Experts query quality of cladding on Dubai buildings

The fires that have erupted in Dubai landmarks have raised concerns about the quality of material used to clad the city’s buildings.

A fire burns on the Address Downtown skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Friday, Jan. 1, 2016. The blaze began Thursday night before Dubai's annual New Year's Eve fireworks show at the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building which sits nearby. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)Show less

DUBAI // The fires that have erupted in Dubai landmarks have raised concerns about the quality of material used to clad the emirate’s buildings.

After a fire at The Torch in February last year, experts believed that a majority of Dubai's approximately 250 high-rises use cladding panels with a thermoplastic core for insulation, to improve rigidity and for cosmetic purposes.

Flammable cladding materials, comprising plastic or polyurethane fillings – called a thermoplastic core – sandwiched between aluminium panels, have been blamed for spreading fires at both the Al Baker Tower 4 and the Al Tayer Tower in Sharjah in 2012.

“On some fires that we’ve seen, clearly the facade itself contributed to the way that the flames have spread. But I don’t know if that’s the case with Thursday night’s incident,” said Andy Dean, head of facade engineering for consultancy firm WSP yesterday.

“The design process starts with a fire-safety strategy and just needs to be implemented properly and maintained.”

His comments followed a blaze in The Address in Downtown Dubai hours before the New Year’s Eve fireworks at Burj Khalifa.

Mr Dean, who has more than 25 years experience in the field of building and construction, said it was too early to speculate about the cause of the blaze and the reasons why it spread quickly.

“Any fire from an ignition source will propagate fuel and that fuel can be anything that will burn so that’s just applying the obvious,” he said. “Let information come out first, and let’s not speculate.”

In the first half of last year, Dubai Civil Defence responded to 193 incidents, an increase from 158 in the same period in 2014, director Maj Gen Rashid Thani Al Matroushi said in September.

Eighty-two of those incidents took place in homes, he said.

Of the 193 incidents, 34 were caused by short circuits, 10 were from cigarettes, nine from unattended candles and five from burning incense.

On November 23, more than 100 people were forced out of their homes by a blaze in an apartment building on Salahuddin Road. The rush-hour incident caused chaos for many as strong winds fuelled the flames, forcing an evacuation of the adjacent Movenpick hotel.

The cause of the blaze hass yet to be determined.

Two days later, a fire erupted on the balcony of the 26th floor of the 32-storey Regal Tower on Business Bay. It spread to the 28th floor but did not affect the building’s interior. Again, the cause of the fire was still under investigation.

Other notable fires include The Torch, one of the tallest residential towers in the world at 86 storeys, that left more than 100 apartments severely damaged.

In 2012, a large fire gutted the 34-storey Tamweel Tower in JLT after a cigarette was dropped in a pile of rubbish.

In June, Dubai Civil Defence said more than 40,000 buildings across the emirate had connected to the Dubai Life Safety Dashboard. This allowed the authority, government departments, building owners and residents to see on smart devices whether sprinkler systems were working correctly.