Hundreds of residents have been told they cannot return to their high-rise Melbourne home after a fire sparked concerns about the building’s cladding, which is the same material that covered London’s Grenfell Tower.
Eighty firefighters were deployed to the building in Melbourne’s Spencer Street on Monday morning to battle a blaze that has prompted fresh concerns about combustible cladding on apartment buildings.
The fire began shortly before 6am at the Neo 200 complex and shot up several floors of the apartment complex, prompting the Metropolitan Fire Brigade to upgrade the emergency.
The fire brigade said the fire had started on the 22nd floor and quickly moved up the outside of the tower to the 27th floor.
Ambulance Victoria said paramedics had treated one man in his 20s for smoke inhalation. He was taken to Royal Melbourne hospital in a stable condition.
Just by Spencer street station .. I honestly hope whoever is in there gets out okay!! #melbourne #fire — you feel so helpless looking on but the fire engines are on their way. pic.twitter.com/jYGYqSc0Wb
— ʙᴇᴋᴀʜ ᴊᴀʏɴᴇ (@bekahjaynex) February 3, 2019
Victoria police assisted with the evacuation and relocation of residents.
Dan Stephens, the chief officer for the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, said crews believed the building was clad in the same material as the Grenfell Tower in London, which caught fire in 2017 and killed 72 people.
“My understanding is that the building is cladded with aluminium composite materials, so the cladding that was on the Grenfell Tower,” he said.
Victoria’s planning minister, Richard Wynne, later said the building was only partially clad in the flammable material.
Trent Curtin, the assistant chief officer of the brigade, said sprinklers had activated on four of the floors and contained the fire to the balcony and apartment.
Firefighters had undertaken an “internal fire attack”, fighting the fire directly inside the building.
“The fire escalated quite rapidly from the 22nd floor,” Curtin said. “We can assume, but can’t confirm, that the cladding escalated the speed of the fire.”
On Monday afternoon the City of Melbourne issued an emergency order after the municipal building surveyor identified “essential safety measures” had been compromised by the fire.
“The emergency order requires that the building not be occupied for 48 hours or until these systems can be recommissioned and confirmed as operational,” a council spokesperson said.
Smoke controls, sprinklers and emergency warning systems are among the functions that could have been compromised.
The apartment building was one of more than 2,000 that have been inspected since the Grenfell Tower fire by the Victorian Building Authority, chief executive Sue Eddy confirmed.
She said the building had been declared a “moderate risk” and two notices were issued, requiring smoke alarms be installed in bedrooms adjacent to walls covered with the cladding.
Former premier Ted Baillieu, who co-chairs the Victorian Cladding Taskforce, said building notices were issued last July and October, identifying the problem.
“The important task is to find these buildings with cladding, to fix them and to fund them and then to prevent it happening in the future,” Baillieu said.
Some 360 private buildings had been deemed high-risk, he said.
Cities across the world began assessing buildings following London’s Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017 when an inferno engulfed the 24-storey block of flats, killing 72 people.
Fire safety inspectors, investigation specialists and the Melbourne city council municipal building surveyor immediately began working to determine the cause of the blaze.
Curtin said crews had already identified potential fire safety issues with the building, including that some residents had covered their smoke alarms with plastic.
Fire at high rise apartment corner of Spencer St and Little Bourke. Major @MFB_NEWS response @theheraldsun pic.twitter.com/UDJD9AluaV
— Josh Fagan (@faganjosh) February 3, 2019
“One of those issues is that occupants have been covering smoke alarms with plastic to stop them going off from cooking or false alarms,” he said. “There’s potentially others [fire safety issues] but we’re unclear at this stage.”
Curtin said crews had also encountered residents who refused to evacuate from the building.
The complex has 371 apartments and, at 10am, Curtin said crews were still struggling to get some people to leave. “Firefighters went floor to floor in the early stages of the fire,” he said. “Even with a notification to evacuate, some people refused to evacuate.”
Spencer Street was initially closed in both directions and a spokesman for the fire brigade said crews had been able to bring the fire under control by 7am.
By 10am the street had reopened in a northbound direction. The fire brigade expects crews to be on site for most of the day.
The City of Melbourne set up at relief centre in Swanston Hall on the ground floor of Melbourne Town Hall and said around 200 people had attended.
“The relief centre will be open to provide food, counselling and relief services while the status of the apartment building is being assessed,” a spokesperson said.
The Age reported that pieces of the building could be seen falling from the complex on the corner of Bourke and Spencer streets during the fire.
