Title: Fire hazards of crowded airport terminals

Authors: W.K. Chow

Addresses: Research Centre for Fire Engineering, Department of Building Services Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Abstract: A fire that occurred at the Canton airport terminals has alerted the general public to the fire hazard in crowded terminals. The necessity of covering the entire tall terminal halls by fire suppression system; and occupational safety and health effects on firemen when they carry out fire fighting and rescue operations at large terminals with long travel distances should be studied. In this presentation, these points are raised and discussed. Some busy airport terminals are taken as examples. It is difficult to upgrade the hardware fire safety provisions, both active fire engineering systems and passive construction elements, in existing airport terminals. An immediate action viable at the moment for the authorities is to implement tighter fire safety management for achieving aviation sustainability.

Keywords: fire hazards; airport terminals; crowded areas; fire suppression systems; occupational safety and health; OSH; airports; fire safety management; airport fires; crowds.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSA.2016.082192

International Journal of Sustainable Aviation, 2016 Vol.2 No.4, pp.327 - 337

Received: 23 Sep 2015
Accepted: 10 Mar 2016
Published online: 12 Feb 2017 *

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