A US-based former fireplace chief mentioned the construction of the buildings affected by the Hong Kong high-rise blaze is a “huge concern.”
“This fire has been intense. It’s been attacking the structure itself. And while it’s a concrete, reinforced structure, it can only withstand so much heat and so much of this is happening over time,” Dave Downey, a former chief of Florida Fire and Rescue for Miami-Dade county, instructed NCS’s Max Foster.
“That has to be a primary concern right now is the likelihood of a collapse.”
Conditions contained in the buildings as they had been burning would have been like (*44*) that received hotter the upper up the construction, he mentioned. Residents trapped inside had been instructed to shut all doorways and home windows and seal them with tape and moist napkins.
“Between the heat and the smoke, it would be unsafe to try to travel anywhere within that building,” mentioned Downey.
Downey likened the catastrophe to London’s Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 and Dubai’s hotel fire on New Year’s Eve, 2015, the place fireplace traveled quickly up the outside of the buildings.
“A combustible exterior on the building, that lends itself to allow the fire to spread very, very rapidly. And if there’s any opening at all, a window opening or a window fails, it allows that fire then to get into the building.”