Posts by mitchffb

Following yet another arc flash injury caused by failing to test a circuit before work started in a switchboard, the Electrical Safety Office is issuing an urgent callout to electrical workers – it’s time to reset your safety focus and test before you touch. The ESO is investigating three other serious electrical incidents where electrical…

The owners of buildings clad in potentially lethal combustible material have been left the bill after the Queensland government rejected pleas to help cover the repair cost. Following the Grenfell Tower fire in Britain in June 2017, which killed more than 70 people, flammable cladding was found on 237 Queensland buildings, including five owned by…

Firefighters have extinguished a blaze at Warwick East State School on Queensland’s Southern Downs, one of the oldest schools in the state, with a building that dates back to the 1850s. The fire broke out in one of the classrooms on Friday afternoon. All students and staff have been accounted for and there have been…

Paint tins were exploding into the air and flying onto the street as firefighters battled a massive fire that destroyed a paint factory and a house in Albion, in Brisbane’s inner north overnight. The blaze started at the factory, on Tate Street, just before midnight and when 30 firefighters and 10 trucks arrived, there were…

A website for Queensland building owners to register their properties to check for flammable cladding came under attack as the deadline loomed on Friday. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission’s Safer Buildings website had more than 20,000 registrations completed as owners rushed to comply with new legislation. The registrations are the first phase of a…

A Brisbane primary school has been shut down and a crime scene declared after a “significant” fire destroyed several classrooms. Key points: A blaze broke out on the top level and roof of a two-storey building at the school just after 7:00pm on Friday More than a third of the school’s 500 students from prep…

Many building owners and managers in Queensland continue to go through the cladding compliance process as mandated by the Queensland Government, even if their buildings have no cladding issues. Following the devastating fire at London’s Grenfell Tower in 2017, the Queensland Government had introduced new combustible cladding regulations in late 2018, which required property owners…

Potentially deadly combustible cladding will be banned from all new Queensland buildings. The combustible cladding ban would extend to all aluminium composite panels with a polyethylene core of more than 30 per cent and restrict usage across all buildings in Queensland. Cladding with a polyethylene core is not flame retardant. It comes after industry support…