‘Qualitative architectural design, panacea to fire outbreak in public space’

Good architectural design has been said to be panacea to fire incidences in Nigerian public spaces, especially markets.

According to the Registrar, Architects Registration Council of Nigeria (ARCON), Arc. Umar Murnai Saulawa, the unfortunate incessant fire outbreaks in public spaces could be addressed with qualitative architectural design.

The registrar disclosed this during the just concluded conference organised by the Nigerian Building & Road Research Institute (NBRRI) Workshop.

In his paper, ‘Fire Safety Design Considerations: A Panacea for Fire

Severity Reduction in Markets’, the ARCON registrar, decried colossal loss of lives and properties to fire incidences in the country.

To address the situation, Murnai said the discourse was put together to enlighten Nigerians on the roles of architects and architectural designs to reduce to acceptable limits the potential for death or injury and loses to the occupants, the owners, the customers and others such as fire rescue service providers.

According to him, lack of architectural designed spaces using the safety factors in the building and fire code would create environment with no restrictions to spontaneous and massive conflagrations.

“Most conflagrations start off with a source of heat, whilst the fuel is often the combustible goods and structures that makeup majority of the occupancy of the market; the open air in these spaces provides the oxygen, often exacerbated by winds and movement of hot air during the fires,” he said.

He noted that fire incidences could be prevented through the deployment of passive and actives measures.

The passive measures, according to him, take the process of utilisation fixed, passive and immobile structures and design parameters in the prevention and containment of fires.

“These measures are principal component of architectural design processes governed and dictated by the building and fire codes. This is the process of utilising architectural design in developing buildings to ensure fire safety,” he said.

Also, Murnai added that, strict compliance to the nation’s building code should be enforced because the code delineates the process of creating an architectural drawing for a building with the necessary design measures for passive and active methods of fire safety by establishing steps and processes.

According to him, these steps in design ensure fire safety in the building by

determining structural and design parameters that affect containment of smoke, fire containment, separation of stored combustible materials, speedy and safe evacuation of occupants and fighting of the fire.

“The step-by-step process provides the architect with a logical sequence and methodology for implementing code compliance during the design of the project to ensure fire safety using international best practices,”he said

The ARCON registrar said that, the effective design of fire safety components in buildings also requires the effective use and maintenance of these components, hence, the operators of markets should be required to maintain constant code compliance requirements and standards, which the markets were designed for.