New Year’s Eve 2015 quickly turned frightful. A 63-story skyscraper in the United Arab Emirates caught fire. Analysts investigated. Some people pointed to faulty electrical wiring. Others blamed poor building materials. One thing is likely: This building may not be the last to go up in flames.
The blaze at The Address Downtown (the building’s name) wasn't the first, second, or even third fire to engulf the outside of a Dubai skyscraper. It was at least the eighth such fire in the desert country known as the Emirates.
Similar building infernos have struck major cities around the world. The fires have killed dozens of people according to an Associated Press survey.
What is causing the structures to flame up? Building and safety experts say a material called aluminum composite panel cladding is the culprit.
Most cladding is two thin pieces of aluminum with a foam core. The cladding panels are attached to the side of a building, one piece after another. Developers use cladding because it offers a modern finish, allows dust to wash off during rains, and is relatively simple and cheap to install.
The biggest problem is the panel cores. They are all or mostly a common type of very flammable plastic.
The panels themselves don't spark the fires. However, when installed row after row, the cladding can provide a straight line of kindling up the side of a tower. Whooooosh! Fire spreads quickly and burns hot.
"It's like a wildfire going up the sides of the building," says one Dubai official.
Builders could lessen the danger. They could install the panels with breaks between them to curb a fire's spread. Replacing some of the plastic inside the panels with non-flammable material would also lessen the problem.
Lots of siding in Dubai and elsewhere don’t meet strict safety standards. Local experts have suggested as many as 70 percent of Dubai’s towers may use the flammable cladding. Experts have no idea how many skyscrapers worldwide have the cladding. That makes many buildings at risk for fast-moving fires.
After a fire at a 40-story building in Dubai, the city made new building regulations. The laws barred the use of flammable cladding. Officials elsewhere in the Emirates did the same.
But today’s rules do not call for repairing buildings with cladding already installed. So that leaves everyone wondering where the flames will strike next.
