China News Agency, Beijing, September 17 (Reporter Guo Chaokai) On the afternoon of September 16, a fire broke out in the 218-meter-high Changsha Telecom Building in Hunan, and the exterior walls of dozens of floors burned violently.

Although there were no casualties, it once again sounded the alarm for the firefighting of super high-rise buildings.

　　Fire extinguishing of super high-rise buildings is a worldwide problem

　　At about 15:45 on the 16th, a fire broke out on the outer wall of the west annex of the Telecom Building, Heyuan Street, Changsha, Changsha.

After receiving the alarm, the Changsha Fire Rescue Detachment Command Center immediately dispatched 17 fire stations, 36 fire trucks, and 280 commanders to the scene.

As of 19:30 that day, the open fire in the building had been extinguished, and the fire caused no casualties. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

　　The reporter noticed that in August this year, the Hunan Branch of China Telecom Co., Ltd. issued a bidding announcement for the fire maintenance project of the building, saying: "At present, the fire protection equipment of the Hehuayuan Building is running overtime, and some equipment does not meet the current national standards. Fire alarm systems and smoke prevention and exhaust systems still have major safety hazards.”

　　On September 5, 11 days before the fire broke out, Hunan Telecom announced that the bidding for the fire maintenance project had failed because there were less than 3 valid bids and an apparent lack of competition.

In other words, there were obvious fire hazards in the Telecom Building before the fire.

　　In fact, the fire extinguishing of super high-rise buildings has always been a worldwide problem.

China's "Uniform Standard for Civil Building Design", which has been implemented since 2019, clearly states that a building with a height greater than 100 meters is a super high-rise building.

The 218-meter-high Telecom Building is the first building in Changsha to exceed 200 meters, and it is also a typical super high-rise building.

　　Previously, experts from the Fire and Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Emergency Management of China have analyzed that if a fire occurs in a super high-rise building, rescue will face the following difficulties: First, the spread is fast, there are elevator shafts, pipeline wells, etc. in the super high-rise buildings, and some buildings have insulation outside materials, the fire can easily spread upwards from the inside and outside, forming a three-dimensional fire; second, it is difficult to evacuate, and the evacuation mainly takes stairs, but the vertical evacuation distance of super high-rise buildings is longer, and the buildings are densely populated, which is easy to cause trampling, suffocation, and poisoning; The third is the difficulty of water supply. Super high-rise buildings consume a large amount of water for firefighting, and their own water supply may not be able to meet the needs.

In addition, most of the super high-rise buildings have underground floors, the road bearing capacity of fire truck passages is reduced, and the climbing operation site is limited.

　　At present, the highest climbing fire truck ladder in Asia can only reach about 100 meters. Affected by the fire fighting distance, weather and other conditions, the effective fire extinguishing height of the climbing fire truck is difficult to reach the theoretical value.

Fire rescue on higher floors can only rely on firefighting facilities in the building, personnel self-rescue and rooftop helicopter rescue, etc., which brings great difficulties to personnel evacuation and escape.

　　What is the solution to the fire protection problem of super high-rise buildings?

　　How to solve the fire problem of super high-rise buildings?

Industry experts pointed out that fire fighting in super high-rise buildings requires high professional requirements and cannot be solved by the fire department alone.

Fire prevention is more practical than fire fighting.

　　The priority is to limit the height.

　　In recent years, some cities have blindly built super high-rise buildings.

To this end, in recent years, relevant Chinese departments have introduced measures one after another.

In June of this year, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for New Urbanization Implementation Plan", which proposed "strictly restricting new super high-rise buildings, no new buildings above 500 meters, and strictly restricting new buildings above 250 meters."

　　In this regard, Qin Jing, senior urban planner of the National Development and Reform Commission's Urban and Small Town Reform and Development Center, wrote bluntly that the introduction of this plan has undoubtedly poured cold water on super high-rise buildings. For the fourth time, relevant ministries and commissions promulgated policies on urban building height limits and strict restrictions on new super high-rise buildings.

　　The second is the use of external insulation materials.

　　According to media reports, Jiang Zuo, a local architect who lives near the Telecom Building all the year round, believes that the fire developed rapidly because the insulation materials on the outer wall of the Telecom Building are relatively flammable.

　　In recent years, whenever a fire occurs in a high-rise or super high-rise building, the external thermal insulation materials of the building will mostly become a hot topic.

Before the Ministry of Public Security issued Document No. 65 in 2011, the thermal insulation materials of civil buildings were mostly flammable and combustible materials.

After exploration and negotiation, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued the national standard "Code for Fire Protection in Architectural Design" in 2014, and once again made clear regulations that non-combustible or flame-retardant materials must be used in the interior and exterior thermal insulation systems of Chinese buildings.

　　The reporter learned that the external thermal insulation materials of high-rise buildings are classified into A (non-combustible), B1 (flammable), B2 (flammable), B3 (flammable) and other grades according to the combustion performance; The combustion performance of its insulation material should be Class A.

　　In the eyes of the outside world, to solve the fire protection problems of super high-rise buildings, prevention is more important than fire fighting. All parties must work together to add a "safety lock" to super high-rise buildings.

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