SINCE THE TERRORIST ATTACK of September 3, 2010, building designers, Government regulators, and politicians have identified the absence of a national building code as the principal reason for the deaths.
Your editorial of September 7 also identified the principal reason for the deaths as “the sad lack of a national building code”.
Please be advised that a draft national building code was published in 1991 and 1992 for comment, and I visited the Barbados National Standards Institution in Culloden Road and obtained a free copy.
The current edition of the code is not a draft document, but was published in 1993 for use by building designers, contractors, and Government regulators, including the Barbados Fire Service.
For the past 17 years, the Barbados National Standards Institution has been selling the current edition of the code for $100.
The most voluminous section of the code is Part 3 – the Fire Safety section. It provides sufficient information to designers of new buildings in Barbados to significantly reduce the occupant’s risk of harm from fire.
It also provides sufficient information to the Barbados Fire Service to check the fire safety of existing buildings in order to significantly reduce the occupant’s risk of harm from fire.
For the past 17 years, successive Government administrations have not made enforcement of Barbados’ national building standards a priority.
However, that does not relieve building designers, contractors, and regulators from their primary obligation to ensure that buildings under their authority are safe.
The standards of structural and fire safety are defined in the current edition of the Barbados National Building Code.
GRENVILLE PHILLIPS II, Fellow of the Institute of Structural Engineers
