KEY POINTS:
Large coolstores for supermarket and distribution companies in the industrial areas of Auckland are rated as high risk by firefighters.
"They are up there in our risk matrix ... up with the large warehouses without sprinklers that are being built in South Auckland," said assistant Auckland regional fire
commander Larry Cocker.
Like the coolstore that exploded and burned down at Tamahere, on the outskirts of Hamilton last Saturday, thousands of chiller and freezer produce operations have been built with expanded polystyrene panels (EPS).
They are not fitted with sprinkler systems to act as first aid until fire crews arrive and they do not always have town supply water mains to allow crews to extinguish fire and disperse flammable and toxic gases used for refrigerants.
In Auckland, Mr Cocker said the Fire Service had the chance to comment on a building permit when a design departed from the Building Act.
The service's design review unit would then strongly recommend to the local council that the building have sprinklers.
"Often that just won't happen."
A supermarket chain built a new warehouse in the Mangere industrial area that does not have sprinklers. Instead, designers decided to use a flame retardant polystyrene panel construction.
Mr Cocker said the service was dealing with a trend towards boutique coolstorage plants in East Tamaki, Mangere and Albany.
"We are aware of how these places are built and how they store hazardous materials."
A particular concern was warehouses built as a single cell from concrete tilt-slab material.
"It will be extremely difficult to extinguish fires in them, because we can't get at them and the quantity of flammable goods they contain."
The Western Bay of Plenty district has dozens of coolstores because of its kiwifruit industry and many are outside areas with reticulated water supply, said Te Puke Volunteer Fire Brigade chief officer Glenn Williams.
That was the case at Te Puke's last major fire in a packhouse and coolstorage operation nine years ago when 58 firefighters from four regions attended.
Having sufficient water for firefighting was still a worry, he said. It seemed also that a lot of buildings were kept below a certain size so they did not have the added cost requirement to put in sprinklers.
"Some coolstores have monitored automatic alarms and some do give false alarms at times," said Mr Williams. "When you turn up, unless you see smoke and flames coming from the roof you look at it as possibly just another false alarm. Tamahere will be a wake-up call for all of us because we will treat every call as a potential fire."
Guidelines for minimising the fire risk in coolstores using polystyrene panels were issued two years ago by consultant fire engineer Bob Nelligan. His research showed the materials had been involved in a number of building fires and increased the risk of spread of fire.
His research paper said there were also issues relating to the safety of firefighters and rescuers in buildings where the material was burning and letting off flammable gases.
Mr Nelligan said guidelines were being adopted but not as quickly as the insurance industry and Fire Service would like.
He was heartened that councils were asking for both fire-rated panels and sprinkler protection in high-risk areas for new buildings. However, the Building Code had certain fire hazard categories where polystyrene panels were allowed.
The Cold Storage Association declined to comment on fire risk matters because of the inquiry into the fire at Icepak Coolstores' Tamahere plant.
But the industry argues sprinklers are uneconomic compared with monitored smoke and heat detection systems and there is a risk of accidental water release destroying stored goods.
"There's nothing wrong with any of the refrigerants we use until they escape," said Murray Butler, president of the Institute of Refrigeration Heating and Air Conditioning Engineers. He added people living near coolstores should not worry about explosions.
