Wollongong council will investigate ways it can track fire safety in the city’s growing number of high-rise buildings, due to fears about flammable aluminium cladding in the wake of London’s Grenfell Tower disaster.
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On Monday night, Greens’ Jill Merrin asked councillors to support her call for the council to look into ways it could track and assess where composite aluminium cladding – like that used on the exterior London high-rise – was used in Wollongong.
Cr Merrin cited reports from a Senate inquiry in Melbourne last week which heard that thousands of buildings across Australian were potentially a high fire risk due to non-compliant, highly flammable combustible cladding.
In the aftermath of the fire, which killed 80 people, it was revealed the external material – an aluminium composite – was one reason flames spread so quickly. A lack of sprinkler systems and safe fire exits were also highlighted as problems with the public housing tower.
“This probably needs to be dealt with at the state and federal levels as far as regulations go, but councils everywhere also have a responsibility to make sure our buildings are safe and that we’re not putting our residents at risk of this kind of fire happening here,” Cr Merrin said.
At the meeting, Wollongong council’s planning director Andrew Carfield told councillors there were “quite a few buildings” across the city which were covered in aluminium cladding.
However, he said it was impossible to know whether they were a fire risk without a detailed inspection.
"The complicating thing is, there are compliant cladding materials and non-compliant and you wouldn't know the difference merely looking at the two, you'd have to do some more detailed tests,” he said.
"There are quite a few buildings within our city that have a similar type material that has been applied to the external finishes, but that's not the only fire safety risk we are dealing with."
Mr Carfield said the council had already received guidance from the NSW Government in 2015 following a fire at a high-rise in Docklands, Melbourne, but was expecting further directions after the Grenfell fire.
He said the council, as a certifier, as well as private certifiers were responsible for making sure buildings were fire compliant once they were built, and noted cladding was just one aspect of fire safety.
He also said Wollongong council already had fire safety requirements for hundreds of buildings in the CBD.
These included apartment buildings, public buildings, churches, clubs and office blocks, which are required to do annual checks and prove they can comply.
Most councillors, except Greg Petty and Vicki Curran, supported Cr Merrin’s motion.
Wollongong hospital’s recent redevelopment of the Elective Surgical Services and Ambulatory Care Unit is one local building clad in an aluminium composite.
After inquiries from the Mercury, a Health Infrastructure spokesperson said the facade was made of external cladding called Alpolic FR and Kingspan KS 1000 – both types of aluminium and poly composite cladding.
However, Health Infrastructure said all cladding had been certified compliant to the Building Code of Australia and was installed on fire-rated gyprock walls.
Kate McIlwain
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
