How Malta, and the CPD, can hope to fight fire in high-rise buildings

As raging flames spread throughout the Grenfell Tower in London on Wednesday, fire engines, water trucks and support vehicles raced to the scene through the quiet streets of the English capital. Selfless firefighters leapt from their trucks, grabbed their tools and hoses and walked into the blazing inferno, as others set up equipment in a bid to help save residents on the upper floors of the 27-storey building.

Those images – and Malta’s current obsession with high-rise buildings – raised obvious concerns locally as to whether the Civil Protection Department was ready, well-equipped and staffed to deal with such a scenario.

The Fire and Rescue department prides itself on a maximum response time of 15 minutes, although CPD personnel are often on site sooner than that.

With approximately 5,000 call-outs yearly – or more than 13 a day – the department is kept busy all year round and its staff must be prepared to respond at a moment’s notice.

In the case of the Grenfell Tower, the fire engulfed the building within eight minutes, fuelled, reposts suggest, by cladding that had been added to the outside of the tower last year in order to improve the appearance of the block. Within minutes, there were around 200 fire engines, water trucks, ladder trucks and other vehicles on the way to, or at the site of the fire.

Normal fire engine ladders can only reach up to 12 storeys, with aerial platforms able to reach a further three or four – consisting of a platform attached onto a mechanically bending arm installed on a fire truck – reaching even further.  

But although some aerial ladders are known to reach a maximum of 64 metres, they would still not be enough to reach beyond 15 floors. This means that no vehicle in the fleet can reach the higher floors of tall buildings like the proposed 38-storey-high Townsquare tower in Sliema. 

London fire fighters used aerial platforms to combat the blazing inferno

So how does the CPD plan – and hope – to deal with such a potential calamity? 

MaltaToday set out to find out and discovered that, as is the case in all developed countries where high-rise buildings are cropping up, the CPD is adopting a more pro-active approach to fire hazards, as opposed to relying on reaction alone in case of emergency.

Malta’s CPD may not own 200 vehicles as its larger UK counterparts, but it is well-equipped against fire and for rescue. The department in fact owns a fleet of about 50 vehicles consisting of light fire engines, medium compact fire engines, large fire engines, industrial fire engines, turn-table ladders, hydraulic platforms, foam tenders, rescue vehicles, water carriers and other logistics vehicles.

“There are currently 160 full time fire fighters and a complement of 100 volunteers within the Civil Protection Department,” CPD deputy director Peter Paul Coleiro told MaltaToday. “Furthermore the Civil Protection Department is further supported by a number of NGOs that operate within the field of Civil Protection.”

Coleiro insisted that the CPD was well-suited to deal with fires in high-rise buildings.

 “Any building that is higher than 18 metres is to be considered as a tall building and therefore such a building will need to have an internal fire fighting setup and structural features that assist fire fighting and rescue efforts,” he said. 

Buildings which are more than seven floors high, must also have dry risers: empty pipes that can be externally connected to a pressurised water source by firefighters. This vertical pipe can distribute water to multiple levels of a building. 

Buildings, which are more than 10 floors high, must also be equipped with sprinkler systems; which automatically discharge water when the effects of a fire have been detected, such as when a predetermined temperature has been exceeded. 

Coleiro explained that other preventive measures – such as fire fighting shafts (which provide the fire and rescue service with a safe area from which to undertake firefighting operations), fire compartments, protected lobbies (which serve as a refuge from fire and fumes in case of an accident), fire doors, dry risers, wet risers, and positive pressure systems – are also imposed on developers to ensure that damage is contained in the event of a fire or rescue.

These conditions are already imposed by the CPD before a planning permit is issued; the department is in fact, always consulted by the PA before such applications are approved. 

Such features would make it possible for emergency services to reach everywhere within a building. 

“Such preventive measures are requested at the planning stage by the Civil Protection Department through the Planning Authority application system, depending on the height, width, complexity and location of the proposed building,” Coleiro said.

He said that in case of fire in any high-rise building, the fire fighting operation would be a complex operation in itself, even given the number of tenants in the building. 

“One of the first aims of the fire service would be to evacuate and rescue tenants while at the same time conduct fire-fighting operations to contain fire spread and extinguish the flames,” Coleiro said. 

“The safety concern is that the internal safety measures are kept in a good working condition and serviced regularly.” 

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