Large Fire at residential building in Essen Germany

[MartinLe]

This week a residential building in Essen, Germany, caught fire:

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-fire-rips-through-apartment-complex-in-essen/a-60852478

3 lightly injured, ~100 residents made it out unharmed.
Fire broke out on a balcony, spread over whole facade
The building was from 2016 or so, with a insulated (XPS as far as I can tell from the reports) facade. Building codes in Germany mandate a fire barrier every two storeys - now there's speculation if this was actually implemented.
There's also (IMO plausible) talk about the PVC cladding of the balconies helping the fire spread.
It took about 20 mins from first visible flames, to the whole facade beeing engulfed.
The house will be demolished.

There was also this exchange at a press conference:
Journalist: "Are you certain that the building was built according to the codes, given the tendency in the building sector to hand work over to subcontractors?"
Rep. of the firm owning the building "I'm certain there's a file that says so"

There's also some discussion if German building codes overestimate the safety of insulated facades.

I'm not remotely an expert with these things. My main thought is that everyone made it out in time, so maybe the fire protection of the building was ok. OTOH I think the rather nasty weather helped safe lives - most people will have had their windows closed. Maybe the same fire on a warm summer night would have been a total tragedy.
Then again, on an older building a fire would simply not spread from one balcony to the whole facade in 20 min, if at all.

 

[1503-44]

Looks like hydrocarbon fuel panels of some sort.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

its a bit like mad cows disease.

Everyone would like to think its only a UK problem.

When in actual fact the whole of Europe has the same problem.

 

[MartinLe]

This is how the flame barriers should be positiones with an EPS insulation, barrier means >200mm strip of rockwool. To me (layman) 200mm does not seem like much.
The whole thing presumes that an insulation with (highly flammable) EPS is flame retardant, if built properly with a layer of plaster etc.

 

[1503-44]

Yeah. 200mm doesn't exactly make me feel confident. It might work for horizontal panels.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

50mm of raw wool will stop most domestic flames as long as they can't get round the side.

The round the side is the biggest issue with all of these cladding things because the presumption is that it can't go internal from the outside which has proven time and time again to be a utterly bollocks presumption.

 

[IRstuff]

One thing to remember about most fire "barriers" is that they are not permanent things; hold a fire against them long enough and the fire will get through, if only through self-ignition.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm