Dilapidated Houses & Building Collapses in Bahrain Part II

Risk of Dilapidated Houses & Building Collapses

Effects

There is possibly several hazards and risks within all industries, these are typically more significant on dilapidated houses and building collapses and difficult to manage as there is certainly proof that such field does not have a reliable or effective accident prevention program to get overbuilding collapse hazards and risks. The negative effects of these countless risks are mainly loss of lives, loss of property, and environmental. It was also discovered that human-related risks have a predominant effect on Bahrain's economy, while law/legal risks have the least effect. Normally, the actual and overall loss is higher than the estimated or even expected and it requires a number of months or even years to receive the insurance claim/compensation in case you win the case in court. In case any fatal occurred within such an unwanted event, it might have led directly to prosecution and imprisonment.

Economic/Financial Risks

Financial risk is the possibility of losing money on an investment or business venture. Economic risk is also called financial risk which refers to building collapse risk which has a major impact with a normally prolonged period of long-run economic growth. Such risk mainly comprises of loss of properties, loss of resources and materials, business interruption, rise in the expense of passive and active preventive maintenance program, a significant effect on capital investment, loss of gross annual income, the bankruptcy of the investor and developer due to the state of being insolvent; and inability to pay one's debts. The impact of such risk in terms of the real estate market will drop in the annual contribution to the country's GDP; The facilities of such market will probably be affected as a result of the lack in supply of required items. There will be a major charge for investigation, compensation, and legal dispute resolution; The injured people need to be immediately treated with unlimited financial costs. Containment and clearance of debris i.e. debris removal of Manama building collapse cost only ￡40,000, rescue, recover, leaks or spillages Service that could, in theory, be chargeable, except in emergencies where private contractors have been involved in such activities in Bahrain. We need to add the total cost of the repair, rebuilding includes things like time, labor charge waste of resources. Most of the insurance firms add in their list the expenses of diminishing operation or loss, temporary relocation, and replacement. Such risk by itself will not be naturally positive and prevails to various levels. It is without a doubt that risk normally has adverse perception and is hard to manage and beat as it comes up as a result of unknown or uncontrollable factors/causes leading to a significant impact on different industrial sectors and different markets such as real estate, tourism because it can spread quickly.

Socio-Political Risks

A socio-political risk refers to social, political, and economic elements which in turn design a specific environment, as well as the way of such risk elements, impact the business environment typically day-to-day lives/lifestyle. It is, therefore, considered by several safety experts as a sub-risk of the economic/financial risk. The sub risk includes things like the contractors and subcontractors will probably lose many important things such as integrity, reputation, reliability, trust, new business deals and contracts, or even business suspended, temporary or permanent discontinuation as a result of the cancellation of related practicing licenses. In terms of health, many impacts could be detected such as mental trauma and shocks, stress, tension, and sometimes even depression. In terms of the property growth sector, there could be a high probability of losing current and future investment opportunities, leading to typically eliminating the values of qualified/experts, shortages of properties, layoffs, loss of job opportunities, and the owner will probably lose his prestige/reputation, loss of employee morale. The construction industry in Bahrain is depicted as not standardized or even corrupt. Qualified persons such as designers, engineers, etc. marketability to global companies/investors will certainly be devalued.

Human Related Risks

Such risk is typically has a direct effect on human beings/lives including minor and major injuries which in turn may result in permanent disabilities, require an immediate and follow up incentive treatment, fatality, or catastrophic which will have a negative impact on the socio- economic growth of the country and Countries Millennium Growth Desired Goals (CMGDGs) as result of such events. There will be an atmosphere of sadness within the country as a result of several funerals in several places, a state of national alert, and it will be more severe if there are foreign victims. We should not forget that major vital elements such as training and educational development, initiatives, and activities will highly be impacted as a result of such unwanted events. Such risk can also lead to Psychological, Health and Personal Physical harm, such as depression, helplessness, apprehension, vulnerability, soreness, distress, and self-murder. As a consequence, the economic functions will be significantly affected for the short and long term.

