Preventive Measures for Fire Accidents in Apartment Buildings in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Owing to the increasing population, lands have become scarce. Therefore, the prices of land also have increased. To address this issue people, tend to buy apartments than have their plots of land and construct a house. The height and complexity of these residential buildings may easily lead to fires and there will be property losses, injuries, and deaths every year worldwide. Mostly nowadays people are looking at the fire safety of all these apartments due to these incidents. The research aims to identify a better preventive measure for fire accidents in residential buildings in SL. An extensive Literature review was carried out to discover the current practice in worldwide fire prevention. This study was conducted using a Questionnaire survey with apartment building occupants to identify the fire safety measures currently practice in the SL context regarding the ICTAD fire regulations. Simultaneously, statistical data related to fire incidents in SL for the past few years and major reasons for SL apartment building fires were collected from the fire department. The collected data were analyzed based on three building height categories. From the findings, faulty wirings were identified as the major reason for apartment fires, most of the occupants are unaware of these regulations and some of the buildings are also not facilitated with required fire safety. Finally, it was highly recommended to conduct demonstration programs for public awareness and do practice the fire regulations.