Building safety: tougher inspections
Owners of buildings and warehouses who fail to adhere to fire safety standards and flout civil defence rules face closer scrutiny and fines
DUBAI: Owners of buildings and warehouses who fail to adhere to fire safety standards and flout civil defence rules face closer scrutiny and fines as more Civil Defence inspectors armed with PDA and iPads fan out across Dubai, a senior official said.
Major Jamal Ahmad Ebrahim, Director of the Preventive Safety Department at Dubai Civil Defence (DCD), said the logs of his team of inspectors across Dubai will be electronically updated.
"This is part of our e-services. There will be no more paper-based inspections. This will allow us to know what's going on in the field almost immediately.
"If a building owner is found in violation, he will be served a warning to fix it within 10 days. After 10 days, our inspector and his supervisor will get an automatic reminder to go back to the violator for a re-inspection. If our warning is ignored we will know it immediately and fines will be issued as per the law," said Major Ebrahim.
The Civil Defence lists 185 types of fire-safety violations. Dubai has 63 buildings with a height of over 200 metres and 125 buildings that are taller than 150 metres, surpassing both Hong Kong and New York.
Dubai currently has 23,746 buildings whose management systems are connected to the 24/7 direct-alarm system.
Police reported that warehouse fires jumped 22 per cent between January and October 2010, from 31 incidents in 2009 to 38 in 2010.
More fire safety inspectors will be hired to deal with the emirate's more than 42,000 buildings, said Major Ebrahim, adding they have issued "several hundred" fines last year for fire safety violations.
Fines could range from Dh500 for ill-maintained fire extinguishers in buildings to Dh50,000 for non-adherence to technical specifications or safety measures concerning cylinders used to transport hazardous or radioactive materials.
"Data uploading will be done through a docking port and communication between the PDAs and our server will be a secure intranet," said Saleh Doleh, the computer engineer in charge of the DCD project.
"I have ordered about 50 iPads for use by our inspection teams," said Ebrahim.
