THE FLAME THAT BURNT THE LIE

A fire which broke out in a high-rise block on Azadlig Avenue in the Binaqadi district of Baku not far from Azadlyg underground station, killed 15 people, among them infants. In literally a few minutes the blazing fire had reduced the flats and the possessions acquired over my years to ashes. Owing to the negligence of a number of structures, the fates of several dozen people were destroyed within an hour. The grief of the parents who lost their infants was incommensurable.

One hundred and fifty Ministry of Emergency Situations' staff and 40 pieces of equipment, including helicopters, were needed to put the fire out. Many of the Ministry's firemen and rescuers and the police demonstrated real heroism, saving people from the burning block, in spite of the risk to their own lives. Ordinary people also displayed amazing heroism, helping the residents from the burning 16-storey building. But the scale of the fire and the speed at which it spread were such that it took a long time to get it under control.

According to a preliminary version of events, the reason for the fire starting was the poor quality of the facing on the building which was not fire-resistant. According to official documentation issued by the State Service for Fire Control of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the facing on the building consisted of polyurethane, a material which is fairly flame-resistant. According to the documents, the polyurethane tiles produced by Global Construction were certified by the experimental testing centre (AzTEST) under the state committee for standardisation, metrology and patents.

Tests on the product were conducted at the laboratory of the private closed joint-stock company "Darnagul Boru Zavodu". Work on the facing of the building was carried out on the orders of Baku's Binagadin district executive authority. According to the court investigation's preliminary findings, by decision of the court the Global Construction company's management have been arrested, accused of being involved in a criminal case relating to the fire, as well as some of the present and former heads of Baku's Binagadin District executive authority, including the district executive authority's deputy head. In particular, the management of Global Construction are accused of using poor-quality building materials in facing the building in which the fire occurred.

The guilty will be punished

Immediately after the tragedy occurred, by instruction of President Ilham Aliyev, a state committee was set up to investigate the causes of the fire. The president held an emergency meeting of the state committee and gave orders to the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Baku Executive Authority to organise the testing of buildings faced with similar materials, and, in the event of poor quality being established, that the facing involved should immediately be stripped. At the present time incidentally, dangerous facings are being stripped from buildings throughout the city of Baku. The head of state has thereby instructed that those responsible for this tragedy will be exposed and punished with the full force of the law.

 "Representatives of the relevant state structures have repeatedly assured me that all the materials being used are of high quality and flame-resistant. But what has happened has shown that the information was not true. Where the materials being used in repairing these buildings were produced or from where they were imported needs to be investigated too! Who issued them with a certificate? What kind of tests did they undergo? If they did undergo tests, who issued the findings? If they did not undergo testing, this means that these buildings were repaired illegally. This means that all these issues need to be seriously investigated," the head of state stressed. The president noted that such a tragedy must never happen again. "In order to prevent something like this happening again in the future, I demand that a concrete package of proposals be submitted to me, since I see that there is no system of proper regulation in this field. Issues of regulation are consolidated in law, but the rules are not being observed," the president emphasized.

The head of state also noted that strict controls were needed at every stage in equipping the city with services and utilities. "But there should not be a single building where any kind of work is carried out without a contract or without a commission of experts. If there is expert supervision, but it does not correspond to the reality, then the people who signed the findings of the experts will also be held responsible. Therefore extensive activity on the part of the bodies of law and order is envisaged here, so that we put an end to this issue, to this chaos, once and for all, because this is not to our liking," Ilham Aliyev said at the meeting.

Speaking at the state commission sitting, the Prosecutor General Zakir Qaralov reported that the certificate of conformity of the Global Construction company was issued by the scientific institute of design and construction building materials named after a certain Dadasov and was renewed annually. "The main issue is that this company was operating without concluding a contract with the body of executive authority. It has become clear that 14 buildings have been covered with this facing without a contract being concluded. Naturally, project work should have been conducted before repairs started on each building. These projects should have been submitted to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and, only after the ministry's consent had been received, could the work go ahead." The question arises of where the controlling structures were when the documents for the facing of the buildings were issued? This question is being asked by the head of state. "For the moment the information I have received does not satisfy me, since I can see that some structures are trying to pass the buck here. Therefore the bodies of law and order, primarily the public prosecutor, should carry out a thorough investigation of this issue and specifically find out who is guilty."

What happens when the experts are ignored

Work on upgrading the city of Baku has been going on for five years now. Whereas the buildings were refurbished with stone facings to begin with, over the last three years polyurethane panelling has been used. The experts repeatedly expressed their negative attitude to the work being done. They asserted that it was sufficient to paint a building requiring cosmetic renewal and not to make its exterior heavier by using stone. Although polyurethane is light, it is dangerous because it is not very fire-resistant. Proceeding from recent events, it can be seen that those executives who did not heed common sense, went on "packaging" the buildings in a plastic material. As a result, according to data from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, there are more than 260 buildings in Baku that are faced with polyurethane panelling. It needs to be added that there is a sufficiently large number of buildings faced with polyurethane throughout the regions of Azerbaijan.

Moreover, an alarming signal which went unheeded was the fire on Nobel Avenue on 10 April. This was a similar case where the plastic facing of the building turned into ashes within seconds. But the necessary attention was not paid to this case nor were any lessons learned.

