Another fire in a flammable aluminium clad building in Dubai reminds us that our politicians are still running around trying to look busy while ignoring the simple facts.
The latest fire spread to 15 floors in the Zen apartment building in Dubai’s Marina development. There have been no reports of any deaths although there was absolute chaos as dozens of residents were left homeless.
There have now been four of these fires in Dubai that we know of, and one in Melbourne, all in modern buildings with fire safety sprinklers installed. Fatalities? Zero.
And yet, our politicians can’t see past the terrible, horrible Grenfell Tower fire in London where nearly ninety people died because the building had no fire sprinklers, no fire evacuation plan and no idea how dangerous the cladding was.
So, as the pollies dither, passing the buck back to us to pay the bills for their lack of foresight and blind adherence to whatever developers want, whether it’s the OK to cut corners or free passes on dodgy developments, the danger (such as it is) doesn’t go away.
If the developers who put the cladding on our buildings in the first place had to pay for it – as they damn well should – then we’d hear a different story about how dangerous it really is.
But, oh no. They didn’t know whether they were getting the dangerous stuff or the safe stuff, so they shouldn’t be expected to fork out for its replacement.
What about us? We didn’t know that there was such a thing as flammable cladding. We trust the people we pay a lot of money to, to get it right.
And why wouldn’t we just insist that every building over three storeys with cladding had fire sprinklers installed (at government expense)?
Anyway, thanks to our very good friends at the Owners Corporation Network for alerting us to the latest not-very-fatal cladding blaze.
Closer to home, there’s a bumper crop of posts on the Flat Chat Forum.
Is our strata manager over-servicing our scheme? And why? That’s HERE.
I want to remove part of a structural wall. Where are the regulations for that? That’s HERE.
The special levy of tens of thousands of dollars raised to fix windows hasn’t been spent after two years. How do we force the committee to act? That’s HERE.
Can the committee pay for work that should have been done by a lazy owner? That’s HERE.
Why do we need a strata manager when we have a functioning committee? That’s HERE.
Do I still have to take my company title dispute to the Supreme Court? Maybe … maybe not. That’s HERE.
By the time you’ve read this, there will be even more questions and answers on the Forum.
