High rise apartment blocks under scrutiny

Auckland specialist apartment developer Tony Gapes is awaiting a ruling on fire safety issues at his Scene Two highrise apartment block on Auckland's waterfront.

The Redwood Group chief said authorities had sought a Government department determination on fire safety aspects of the completed structure put up by Mainzeal Construction.

The Beach Rd block in a group of three has a single means of fire escape and is one of a number of buildings that have come under the spotlight for having only one set of stairs.

Gapes said a territorial authority took the matter to the department.

"The Auckland City Council referred the fire design issues to the Department of Building and Housing as they did not feel that they had the detailed professional knowledge to make a decision on our fire design," Gapes said.

Although the block has only one set of stairs, it has a number of high-spec fire prevention features.

"The building is fully sprinklered with two pressurised stairwells, with access to the stairwells at every level. It has a duty and standby sprinkler pump," he said.

Initial feedback in a draft report from a department consultant had indicated that the design of the building was acceptable

Many other buildings have also come in for closer scrutiny and Auckland City is understood to be seeking determinations on many other blocks being proposed.

Simon Davis, engineering manager for the Fire Service, said Auckland had 25 to 30 highrise apartment blocks with only one means of fire escape.

There was nothing inherently wrong with the design of these buildings if they had other acceptable fire prevention and detection services.

"But when we had concerns, we raised them and services like smoke detectors, sprinklers and stair pressurisation measures were installed," Davis said.

The Waldorf in Bankside St was the subject of a department report which said it should never have been granted building consent.

Department determinations manager John Gardiner criticised the building but ruled that a waiver should be granted to the building code so the Waldorf could be granted code of compliance certificates.

Waldorf developer Gary Gordon was cited in Gardiner's report as saying he had done nothing wrong. He had asked for professional advice before getting building consent, put up the building according to that consent, got extra technical advice when required and acted in good faith.

Gardiner said if the determination ruled that the original building consent be withdrawn, this would have "very significant consequences for the owner".

The Waldorf got media attention in winter when its tiny units were marketed with space-saving furniture that folds into its walls.

Fire safety expert and engineer Tony Gibson this week criticised Gardiner's report, saying the department and the Fire Service had got it wrong on the Waldorf.

"This is an extremely safe building, reflecting the tradition of careful performance-based design established in New Zealand by the Building Act in 1991," he said.

Gibson was an independent fire safety reviewer for the Auckland City Council on the Waldorf at the time it was proposed and is chairman of the independent fire advisory panel to the Department of Building and Housing.

Gibson was satisfied the Waldorf was a safe building because it had a high level of fire protection systems, including a sprinkler system with safety enhancements.

"The system includes an on-site tank as well as street water supply. Each apartment is fully fire-separated from the atrium stairway and each apartment is designed as a firecell which will contain any fire until the fuel is exhausted with or without sprinkler activation, and without building collapse," he said.

"The atrium stairway is pressurised so any smoke from an apartment fire will be held back in that apartment and will not enter the stair."

The stairway was built of incombustible materials, mainly concrete. As well as a sprinkler system, each apartment and the stairway were fitted with smoke detectors.
Gibson said people who lived in the Waldorf had far less to fear from fire than those living in a typical Kiwi house. 

The Fire Service emergency incident statistics showed that during the past five years, 119 people had died in residential fires.

"But, to my knowledge, there have been no deaths in highrise sprinklered apartment buildings in the whole history of such buildings in New Zealand.

"Indeed, there have been only three deaths in any kind of sprinklered building in this country since sprinklers started being used early last century."

The track record overseas was equally impressive. Statistics prepared by John Hall of the National Fire Prevention Association in the United States showed three to four deaths a year in highrise sprinklered apartment buildings in the US and most of these were within the apartment of the fire's origin.

Elsewhere in the world, single-stair buildings are constructed up to very high levels with appropriate fire safety systems, Gibson said, citing the single-stair, 54-level Turning Torso apartment building being built in Gothenburg, Sweden.

He urged the department to re-consider its stance on fire safety in single-stair highrise blocks, saying it would not have issued a waiver on the Waldorf it it had any genuine concern about fire safety there.

"Let's get rid of the bureaucracy and streamline the processes so that excellence in design and construction may continue in New Zealand and not be tied up in irrelevant red tape," Gibson said.

"If we don't, it is extremely demoralising for a team to have permitted construction of a building to the world's best standards only to have it retrospectively tarred with a reputation it doesn't deserve."

Fiery topic

* High-rise apartment blocks with a single means of escape are under the spotlight.

* A Government department ruling on the Waldorf has been a focus for discussion.

* Fire aspects in one of three new Scene blocks on the waterfront are being examined.

* Some fire experts say residential towers with single means of escape are safe.

* Fire detection and prevention services more than compensate for fewer stairs.

* Other experts say the blocks should never get building consent and endanger lives.