Parts of Nelson, Victoria, Hobson and Wellesley street in the area around the building are closed

Hmm yeh a fire extinguisher at a very early part of the piece may have helped... Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

How often on construction sites are fire extinguishers readily available. 

The speed of fires is ridiculous, anyone who has been in one will know this. Its a bummer they couldn't get it under control earlier than they did.

Fletcher Building is in charge of the construction project, and they self insure their own projects. So I suspect they will be quite happy to blame a sub-contractor with the liability if they are able to point the finger.

darylblake:

 

Hmm yeh a fire extinguisher at a very early part of the piece may have helped... Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

 

How often on construction sites are fire extinguishers readily available. 

The speed of fires is ridiculous, anyone who has been in one will know this. Its a bummer they couldn't get it under control earlier than they did.

 

Fletcher Building is in charge of the construction project, and they self insure their own projects. So I suspect they will be quite happy to blame a sub-contractor with the liability if they are able to point the finger.

 

 

 

Surely an extinguisher is required under OSH? On site, yes, just a general rule, but when you decide to use a bare flame on rubber, well, the rule has to state have one within x metres of that use case surely.

Fire extinguishers are only good for a fire about the size of your average desk rubbish bin, they run out of retardant very quickly.

Construction sites can also be very fluid in terms of what staff are working on and where they are working on it which would make it extremely difficult to cover everything all of the time.

I imagine the worker would have been working under a task analysis, detailing out risks and how those risks are managed, including not leaving hot works equipment running unattended. This leads into somewhat of the fallacy that is "health and safety". You can have all paperwork up the wazoo, site specific safety plans, task analysis, risk matrixes etc etc etc, but at the end of the day, stupid and/or inattention actions will always occur, other than ass covering, what good is paperwork then?

I read that the ceilings were ply, and that there was a layer of "straw-like material" between the ceiling and roof.

Sure a blowtorch left on by a contractor may have started the fire, but it's a bit disturbing to think that a "straw-like material" might behave like straw in a fire.

I guess that the "straw-like material" - presumably for sound and heat insulation - didn't work as well as hoped or behaved differently in large scale in situ than in smaller scale lab tests.

They already changed cladding material, was going to be clad in composite panel with polyolefin core of the same type that caused disasters overseas (what did they change it to - a completely different material or a composite panel with a fire-resistant core?).

Also, the building has exterior scaffold that's enclosed with scrim, I guess that doesn't help firefighters with access to the fire from the side.

sen8or:

 

Fire extinguishers are only good for a fire about the size of your average desk rubbish bin, they run out of retardant very quickly.

 

Construction sites can also be very fluid in terms of what staff are working on and where they are working on it which would make it extremely difficult to cover everything all of the time.

 

I imagine the worker would have been working under a task analysis, detailing out risks and how those risks are managed, including not leaving hot works equipment running unattended. This leads into somewhat of the fallacy that is "health and safety". You can have all paperwork up the wazoo, site specific safety plans, task analysis, risk matrixes etc etc etc, but at the end of the day, stupid and/or inattention actions will always occur, other than ass covering, what good is paperwork then?

 

 

 

Ok, if that's the case then it seems this fire is no one fault. A blow torch vs butanol

DarthKermit:

 

It's a pity it wasn't the casino that burnt down.

 

True.  Probably NZ's largest destroyer of human lives after the Alcohol and Methamphetamine industries, and has the same defensive argument - that the majority can dabble with any of those for a bit of amusement without it causing significant harm, but once you cross the line it's very hard to find your way back.

I was expecting traffic to be horrific today, but myself and staff all experienced considerably lower than usual travel times.

networkn:

I was expecting traffic to be horrific today, but myself and staff all experienced considerably lower than usual travel times.

hio77:

networkn:

 

I was expecting traffic to be horrific today, but myself and staff all experienced considerably lower than usual travel times.

 

Quite a few companies are recommending working from home today.

Yeah, I understood that, and I had told my staff to come in an hour or two later depending on traffic, but it was good.

Must be quite a lot of companies doing that, it's almost like school holidays!

This job has been so bad for Fletcher's. This is quite convenient (maybe too convenient) as it will allow them to cut their losses an run. I'm sure the insurance company isn't going to to be too eager to payout quickly on this one.

I'm no engineer, but could they drop a couple of monsoon buckets on top of this building?

johny99:

 

I'm no engineer, but could they drop a couple of monsoon buckets on top of this building?

 

Fire service is looking to control at specific locations (mainly 5th floor concrete slab area) so a large scale dump of water may compromise the spread of fire to their target location, also its pretty windy out there and the dump would spread quite quickly on descent and reduce the impact.