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Spain's Tragic Tower Block Fire Exposes the World's Failing Fire Regulations
A deadly tower block blaze in Spain has focused attention on notorious flammable building materials—but around the world, there's little momentum to stop using them.
While what drove the blaze in Valencia is unclear, attention immediately turned to the building’s cladding—material added to the outside of high-rise blocks to improve insulation and aesthetics, and which helped the Grenfell fire spread so quickly. “If you turn the ACM 90 degrees, and attack the edge with the polymer exposed, the aluminum peels off in 20 seconds and a ball of fire rips, creating black smoke and big flames,” Rein says. Douglas Hope, a Las Vegas-based fire protection engineer, says the problem is global—one of the deadliest facade blazes was a 28-story high-rise apartment block in Shanghai in 2010 that had polyurethane foam insulation.
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