Cladding is cladding, is there a difference

According to evidence from residents of different districts in Baku, the appearance of the plastic panels used in facing the buildings does, it turns out, look different. In some cases, in theory, this is polystyrene foam is used especially in the thermal insulation of facades and has the optimal qualities for these purposes, such as the necessary density and heightened fire-resistance. True, this polystyrene can easily get broken, even by hand. In other buildings it seems the polyurethane itself is not a melting plastic with a cell-like structure where 97 per cent of the volume is gas-filled cavities. The decorative outer layer is made of facade clinker tiles There are many advantages to facade panels of ordinary and foam polyurethane such as the fact that it is long-lasting (30-50 years) and frost-resistant (100 cycles), and protects the building from heat loss, as well as having other pluses.

But it turns out that polyurethane foam is particularly fire-hazardous. When it burns, it releases extremely toxic gases, including such a potent toxic substance as hydrogen cyanide. Almost all brands of polyurethane foam with different densities are classed as combustible substances. The temperature at which they ignite is 325-345 degrees centigrade. At a temperature of more than 170 degrees, polyurethanes begin to decompose, releasing toxic and combustible volatile products. Polyurethanes with a greater amount of aromatic substances are characterised by a maximum temperature for destruction to begin and the release of an extremely large amount of smoke with minimal loss of mass and a minimal speed at which the flame spreads.

Were there few antipyrenes?

In a conversation with Regionplus, a chemistry expert, a specialist in safety technology, Teymur Quliyev, admitted that at the present time, numerous types of facing materials are being used, including synthetic ones.  Of course, the safest from the point of view of flammability is natural stone, which never burns. At the same time, that material is rather expensive and heavy. It takes a great deal of trouble to fix it to the facades. This is why the plastic facade panels are very popular on today's building market and this is not accidental for this material combines a series of advantages. "Among the main ones there is the large variety, extensive colour range and the accessible price. The plastic facade panel allows the facade of any building to be faced carefully and beautifully. The panels are fixed on by mechanically putting them together and attaching them to the walls of the building or other elements of the construction for which they are intended."

In Germany, according to evidence from our fellow countrymen, polystyrene foam is used in facade tiles. They are produced according to strict standards there: 80 x 50 x 16 cm. In other words, you cannot put your fingers through the tiles there. This fundamental difference also dictates the different methods of attaching the tiles to the walls of the houses. In Baku, for instance, polyurethane tiles are attached to a metal frame. There is a gap of something like 20-25 cm between the wall and the tile, which only promotes a stronger draft to help spread a fire. In Germany these tiles are fixed right onto the wall with the help of a special glue. After that, plaster is applied to the tiles, composed of cement and mortar. All this is followed by a coat of paint. A facing like this not only heightens the attractiveness of the building's facade, but protects it against cold and damp. Incidentally, the head of Baku's executive authority, Hacibala Abutalibov, pinpointed the way the facing is attached in Baku when he noted that the rapid spread of the flames was facilitated among other things by the distance between the panels and the walls of the houses.

As far as the polyurethanes are concerned, then, according to the norms of the safety regulations, the expert said, antipyrenes are added during the production of facing 

materials made from polyurethane foam. Antipyrenes are substances which slow down or completely inhibit the combustion process. But, judging by the fact that the fire spread so rapidly in the block that burnt down, the chemist thinks that no antipyrenes had been added to the facing mixture.

 Here we would like to note that the executive authorities should have paid attention to such aspects immediately after the fire that occurred in April. What is more, no alterations were made to the monitoring process which should have been carried out by the clients after one building or another had been "clad" in polyurethane. This means that every commodity should have been checked before it left the works.

Regarding the causes of the fire itself, according to the expert, polyurethane cannot ignite by itself. Three elements are needed for any fire: oxygen, fuel and a source of heat. Naturally, there are some factors that cause ignition. The exact cause has still not been established, but this is not the main thing. For it is sufficient to even have the slightest source of heat or fire for a fire to engulf the entire building. All the blocks which are "fortunate" enough to have this facing are potentially in danger. Fortunately, there were no fatalities in the first fire. So, surely, it wasn't necessary to lose dozens of lives in order to focus attention on the danger of polyurethane in the end?

A decision on compensation

President Ilham Aliyev has given orders that the families of the dead and injured should be given material assistance and the building repaired rapidly, that the flats should be furnished and provided with domestic appliances, and documents destroyed in the fire should be re-issued. The families of each of the 15 people who perished during the fire and each resident of the building who suffered as a result of the fire, are to be given 5,000 manats; each of the 56 families who lived in the building are to receive 20,000 manats in compensation for their material losses. Before that each of the victims was given 10,000 manats by way of preliminary assistance. Three million manats has been allocated for capital repairs to the building. A total of five million manats has been provided by the reserve treasury fund of Azerbaijan for the residents of the fire-stricken building to assist them in renting accommodation.

A great tragedy, big questions

The tragedy has rocked the whole of Azerbaijani society.  The deaths of people, of infants, has evoked an enormous response in the heart of every resident of Azerbaijan. A number of foreign media reported the tragedy that occurred in Baku with expressions of sympathy. People left flowers by photographs of those who perished at the embassies and consulates of Azerbaijan in Istanbul, Moscow and a number of other countries.

Clothes and food collection points were rapidly organised for the victims with the assistance of the Red Cross and a number of volunteers. The next and subsequent days people came to the scene of the tragedy with flowers, toys and candles to pay their respects to the innocent people who had perished, who it would seem were in the safest place, their own home. Who could have thought that this house would become the last resting place of three infants, of a family in which all members perished, of the woman who did not want to leave her pets in the burning building and of others, the elderly and the old.  Fifteen of them perished in the 16-storey building that burnt down. May such a tragedy never happen again.