Ask the Architect

About these tall buildings...

Posted

Q. I work in the city, and my sister and brother-in-law just moved to a high-rise apartment building as well. My question is, after seeing the horrible fire disaster in London and thinking back about the World Trade Center, how safe are we, working and living in a tall building?

A. We shouldn’t have to wonder, getting into an elevator, if it’s safe to leave the ground. People trust that they’re safeguarded, and I’m glad to say that building officials take the responsibility of public safety and security very seriously. It’s not a popular job to keep the public safe.

Ask any building inspector, and they can tell you of building owners and builders who took dangerous shortcuts, used sub-par substitute materials or tried to hide shoddy work. Something as simple as an air gap that fire slithers right through can be devastating, and with new technology and lessons learned from so many cumulative years of testing and real-life disasters, this kind of life-taking event should not occur. In London, 79 people lost their lives in the middle of the night, trusting that when they went to bed, they wouldn’t even think this was possible. Fire spread along the exterior of the building, burning through panels that were supposedly fire-retardant and creeping from level to level through gaps in the building face where the floors meet the exterior wall panels.

It’s common practice to seal these gaps with fireproof or fire-retardant putty, but fire-retardant is not fireproof. Just to clarify, every material is consumable, even concrete and steel. Public safeguarding involves several factors intended to slow the burning process: containment, where fire is intended not to spread; delay, where the progress of a fire is slowed to give firefighters a chance while people escape; and suppression, where the fire is slowed by preventive retardants and automatic sprinklers and chemicals. Firefighters may use different terminology, but the principle of life-safety is the same.

Sadly, I don’t remember being taught anything about disaster prevention in a formal architecture school setting. Nothing. And that’s another big problem. I remember being criticized by fellow students, who said it was morbid that I kept a notebook filled with clippings of every building disaster, along with articles and sketches analyzing how it happened and what scientists learned. I always answered that you have to learn from failures in order to succeed. To me, success has always been safe buildings.

Fortunately, technology advanced with the same attitude. With so much at stake, from loss of life to lawsuits and loss of livelihood — even spending time behind bars — the building industry is much more vigilant than you might think. These days in this country, safety is paramount, and you’re protected by several levels of scrutiny before a building can be occupied. It’s healthy to always be aware and safety-minded. I’ll continue this answer next week.

© 2017 Monte Leeper. Readers are encouraged to send questions to yourhousedr@aol.com, with “Herald question” in the subject line, or to Herald Homes, 2 Endo Blvd., Garden City, NY 11530, Attn: Monte Leeper, architect.