Fire Issues in Strata Property

Thursday, March 17, 2011

What is strata property?


Strata property defined as building or collection of buildings where individuals with their small portion of their own known as lot but shares the ownership of common possessions such as walls, windows, roofs, driveways, fences, lawns, swimming pool and gardens, etc. Many people think strata properties are high rise buildings and vertical blocks of flats but keep in mind that townhouse and villa developments (the one level) also included in the strata schemes.

Being strata manager is not an easy task especially when you have to deal with various type of people living in the same block. Adheres to fire safety regulation is important, not because it is stated in the Act but this regulations ensured the safety of hundreds of lives in the building if the fire occurs. In strata properties the common cause of fire is electrical, usually related to cooking or heating equipment misuse and/or failure (Broadhead, R., 2010). In Malaysia, under the Strata Titles Act, it is mandatory for the Management Corporation (MC) of buildings such as apartments and condominiums to purchase fire insurance for the whole building. The individual unit owner is required to pay to the MC his respective premium portion.

 Prevention is Better Than Cure

As facility manager, these several actions shall be taken into consideration:

  1. Portable Fire Equipments,
  2. Alarms and Evacuation System
  3. Fire Safety Training,
  4. Fire Sprinkler System,
  5. Passive fire products. 


In minimizing risk, the key point is to prevent fire from starting or stop them if they are already spreading. The materials made to make wall, window and door frames may help to slow down or stop the fire from expand to other lots. Make sure the alarm is sensitive enough to identified the fire but not a false-alarm of people cooking with lots of smoke from their cooking pots. Property manager shall be alert whether to change it to better quality but not totally removed it from the properties. 



summarized from http://www.hba.org.my/faq/fire.htm
http://www.wormald.com.au/industry-capabilities/strata-buildings
http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/pdfs/About_us/Publications/ft045.pdf
\

0 comments: