Life threatening apartment buildings
07/03/2012 15:40
Steady snowfall blankets higher central and northeastern Albania 30/11 21:18
Two fires that broke up this Sunday in the Albanian capital returned the
concern of newly built apartment buildings that do not have emergency
exits or other safety measures, regardless the high price of the
apartments.
“The new apartment buildings should have emergency exits, with the money that they cost. We must avoid any emergency and fire. The constructors are the ones that should think about the emergency exits”, the residents declared.
In all cases of fire in Tirana, only the intervention of the Special Forces RENEA and the firefighters have avoided victims, because the residents have always been unprotected.
The Municipality, the Firefighters and the Construction Associations declared for Top Channel that there is no law that obliges the constructors to apply emergency exits.
Experts: Security, criteria for permits
All public constructions in our country do not fulfill the emergency evacuation criteria.
Only the objects built by the international institutions are excluded. The dean of the Construction Engineering Faculty, Andrea Maliqari, explained that the construction companies have not been obliged to implement a series of criteria for isolating fires or for a safe evacuation.
“We must predict as soon as possible not only the projection norms, but also the construction permits. If we refer to this security system, we are not talking only for the emergency exits, but an entire system related with the protection of these special elements of the building, the isolation of the fire and the fast evacuation of the people. The parameters exist in the projecting norms, but these rules should be part of the construction permits given by the Municipality or the institutions that issue them”, Maliqari declared.
The implementation of these criteria is obligatory for the EU, and it would increase the construction cost.
“It is very indispensable for me that if you place regular criteria against fire or the protection system, it is obligatory for this rule to be applied even for the existing buildings. This phenomenon does not happen only with the new constructions, but it could happen with old ones. The minimal measures should be taken, especially in the urban solutions of the buildings that are near each other, where these problems happen more frequently”, Maliqari declared.
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