Canberra Airport is defending its safety standards in the wake of concerns over some materials which are the same as those in Grenfell Tower, the high-rise building in London which turned into an inferno two years ago, with the loss of 72 lives.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The top of the front of the Canberra terminal and the car park are partly covered with an aluminium cladding which contains polyethylene, the same type of flammable plastic as the one at the core of the London catastrophe.
But airport managing director Stephen Byron said the Canberra and London situations were quite different.
The airport is a three-storey building which is not occupied by sleeping people at night, he said. And it has a raft of "fire-mitigation" devices and systems from sprinklers to alarms to sensors. There were fire wardens and frequent fire drills. Hydrants were situated around the complex.
"You put all that together and in a three-level, low-rise building there is not a risk," he said.
He felt that of all the types of building with the material, the airport was at the low end of concern. "This building would be in the lowest level of risk," he said.
This building would be in the lowest level of risk.
- Canberra Airport managing director Stephen Byron
The authorities across Australia are looking at use of the cladding in different buildings. Mr Byron said that there was not one rule for all. The situation in a hospital with the cladding might be different from that in a school - or an airport.
But an expert in fire safety and construction wasn't so confident. Sahil Bhasin of the Roscon Group, which inspects buildings, said the material wouldn't be used today after its dangerous properties emerged so tragically in Grenfell Tower.
He was concerned that the cladding at Canberra Airport was near exits where passengers emerged. "When someone comes out of a terminal, the first thing they want to do is light a cigarette," he said.
He was also concerned about the car park next to the terminal because of the amount of fuel in cars which might be there. "Car parks are risky based on the fuel loads," he said.
The cladding at the airport is used to make the buildings look better. They are shiny white sheets of aluminium with polyethylene between them - in effect, two sheets of metal with a thin space between them, filled by plastic which is flammable. Mr Bhasin said using it extensively was like wrapping a building in thousands of litres of petrol.
For the airport, Mr Byron said that the cladding was not all over the whole structure. Much of the facade was glass. He said that the airport had complied with all the relevant regulations right through the process of construction. The fire authorities had approved the airport's safety protections.
The ACT government said it had no jurisdiction over the cladding at the airport.
At the moment, cladding is being taken off buildings where the risk has been deemed to be particularly high. But it's not an exact science. Many flammable materials are used in construction - wood, for example - and each material demands its own precautions.
But this is costly. For some big apartment blocks in Australia, the bill comes to around a million dollars.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
