LONDON: Owners of high-rise hotels across the Gulf should review their evacuation and fire alarm systems in the wake of an horrific blaze in London last month, said a leading international fire expert.
The large number of high-rise hotels in the region represents a particular worry for regulators, according to Jim Glockling, the technical director of the UK-based Fire Protection Association.
He made his remarks as it emerged that cladding used in at least 60 tower blocks in the UK had failed a new safety test.
Glockling said building owners should urgently review both their fire detection and evacuation procedures as regulators worldwide absorb the lessons of the Grenfell Tower blaze, in which at least 80 people died last month.
A surge in hotel construction spurred by the growth of regional tourism and events such as the Dubai Expo 2020 and FIFA World Cup in Qatar two years later has led to hundreds of new high-rise hotels being constructed in the region, many of them covered with cladding panels.
Hotel owners may now have to review their entire evacuation procedures in the wake of the fire as insurance companies reassess building fire risks.
A cladding fire which erupted on New Year’s Eve 2015 at The Address Downtown Dubai hotel was broadcast live to millions of people worldwide and triggered reforms to the fire safety code in the UAE.
“It is critical that you have a robust alarm detection in place to get the earliest possible warning,” said Glockling. “Many alarm systems are de-sensitised so that a big building doesn’t have to be evacuated if someone has burnt the toast or left the kettle on.”
Such false alarms can lead to complacency among building managers and fire fighters.
He said that some 95 percent of automated fire alarms in the UK are either false or unwanted — such as those caused by someone smoking or from cooking fumes or vapor.
Building owners should instead install more sophisticated systems that are triggered when there is more likelihood of a fire than not.
“These systems indicate a fire is more like 80 percent likely than 90 percent unlikely,” Glockling said.
Police in the UK said on Thursday that they had reasonable grounds to consider whether local authorities had committed corporate manslaughter as tests on buildings with cladding continued across the UK.
At least 80 people died on June 14 when the blaze ripped through the London tower block, the city’s deadliest fire in more than a century.
Unlike the UK, where many old concrete towers built in the 1960s and 1970s have been recovered with flammable cladding panels, such panels are more likely to be found on much newer towers in the Gulf, where a real estate boom has added hundreds of new high-rise towers over the last decade — most of them covered with aluminum cladding panels with flammable core materials.
The Grenfell Tower fire “has enormous implications” for such buildings, said Glockling.
The Fire Protection Association has also warned of the urgent need to update 10-year-old fire regulations in the UK.
“We are concerned that other sectors of the building regulations, particularly to do with sustainability, unwisely bias building methods and material choices to those that might perform less well in fire scenarios,” according to a briefing note. “The regulations do not constitute a holistic approach to the creation of a safe, resilient and habitable building.”
Gulf high-rise hotel owners ‘must learn from Grenfell blaze’
Gulf high-rise hotel owners ‘must learn from Grenfell blaze’
DHL cargo plane crashes in Lithuania
- The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a “DHL cargo plane
The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a “DHL cargo plane flying from Leipzig, Germany, to Vilnius Airport.”
It posted on the social platform X that city services including a fire truck were on site.
DHL Group, headquartered in Bonn, Germany, did not immediately return a call for comment.
UN chief slams land mine threat days after US decision to supply Ukraine
- The outgoing US administration is aiming to give Ukraine an upper hand before President-elect Donald Trump enters office
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the mines ‘very important’ to halting Russian attacks
SIEM REAP, Cambodia: The UN Secretary-General on Monday slammed the “renewed threat” of anti-personnel land mines, days after the United States said it would supply the weapons to Ukrainian forces battling Russia’s invasion.
In remarks sent to a conference in Cambodia to review progress on the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, UN chief Antonio Guterres hailed the work of clearing and destroying land mines across the world.
“But the threat remains. This includes the renewed use of anti-personnel mines by some of the Parties to the Convention, as well as some Parties falling behind in their commitments to destroy these weapons,” he said in the statement.
He called on the 164 signatories — which include Ukraine but not Russia or the United States — to “meet their obligations and ensure compliance to the Convention.”
Guterres’ remarks were delivered by UN Under-Secretary General Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana.
