Fire Dangerous in Densely Populated Area

We always know, hear or read in media or directly witnessed a fire damages buildings or houses. Accorded to information taken from media (newspaper, television, internet, or radio), fire is commonly occurs in densely pupulated residence of urban area. For example, a wildfire that burns Manggarai Utara residence, Jakarta Selatan (2006), Pasar Rebo settlement (2007), residence located behind Salemba penitentiary (2007), settlement located below Jembatan Tiga flyover, Pluit, Jakarta Utara (2007), Karet Tengsin residence, Tanah Abang (2008).
Fire incidents happened in residence or densely populated areas are commonly caused by electrical failure, explosions from stove, outboard lamp, or triggered by cigarette butt which of course started bby human error’s factor. One of several causes of this error, from others, is lack of knowledge on fire dangerous and its prevention, less carefull in using tools or materials can trigger fire, personal unwareness besides indiscipline.
Residence or densely populated area is in the highest position for location that commonly stuck by fire compared to other locations. This is caused by the high fire load and building density. Besides that, slum houses in urban area are commonly identical with material from bamboo and wood. It is very easy to burn and there is no active protection system, therefore this slum area is very susceptible towards fire.
Vehicle unavailability of fire departement that can reach the fire location in densely populated settlement (especially settlement with unregularly layout of houses, with alleys as the only access of approximately 1 to 1.2 meters width) is one obstacle that hamper the alacrity of firemen, moreover with the fast spread of fire and less water availability to channel, it will need more time for firemen to arrive in the location adjacent to the fire location (time for installing additional hose if one can not reach the fire and/or portable pump to improve water pressure), there are many bends thus create more extra time. As the result, fire is difficult to quench and it will cause more losses due to fire. Material loss and life victims will be increased if there is no preventing action or anticipation towards possibility of fire in densely populated area. Preventing action can be taken through the installation of active protecting system (alarm, smoke/heat detector, sprinkler, hydrant or portable fire solver) on house building. However, of course these alternative are not cheap, although it will be more cheaper if compared to the loss suffered after fire.
By installing hydrant on critical spots in the location chosen with water capacity that was designed to supply two or three houses of certain volume, it will become more economical than if every house install their own active protection system.
If there no network of water company (PDAM) installed yet, then water source can be taken from well water or rivers that probably flow across this settlement area. Thus, there must be a special tank designed to accommodate water, pump, and simple pipe network.
In order to allocate water supply into pipe networks for hydrants system, we can use siamese connection installed in the road’s edge. From this siamese connection, firemen can supply water into the system of hydrant pipe network.
Within Keputusan Menteri Negara Pekerjaan Umum No. 11/KPTS/2000, amount of water needed for fire solving in certain building’s volume is stated in a formula :

Total water supply = (V/ARK) x AKK x FB
where,
V = volume total bangunan (total of building’s volume) (m3)
ARK = angka kasifikasi resiko bahaya kebakaran (number of risk classification for fire dangerous)
AKK = angka klasifikasi konstruksi resiko kebakaran (number of construction classification for fire risk)
FB = faktor bahaya dari bangunan yang berdekatan (dangerous factor from the adjacent buildings)

Residence has V of 7, where as the maximum AKK for residence is 1.0. if the distance of adjacent building if less than 15 meters, then it must be multiplied by 1.5.
The operation of this hydrant system must be properly controlled by local people, thus if there a fire happened, local people can responsively anticipate or at least can lessen the damage caused by the fire before firemen arrive. Therefore, counseling and training about fire dangerous besides its prevention are a must to be given to public because it can happens anytime. In the future, people are expected to form a kind of organization to anticipate fire dangerous, they must share responsibilities and duty if there is a fire happened in their houses.

Sumber : Keputusan Menteri Negara Pekerjaan Umum No. 11/KPTS/2000, Keputusan Menteri Negara Pekerjaan Umum No. 10/KPTS/2000, www.detik.com, Koran Tempo, yayasanpalapavc.com