fatalities resulting from the fires. From this, it can follow a discussion on the solution identified within the Project Team, which includes Authority in Jurisdiction, Conservator or building owner, Architect and the Fire safety engineer (Patterson, G 1982). The entire process and involvement of the team helps ascertain if the solution proposed is acceptable for parties ideally without compromising the particular historic value, and help in implementing the additional safety measures (Barnett et al 1997, 879-883). For instance, a Scotland rescue service provider assessed the established strategies in reducing the occurrence of fires and reducing their fatalities. The Building Regulations had incorporated the requirement as mainly for automatic suppression systems in the respective high-rise domestic buildings at least over 18 metres as well as residential care buildings. However, there existed no legislative requirement particularly for sprinklers fitted to the respective dwellings in low-rise domestic structures (Prosser 2009). From this assessment, it was possible to justify that he use of sprinkler systems domestically would in the opinion of professionals, have saved approximately 80% of the accidental fire fatalities and injuries (Scottish Fire & Rescue Services 2005). Therefore, from then, the implementation of domestic sprinklers was on and of value helping brings down fires in the early stages and eventually reduce the injury and fatalities’ risk. Periodic and Initial compliance audits are best applied in the strategy formulated to help ascertain their applications and what the future holds for the safety approaches (Barnett et al 1997, 879-883). With the audits in place, the involved parties can have the ability to provide advice as well as guidance in relation to fire safety especially in these residential homes. It also can assess what would be best-applied for instance availing affordable domestic detectors of smoke particularly from retail outlets as well as the introduction of the established legislation demanding hard-wired smoke detection fitted in circulation spaces in all new build as well as refurbished domestic dwellings. This is just a part of the solutions the audits can provide among many other options particular depending on the situations at hand and the established cause of the fire. Conclusion As with fires common across the globe, those occurring multi-occupancy high-rise buildings, which are under construction, and provides overpopulated temporary housing for migrant workers are largely preventable. Additionally, reducing the number of injuries and fatalities because of domestic fires in multi-occupancy high-rise buildings is applicable with the identification of the best strategies. However, this cannot be a single party operation because it involves many. The fire rescue cannot do this on its own because there are many other involved parties that have a part to play in reaching this goal. There is a need to involve inter-relationship of the fire service, other emergency services and supporting agencies in a range of community safety events or activities because they each have a significant role to play. Before formulating a strategy to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities because of domestic fires, it is indispensable to understand the status of these fires to evaluate how best to deal with them and what is required. The solution lies permanently on adopting a fire-safety management plan. With the cooperation of all parties involved, this strategy is one of the best and can help handle and reduce the number of injuries and fatalities because of domestic fires in multi-occupancy high-rise buildings, which are under construction, and provides overpopulated temporary housing for migrant workers. 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