AFP has contacted her office and a spokesman for Guterres to ask if the remarks were directed specifically at Ukraine.
The Ukrainian team at the conference did not respond to AFP questions about the US land mine supplies.
Washington’s announcement last week that it would send anti-personnel land mines to Kyiv was immediately criticized by human rights campaigners.
The outgoing US administration is aiming to give Ukraine an upper hand before President-elect Donald Trump enters office.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the mines “very important” to halting Russian attacks.
The conference is being held in Cambodia, which was left one of the most heavily bombed and mined countries in the world after three decades of civil war from the 1960s.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet told the conference his country still needs to clear over 1,600 square kilometers (618 square miles) of contaminated land that is affecting the lives of more than one million people.
Around 20,000 people have been killed in Cambodia by land mines and unexploded ordnance since 1979, and twice as many have been injured.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) said on Wednesday that at least 5,757 people had been casualties of land mines and explosive remnants of war across the world last year, 1,983 of whom were killed.
Civilians made up 84 percent of all recorded casualties, it said.
Philippines’ Marcos says threat of assassination ‘troubling’
- Security agencies at the weekend said they would step up their protocols
MANILA: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos said on Monday he will not take lightly “troubling” threats against him, just days after his estranged vice president said she had asked someone to assassinate the president if she herself was killed.
In a video message during which he did not name Vice President Sara Duterte, his former running mate, Marcos said “such criminal plans should not be overlooked.”
Security agencies at the weekend said they would step up their protocols and investigate the statement, which Duterte made at a press conference. The vice president’s office has acknowledged a Reuters request for comment.
An average of 140 women and girls were killed by a partner or relative per day in 2023, the UN says
- The agencies reported approximately 51,100 women and girls were killed in 2023
- The rates were highest in Africa and the Americas and lowest in Asia and Europe
UNITED NATIONS: The deadliest place for women is at home and 140 women and girls on average were killed by an intimate partner or family member per day last year, two UN agencies reported Monday.
Globally, an intimate partner or family member was responsible for the deaths of approximately 51,100 women and girls during 2023, an increase from an estimated 48,800 victims in 2022, UN Women and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime said.
The report released on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women said the increase was largely the result of more data being available from countries and not more killings.
But the two agencies stressed that “Women and girls everywhere continue to be affected by this extreme form of gender-based violence and no region is excluded.” And they said, “the home is the most dangerous place for women and girls.”
The highest number of intimate partner and family killings was in Africa – with an estimated 21,700 victims in 2023, the report said. Africa also had the highest number of victims relative to the size of its population — 2.9 victims per 100,000 people.
There were also high rates last year in the Americas with 1.6 female victims per 100,000 and in Oceania with 1.5 per 100,000, it said. Rates were significantly lower in Asia at 0.8 victims per 100,000 and Europe at 0.6 per 100,000.
According to the report, the intentional killing of women in the private sphere in Europe and the Americas is largely by intimate partners.
By contrast, the vast majority of male homicides take place outside homes and families, it said.
“Even though men and boys account for the vast majority of homicide victims, women and girls continue to be disproportionately affected by lethal violence in the private sphere,” the report said.
“An estimated 80 percent of all homicide victims in 2023 were men while 20 percent were women, but lethal violence within the family takes a much higher toll on women than men, with almost 60 percent of all women who were intentionally killed in 2023 being victims of intimate partner/family member homicide,” it said.
The report said that despite efforts to prevent the killing of women and girls by countries, their killings “remain at alarmingly high levels.”
“They are often the culmination of repeated episodes of gender-based violence, which means they are preventable through timely and effective interventions,” the two agencies said.
Russia says it downs seven Ukrainian missiles over Kursk region
Russia’s air defense systems destroyed seven Ukrainian missiles overnight over the Kursk region, governor of the Russian region that borders Ukraine said on Monday.
He said that air defense units also destroyed seven Ukrainian drones. He did not provide further details.
A pro-Russian military analyst Roman Alyokhin, who serves as an adviser to the governor, said on his Telegram messaging channel that “Kursk was subjected to a massive attack by foreign-made missiles” overnight.
