The Need for Revision of Building Safety Regulations against Fire Hazards

The March 2015 fire incident in an office building in Central Jakarta broke the record for the longest fire outage in Asia. The extinguishing process took more than 15 hours because the fire hydrant and fire protection system in the building were reportedly not working, so officers had to fetch water from other sources. Although the building owner later denied the rumors, the length of time and extent of the damage remains a concern about Jakarta's weak fire protection system.

This Pergub is prescriptive-based, in that it regulates fire-fighting techniques that building owners must comply with in detail. It tends to be rigid and not open to innovation and efficiency. On the other hand, there is Permen PU 26/2008 which also regulates fire fighting at the national level.

Pergub vs Permen PU

When compared to Pergub 200/2015, Permen PU 262/008 is more flexible by allowing the application of building safety in different ways as long as the performance requirements can be met and accounted for. Based on a discussion on April 25, 2017 with Prof. Dr. Ir. Suprapto Msc. as one of the experts drafting the regulation, this regulation should be a reference for planners and building owners to implement building fire safety systems.

The issuance of the new Pergub No. 200/2015 has caused pros and cons among planners and building owners because there are several articles that are not in harmony with Permen PU No. 26/2008. For example, in the gubernatorial regulation, the size of fire elevators is lumped together to be the size of a fire elevator for hospital class buildings. Meanwhile, the Permen PU is only classified based on the function and class of the building. Of course, the Fire Department that issued this regulation has its own reasons. Unfortunately, this regulation was not socialized in advance to planners and building owners.

Building owners are increasingly hit by the existence of Fire Decree Number 23 of 2015. With this decree, it is increasingly difficult for building owners to meet the Green Basic Coefficient (KDH) requirements. The reason is, the requirements for calculating the pavement for access to Damkar vehicles cannot be included in the KDH calculation.

Although restrictions due to the KDH obligation and Fire Department access can be worked around with the creativity of building planners, planning areas with limited land area will be burdened. It is not uncommon for this to lead to a lack of buildable land or result in a lack of land utilization efficiency.

Prescriptive-based

Prescriptive-based regulations such as relying solely on the Fire Department to fight fires. This is not wrong, but the limited coverage of the Fire Department and Jakarta's traffic conditions hamper the speed of the Fire Department to respond to fires. Therefore, it is necessary to find ways to improve fire management efforts.

Actually, there are already regulations that regulate periodic checking and testing of the feasibility of active protection components of buildings and the first handling of fires, for example Decree No. 11/KPTS/2000 concerning Fire Safety Management in Urban Areas. This step is expected to minimize material and life losses caused by fire.

The prescriptive-based concept in building fire safety regulations in DKI Jakarta currently adopts regulations from other countries. However, its appropriateness for the local climate, infrastructure availability, building type and classification should be reviewed. In addition, the opportunity to apply performance-based should be emphasized, as long as it can be technically justified.

The Way Out

The responsibility for fire suppression can actually be partially shifted to the building owner through the optimization of building fire protection. An example of fire suppression in the United States is the optimized use of sprinklers, hydrants, and other protection systems. This system has proven successful in reducing the number of fires from 1,098,000 incidents in 1977, to 501,500 incidents in 2015.

The Indonesian Architect Association (IAI) has held discussions with various parties and stakeholders, including the Jakarta Property Institute (JPI), to solve the above problems.

Prescriptive-based regulations make it easier for firefighters, but their implementation can be difficult for building owners because they are incompatible with environmental conditions and building needs. It is better if performance-based regulations are considered to be applied in Jakarta. Improving fire management regulations is one of the efforts to prevent the above incident from happening again.