MartinLe
Civil/Environmental
- Oct 12, 2012
- 394
This week a residential building in Essen, Germany, caught fire:
3 lightly injured, ~100 residents made it out unharmed.
Fire broke out on a balcony, spread over whole facade
The building was from 2016 or so, with a insulated (XPS as far as I can tell from the reports) facade. Building codes in Germany mandate a fire barrier every two storeys - now there's speculation if this was actually implemented.
There's also (IMO plausible) talk about the PVC cladding of the balconies helping the fire spread.
It took about 20 mins from first visible flames, to the whole facade beeing engulfed.
The house will be demolished.
There was also this exchange at a press conference:
Journalist: "Are you certain that the building was built according to the codes, given the tendency in the building sector to hand work over to subcontractors?"
Rep. of the firm owning the building "I'm certain there's a file that says so"
There's also some discussion if German building codes overestimate the safety of insulated facades.
I'm not remotely an expert with these things. My main thought is that everyone made it out in time, so maybe the fire protection of the building was ok. OTOH I think the rather nasty weather helped safe lives - most people will have had their windows closed. Maybe the same fire on a warm summer night would have been a total tragedy.
Then again, on an older building a fire would simply not spread from one balcony to the whole facade in 20 min, if at all.
3 lightly injured, ~100 residents made it out unharmed.
Fire broke out on a balcony, spread over whole facade
The building was from 2016 or so, with a insulated (XPS as far as I can tell from the reports) facade. Building codes in Germany mandate a fire barrier every two storeys - now there's speculation if this was actually implemented.
There's also (IMO plausible) talk about the PVC cladding of the balconies helping the fire spread.
It took about 20 mins from first visible flames, to the whole facade beeing engulfed.
The house will be demolished.
There was also this exchange at a press conference:
Journalist: "Are you certain that the building was built according to the codes, given the tendency in the building sector to hand work over to subcontractors?"
Rep. of the firm owning the building "I'm certain there's a file that says so"
There's also some discussion if German building codes overestimate the safety of insulated facades.
I'm not remotely an expert with these things. My main thought is that everyone made it out in time, so maybe the fire protection of the building was ok. OTOH I think the rather nasty weather helped safe lives - most people will have had their windows closed. Maybe the same fire on a warm summer night would have been a total tragedy.
Then again, on an older building a fire would simply not spread from one balcony to the whole facade in 20 min, if at all.
