It is necessary to classify existing buildings to have specific requirements on fire prevention and fighting.

50% comes from housing

Recently, on September 3, Thanh Tri District Police said that the Fire Prevention and Rescue Police Team, inter-family groups, civil defense, grassroots fire prevention, commune police and people promptly coordinated to prevent the fire from spreading and rescue property in a fire at a house combined with a business in Ngu Hiep commune.

The fire broke out at a house that is combined with a production and business owned by Mr. Nguyen Van D (in Luu Phai village, Ngu Hiep commune, Thanh Tri district). Immediately after the people discovered the fire, they reported it to the inter-family force, civil defense, fire prevention and fighting force, and the commune police. They quickly arrived at the scene to coordinate with the local forces and the people. The commune police used fire extinguishers to put out the fire, but because there was a lot of cardboard, it was ineffective.

Immediately after receiving a request for support from the local forces, the Fire Prevention and Rescue Police Team (Thanh Tri District Police) mobilized vehicles to support, prevent the fire from spreading and move assets. The fire did not cause any human casualties, and the property damage was insignificant, mainly some cardboard boxes used to contain cakes and candies.

It is known that the scale of the project is a house combined with production and business with an area of about 200m2 including 2 floors with a height of 7.5m. The fire area on the first floor has an area of about 9m2 containing tools and baking ingredients. The homeowner has fully equipped fire extinguishers and has been trained and equipped with fire prevention skills.

According to the representative of the Vietnam Institute of Building Science and Technology (IBST), in fact, in recent times, there have been many house fires, leaving disastrous consequences such as the fire at the boarding house No. 1, lane 43/98/31, Trung Kinh street (Cau Giay district) on May 24, killing 14 people. Furthermore, in 2023, in the early morning of September 13, 2023, a fire at the mini apartment building No. 37, lane 29/70, Khuong Ha street (Thanh Xuan district) killed 56 people and in addition, there were many other small fires that also caused deaths...

Existing houses are very diverse in type and fire hazard, especially existing houses that violate basic fire safety factors such as escape and fire prevention, of which the most dangerous are individual houses combined with businesses.

The vast majority of people living in these buildings live with fire. That is, the house has only one frontage, no second escape route, the stairs are open and the business is combined on the first floor, the upper floors are sealed, so in case of fire, there is no way to escape from the house. These are particularly dangerous points of individual houses combined with businesses.

Fire prevention and fighting problems are often very difficult to overcome, because the house has an elevator inside, the business is outside, it is impossible to cover the elevator to convert from an open elevator to a closed elevator, especially for small frontage houses; or it is impossible to close the business because it affects life; or to prevent the spread of fire, a wall must be built to separate the business area and the residential area, but not every house can do this...

Third, the golden time to escape is only about the first 5 minutes, maximum 10 minutes. Because in the first 5 minutes, the fire is still developing slowly, at this time escaping is not dangerous. When the fire has burned for more than 5 - 10 minutes, the amount of smoke is very large - the leading cause of death. In recent fires, the vast majority of deaths are due to smoke, not direct contact with the fire.

Need to delimit each object

Dr. Cao Duy Khoi - Deputy Director of IBST acknowledged that since the promulgation of the Fire Prevention and Fighting Law No. 27/2001/QH10 until now, the problem of current constructions violating fire prevention and fighting regulations has not been thoroughly resolved. Because in reality, many constructions are very difficult or impossible to overcome to ensure fire prevention and fighting requirements.

In addition, there are also objective factors, infrastructure in many places does not meet standards and regulations. The current situation of urban areas in Vietnam, especially in large cities, especially houses in alleys, is almost unable to meet the conditions of traffic and water supply for fire fighting.

But if construction activities are suspended, it will have a huge impact on society. People in all mini apartments will have no place to live; people will no longer have a livelihood, this is an extremely difficult problem for state management agencies, especially the Ministry of Construction and the Ministry of Public Security in recent times.

Regarding the solution, according to the leader of IBST, there should be separate regulations for existing individual housing projects; there should be separate regulations based on the principle of reducing fire safety requirements, only retaining core contents and possibly adding limited operating conditions, renovation and repair issues.

At the same time, there needs to be a policy to gradually change the model of individual housing combined with business, separating houses for living and business as business; separating areas for living and business. If the situation of half living and half business continues, it will be difficult to prevent fire. Technically, the principle is to ensure priority for people to escape from inside the house; prevent fire and smoke from spreading; early fire warning, to speed up the time for people to know about the fire early so they can move to escape.

At the Conference of full-time National Assembly deputies, delegate Duong Khac Mai (Dak Nong Provincial Delegation) highly agreed with the content on fire prevention for houses combined with business, which stipulates that "business areas with fire and explosion risks must be separated from residential areas". Because in reality, in some recent fires, there was no separation between the business area and the house, so when a fire broke out, it caused serious consequences.

However, delegates suggested that it is necessary to calculate a suitable roadmap and soon complete the draft law to ensure that the laws when put into practice are easy to apply, strict, and have a deterrent effect on business owners of construction works.

Source: https://kinhtedothi.vn/can-phan-loai-cong-trinh-hien-huu-de-co-yeu-cau-rieng-ve-pccc.html