Question of the Day: why are business centers with ventilated facades on fire so badly?

Ivan Zubov

Not without reason, the fire was assigned the highest rank of complexity. Moreover, according to eyewitnesses, the employees of the business center did not even hear the alarm - they were informed that their colleagues from the street were on fire! EMERCOM employees managed to save more than 120 people, and Ka-32 helicopters were also thrown to fight the fire. So far, two victims are known, including a 15-year-old girl who was hospitalized in the Sklifosovsky center. The area of ignition was more than 1,000 square meters, and the facade of the building burned down completely, media reported.

Experts believe that a short circuit, which occurred under the cladding of the business center, led to the fact that the fire spread rapidly along the facade because the cladding of the building consists of outdated synthetic materials with low fire resistance. Not only are they outdated, they also emit toxic smoke when burned.

Fortunately, at the very height of the fire, a thunderstorm with a downpour began, and this helped to localize it and bring down the flames from the outside, but it continued in the interior of Setun Plaza. And only by noon the fire was finally extinguished.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of this year, Ivan Sukhanov's study "Analysis of fires in shopping and entertainment centers" was published in the journal "Young Scientist". His conclusions are directly related to this fire, since the problems of Russian malls and business centers are the same.

The author provides statistics for 2021. At that time, 86 fires occurred in the mall and similar facilities, in which 5 people died and 23 were injured, and material damage amounted to 1433410 million rubles.

The main causes of fires in such facilities are a malfunction or deterioration of electrical equipment, leading to a short circuit. Exactly this happened in Setun.

“The reasons include the electrical equipment of fire protection systems. An analysis of fires for 2021 showed that about 5.6% of all fires occur in the mall.

After the catastrophic consequences of a fire in March 2018 in the city of Kemerovo in the Zimnyaya Vishnya Shopping Center, employees of the Supervisory Activities Department (OND) and preventive work of the Main Directorate of the Russian Emergencies Ministry for the Kemerovo Region-Kuzbass carried out unscheduled inspections at the mall. As a result, 27 shopping and entertainment centers of various functional purposes were checked. At 15 of the shopping malls inspected, the following were identified:

violations:

- malfunction of the fire alarm system;

- lack of a warning system and evacuation in case of fire;

- unsatisfactory condition of evacuation routes;

- lack of a smoke exhaust system;

— Faulty fire-fighting water supply systems;

- insufficient number of primary fire extinguishing means;

— employees who have not been trained in fire safety measures have been identified;

- malfunction of the AUP system.

A total of 127 violations of fire safety requirements were identified.

The analysis of fires in the mall showed a number of problems in ensuring the safety of visitors and employees.

In order to avoid a tragedy like in the Zimnyaya Cherry shopping center, it is necessary to take the following measures to ensure the proper level of safety for visitors and employees in the shopping center:

— increase in the staff of the Department of Supervisory Activities (OND).

At present, about 150 objects of protection are assigned to each inspector;

– increasing the frequency of inspections of the OND, objects with a mass stay of people at least 1 time in 2 years;

— assigning a separate risk category based on the functionality and size of the mall;

— legally establish the participation of ONM employees in the examination of project documentation

buildings with mass stay of people;

- introduce compulsory liability insurance for fires at facilities with a massive presence of people;

— introduction of more advanced and modern technical means of fire protection of the shopping center in the shopping center.

In fact, everything is much simpler and rests on money. If the owner of the building had timely replaced all obsolete materials from the external and internal cladding, replaced the outdated alarm and smoke exhaust system, nothing like this would have happened. But that's a completely different story...