{"id":4518,"date":"2023-05-16T19:26:45","date_gmt":"2023-05-16T07:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=4518"},"modified":"2023-05-16T19:26:45","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T07:26:45","slug":"loafers-lodge-fire-engineer-wants-safety-rules-revamped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=4518","title":{"rendered":"Loafers Lodge fire: Engineer wants safety rules revamped"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A fire engineer who has studied boarding house risks says the safety rules are too slack and need tightening.<\/p>\n<p>Multiple people\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/489987\/prime-minister-chris-hipkins-on-fatal-wellington-hostel-fire-it-is-a-horrific-situation\">have been killed in a fire<\/a>\u00a0that swept the 92-room Loafers Lodge in Newtown, in Wellington early today.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Geoff Thomas&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/273123751_FIRE_SAFETY_IN_NEW_ZEALAND_TRANSIENT_ACCOMMODATION_BUILDINGS\">research<\/a>\u00a0in 2014 found multi-unit buildings without sprinklers have the highest fire casualty rates.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s inconsistency in the treatment of fire safety,&#8221; Thomas told\u00a0<i>Nine to Noon\u00a0<\/i>today.<\/p>\n<p>For transient accommodation &#8220;the risk is not dealt with very well&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The rate of fire fatalities was about twice that for residential houses, but if it was unsprinklered it was four times that,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>The old age of many transient accommodation blocks or houses was another weak spot.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you look at any disaster, typically, a number of things have to go wrong.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And quite often in older buildings or facilities, then you might have a fire safety feature that was already compromised. So rather than have say three or four things go wrong to create a tragedy, you may only have one or two.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He conducted the research when he was at Victoria University, when he realised the residential fire safety requirements were low.<\/p>\n<p>Anywhere people slept raised the risk, as the sense of smell closed down when a person slept, he said.<\/p>\n<p>If alarms did not work &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/489986\/fatal-wellington-hostel-fire-fire-alarms-did-not-sound-at-scene-resident-says\">as has been reported at Loafers Lodge by residents<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; a person might not wake up in time.<\/p>\n<div class=\"photo-captioned photo-captioned-full photo-cntr eight_col \"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/rnz-ressh.cloudinary.com\/image\/upload\/s--ohas2jiu--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1684185707\/4L8XBBS_MicrosoftTeams_image_3_png\" alt=\"Loafers Lodge fire in Wellington\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\"><span class=\"caption\">The Loafers Lodge building where residents have reported multiple false alarms on previous occasions.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Ironically, shopping malls and office blocks, where no one sleeps, had a lot of protections, like mandatory sprinklers, as they were judged to be high hazard due to being crowded, he said.<\/p>\n<p>The fire rules demanded sprinklers for anything over 25 metres tall, but not below that if a building had two stairwells, or one stairwell below 10m high.<\/p>\n<p>What was needed in the first place was enforcement of the current rules around alarms and exits, Thomas said.<\/p>\n<p>The research covered buildings all over the country and also drew on coronial data.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>VIA RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A fire engineer who has studied boarding house risks says the safety rules are too slack and need tightening. Multiple people\u00a0have been killed in a fire\u00a0that swept the 92-room Loafers Lodge in Newtown, in Wellington early today. Dr Geoff Thomas&#8217;s\u00a0research\u00a0in 2014 found multi-unit buildings without sprinklers have the highest fire casualty rates. &#8220;There&#8217;s inconsistency in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4520,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518\/revisions\/4520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}