ARCON registrar advocates architectural design to curtail fire outbreaks in public spaces

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

This was the submission made by the Registrar, Architects Registration Council of Nigeria (ARCON), Arc. Umar Murnai Saulawa, at the just concluded conference organised by the Nigerian Building & Road Research Institute (NBRRI) Workshop held last week.

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In his paper, ‘Fire Safety Design Considerations: A Panacea For Fire Severity Reduction In Markets’, the ARCON chief who lamented the colossal loss of lives and properties to fire incidences, however, maintained that the unfortunate occurrence could be addressed with qualitative architectural design.

He said the lack of architecturally designed spaces using the safety factors in the building and fire code creates environments 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 make up the majority of 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 incidents could be prevented through the deployment of passive and active measures.

The passive measures, he said, take the process of utilisation of fixed, passive and immobile structures and design parametres in the prevention and containment of fires.

“These measures are the 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.

Murnai added that strict compliance with 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.

To him, these steps in design ensure fire safety in the building by determining structural and design parametres that affect containment of smoke, fire containment, separation of stored combustible materials, speedy and safe evacuation of occupants and fighting off the fire.