18-storey block prompts call for fire safety review

The Fire Service has demanded a Government review on the potential for the rash of new Auckland apartment blocks to become towering infernos.

The service is worried that the skinny new 18-level Waldorf hotel/apartment block on Auckland's Bankside St, off Shortland St, could become a death trap because it has only one means of escape at its centre, rather than sets of open steps at either end.

Knowing that many more multimillion-dollar blocks like the Waldorf are being proposed, the service wanted the ruling to become a guideline for the developers of all high-rise units and councils who administer the rules.

The Fire Service took its fears to Katrina Bach, chief executive of the Department of Building and Housing, asking that a ruling be made which would become a new blueprint for councils and developers.

The matter was referred to John Gardiner, the department's determinations manager, to rule on whether the lives of hotel guests and residents in the new 98-unit building were at risk.

Mr Gardiner's report cites many problems with the building:

* It has only one means of fire escape instead of the two required by the building code in high-rise sprinklered buildings.

* A single staircase is in the centre of the building in an enclosed atrium. A blaze could spread to that atrium, yet occupants would be forced to evacuate via the atrium, instead of having the choice of two sets of stairs, one at either end of the building, potentially out of harm's way.

* The central atrium is not in a protected fire shaft so a blaze could easily cause widespread disaster, although the shaft is pressurised, allowing for air to be pumped into it if a fire broke out, potentially limiting that disaster.

* The fire escape is internal - not on the end of the building or outside, as in many other high-rise buildings.

Auckland City delayed signing off the finished building with a code compliance certificate.

Mr Gardiner's scathing 24-page report dubbed "inadequate" the information supplied to the council for the Waldorf's building consent.

So poor was the documentation that the building should never have been built, he ruled.

"The territorial authority should not have issued the building consent," he wrote.

But the Waldorf is not the only problem.

"The Fire Service said that the building was typical of a number of recent or proposed apartment buildings and requested that I make appropriate general statements in my determination to assist developers and territorial authorities that are dealing with these buildings," Mr Gardiner wrote.

Gary Talbot, fire safety integration manager for the NZ Fire Service in Wellington, said the situation over the Waldorf was difficult.

"What are you going to do? Bulldoze an 18-level building in the centre of Auckland?" he asked. "The determination had to come up with an alternative to that."

So Mr Gardiner ruled that a waiver to the building code should be granted for the Waldorf but he added the rider that this should not become a precedent for other buildings.

Mr Talbot said up to 15 new high-rise apartment towers with single fire escapes were proposed in Auckland and the determination would set precedents for future plan approvals.

Another fire chief has been making known his concerns about potential disasters in apartments for months.

Russell Dickson, co-ordinator for unwanted false alarms and a fire safety officer in the Auckland Fire Region, said apartment dwellers were taping up smoke detectors to avoid them being set off by internally vented rangehoods, steaming showers and clothes driers.

Apartment dwellers with fire concerns should:

* Live in units which are sprinklered.

* now how many doors you are from the stairs.

* Check smoke detectors are active.

* Plan a means of escape.

* Keep a fire extinguisher in the kitchen - and know how to use it.

* Discuss safety issues at body corporate meetings.