A leading Australian fire safety engineer has compared the task of removing flammable aluminium cladding from high-rise buildings to ridding the country of asbestos, saying it could affect tens of thousands of buildings.
The fire at the Lacrosse tower in Melbourne’s Docklands in 2014, which spread across the facade in minutes. Photograph: Gregory Badrock/Metropolitan Fire Brigade
Stephen Kip, an adjunct professor at Victoria University, said aluminium composite cladding of the style implicated in the Grenfell Tower fire in west London was used in “thousands” of high-rise apartments and other buildings, despite only being approved for use in Australia for interior use or in low-rise buildings. The material was also blamed for the “near-miss” fire in the Lacrosse building in Melbourne’s Docklands in 2014.
Click on the link below for more: