Fire in Chechnya

On Thursday, April 3, a fire broke out on the exterior of the uncompleted 40-story tower of the Grozny-City complex in Chechnya.   Various reports from Russia said that exterior “panels”, or “trim on the panels,” or “insulation” was burning.  The panels were described only as “plastic.”

Grozny-City is a multi-building complex designed by Baykan Architects, and built by Bora-Insaat, both Turkish companies.  The residential building that burned is the tallest of the group, and is still under construction, although it is already partially occupied.  No one was injured in the fire, and reportedly, the interior of the building is intact: only the exterior burned.

Reporting on the incident is not very detailed (and much of it gravitates towards background factoids: it is the residence of French actor and tax exile Gerard Depardieu, it sports the two largest clock-faces in the world… leaving little space to talk about architectural concerns).  We wonder  if the variations in reporting may, in fact, be due to translation problems.  For example, the description of “trim” burning may be a bad translation-choice for “cladding.”

View video footage of the fire here:

Composites and Architecture contacted the architect’s office.  We received two emails from Deniz Ceyhun BAYKAN – architect.

He states that the building was designed with GFRC panels:  “We used A1 fire class, glass fiber reinforced concrete panels, which is 2000 kg/m3 density and 0.5-1.0 W/m2 materials.”

However, he is explicit that the architectural firm had no control or consultation about what was actually used in construction:

“But! We didn’t do any consulting works, when this buildings under construction.  So! We don’t know the brands or classifications of used materials on construction. All the projects approved by the Moscow Highrise Buildings Control Unit. We used all the international standards together for ours fire protection projects and for all construction and cladding materials.
They are;
TR EN, Turkish Standarts
EN, European Norms
NPB, Norms of Fire Safety- Russia
NFPA, National Fire Protection Association-USA”

(Editor’s Note: Composites and Architecture deeply appreciates Mr. Baykan’s openness in responding to our questions, including the fact that he responded in English, since I have no skills whatsoever in Turkish.)

One thing clearly visible in the video is that there are rectangles of fire on the building still burning after the cladding panels have fallen off.  Could it be a sealant, or adhesive burning?

So far, we have not been able to ascertain any details about the composition or construction of the panels.  We have not yet received any answer from our query to the contractor.  We will post more details if they become available.

UPDATE 4/10

Reporting on this incident has been confused and confusing.  The building that burned was still under construction, and unoccupied.  Other buildings in the complex were occupied, and some of the reporting seems to have confused other buildings (such as the luxury hotel, which did not burn), or occupants of other buildings (Gerard Depardieu) with the Olimp Tower, which burned.   For example, a description of the building as “partially occupied” may have originally been a misunderstood statement that the complex was partially occupied.

According to a later report on the website of Itar-Tass News Agency:

“The detectives from the EMERCOM fire watchdog have already opened a criminal case under an article of the Russian Criminal Code for violation of the fire safety rules.

“According to a version, the fire broke out due to a short circuit in the air conditioner on the upper floors of the building and the fire has spread sweepingly on the insulating plates of the facade of the building, though the lower floors were saved from the fire. The firemen also protected the neighboring buildings from the fire, including the hotel, where a flat belonging to French actor Gerard Depardieu is located.

“Deputy Minister of Emergency Situations Alexander Chupriyan noted that the fire-fighting efforts are complicated by the fact that the fire equipment can reach the 20th floor at most of the 40-storey high-rise building. “As a high-rise building is not commissioned, automatic fire-fighting devices do not function, the lack of indoor and outdoor fire-fighting water supplies results in the fact that the fire had spread on a large area,” Chupriyan said before. However, the firemen succeeded to extinguish the fire with the assistance of the helicopter, which arrived from Mineralnye Vody.

“Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said in his Instagram photo blog, where he posted the photos from the fire site, that all the emergency services were involved in the fire-fighting. Meanwhile, he noted that “by the dinner on Thursday we will decide how the burnt building will look like…” “By the way, the hotel works in the routine mode, neighboring buildings are not damaged and their dwellers are calm,” Kadyrov wrote down.”

Above image via breakingnews.com

Video-frame via CNN.com