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At least four mistakes were made by the Atacadão administration on Avenida Duque de Caxias, in Campo Grande, which was consumed by fire yesterday. The engineer specialized in fire safety analyzed images that ran on social networks and assures that the fire was not controlled in time due to lack of maintenance of the combat system.
Mário Borges is a civil engineer and advisor on the implementation of a fire safety system. For him, there was a sequence of failures that culminated in the destruction of the building, which opened in March 2012.
The first thing that appears is the low pressure of the fire hose that is used to contain the flames, as shown by a video filmed by a customer who was on the scene at the time of the fire. “The bomb never started,” he says.
Explain that when connecting the hose, immediately – within a maximum of eight seconds – the pump that gives pressure to the water is already activated. From what we see there, with that low pressure, it is water that came out of the box or the hose itself, left over from a previous procedure ”.
Another detail that, as Mário draws attention, is that in no video broadcast is there a fire alarm sounding, which indicates that the system of this service also failed. When there is smoke, the alarm should go off automatically.
“If there was an alarm, the evacuation could be done immediately, which may have delayed the departure of a client who did not understand what was happening,” he analyzes.
In addition, just as the alarm should have activated at the first sign of smoke, the automatic showers, called sprinklers, should also have started to release water with the advance of the fire, which did not happen. The expert says that the site had this system, but it did not work.
“The fire could have been controlled at first, in a simpler way, if the equipment had been maintained,” he highlights, as he could see in the images that ran online.
Another point raised by the engineer is that construction fire brigades such as Atacadão, which exceeds 2,000 square meters, must be trained frequently and periodically.
“That brigadier who appears in the images, as he was, seems to be trying at that moment to do something without having much previous experience with the team,” he says.
According to Lt. Col. Fernando Carminati of the Fire Department, the company told the corporation that the hose pump took a while to work, but at some point it worked. However, the fire had already spread to make combat impossible.
He also commented that the brigadistas are trained to try to contain the fires at the beginning, and of low proportions. As the flames could not be contained the moment they started, the job ended up not working.
Finally, he said that the material where the fire started – cleaning products, alcohol and perfumery sector – is highly flammable, which allowed the flames to spread quickly. Carminati also recalled that in the highest part of the place where the fire started, there was a stock of toilet paper, which made it even easier to spread out.
Even today, throughout the day, you could see the black smoke that continued to come out of the place, despite having contained the fire. Now at night, the firefighters continued to pour water over the building with the help of the Magirus ladder, to contain new shoots that ignited.