Emotional or psychological Traumas

A number of traumas are not immediately apparent once an unwanted event happens, however, no matter if a traumatic earliest shows up, it may have a long-term impact. Some of the zones where the building collapse traumas commonly tend to be long-lasting can be those entire and relevant to emotional or psychological trauma. Such traumas resulting from the unwanted event can lead to many mental major issues for the survived people such as shock, mental anguish; sleep disturbance, lack of energy, emotional & psychological distress, embarrassment, anxiety, fear, loss of or decrease in appetite, random episodes of crying, humiliation, mood swings, anger, weight fluctuations, and sexual dysfunction. Research demonstrates that around 30% of such survived people relating to the unwanted event of building collapse remain to get the said signs of emotional/psychological diseases 12 months following on from such unwanted event like post-traumatic stress disorder, different degree of phobias and depression. Therefore, recovering towards the long-term psychological/emotional trauma once such an event needs to be strongly considered and carefully calculated in order to add it into insurance compensation/claim. Such effects are not considered within loss-regulated countries.

Personal Physical Traumas

The common effects of building collapse unwanted events on human/personal physical trauma include things like bleeding, minor and major fractures on a single or different body part. Such traumas which are relating to long-term impacts tend to be irreversible or permanent disabilities include things like paralysis, amputations, or even sometimes, mild, moderate, or severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) that leads to a loss or a decreased mental Capacity as a long term issue, however, light skin or tissue traumas which usually have an impact and threaten the tissue around joining ligaments, tendons and muscles tend to be long term as well. For such reason, figuring out the degree of trauma along with the potential chance of future discomfort or serious pain or having difficulties is a vital element to recovering from such unwanted event.

Environmental Risks

Environmental risk is defined as the probability and consequence of an unwanted accident. Because of deficiencies in waste management, waste transport, and waste treatment and disposal, several pollutants are released into the environment, which cause serious threats to human health along the way. Typically, such risks within building collapse include things like: They offer a good hiding place for outlaws such as thieves and also a good place for harmful animals such as snakes, bats, and spiders as abode. They also cause environmental impairment and degrading, functionality diminished within the local community (neighborhoods).

It leads to a decline in energy utilization, a rise in harmful emission/pollution such as CO2 emissions, and finally damages the artistic/aesthetic values. Therefore, we need to manage such risks quite seriously, the best method is to avoid such risks which can destroy environmental values, ruin reputations, and even bring a country down. In the trigger with the global economic/financial crisis, in particular, a large number sought to include within a great deal more comprehensive risk-related methods and control structures. The purpose is to recognize and fix any such risks, HS contraventions, malpractice in building design, materials, etc., operational errors, and increase leverage a long time before such risks turn out to be complete disasters.

Air Quality

As previously mentioned, that building collapse can produce dust which is a concern for air quality during the building collapse, evacuation, searching, etc. Therefore, sources and tasks which have the potential to affect local air quality and to cause environmental nuisance within the building collapses and surroundings must be identified, evaluated and controlled. There is a legal duty and responsibility to ensure that sufficient and effective control measures have been provided to eliminate or at least reduce the impacts. When asbestos is released into the environment as a result of an unwanted event such as sudden collapse or planned works such as demolition, maintenance, it usually pollutes the atmosphere, water and soil and remains within the atmosphere for a long time as it moves via air by wind, water via the river, sea, etc. and soil. Asbestos produces a high risk to the environment as it is normally indecomposable/biodegrade element.

Physical risks

Physical risks include dangers that pose a threat to physical assets, including buildings, equipment and people. However, these are typically building collapse risks which are usually related to physical aspects of the building collapses including things like building structure, its strength and contents deterioration, change and reform of building structure contents, diminished functionality, short & long term repositioning, lack of workforces, rise in sick leaves, road congestion and closure, emergency and evacuation challenges, damage to items, equipment and materials, loss of fauna and flora, the rate of fire hazards becomes high due to waste, gas line damage, and flooding as a result of sewerage system deterioration. Such physical outcomes could certainly produce high risk and long-term barriers to business in many different means as a result of time lost, change, and reform expenses to legal measures plus reputational ruin if the concerned do not provide reliable protection against such risks adequately.

Health Hazards

Dust: The dust is a basic outcome of building collapse unwanted event as a vast amount of airborne waste will be significantly generated during the collapse. This kind of dust could be harmful to the human respiratory system when involved breathe it into their lungs as it really is unpleasant and the entire human body will ever try to reduce its effect and completely neutralize it by applying a body natural immune defense mechanism system. The affected could have difficulty while breathing mainly asthma suffers or even rasping cough. Moreover, it possesses the possibility to move internally within the residents and even externally within the public, especially during adverse weather conditions. Therefore, a proper RPE needs to be immediately provided for residents who must firstly be evacuated and the public who seem to be targeted by dust particles.

Asbestos

?Asbestos is known as a naturally sourced mineral which usually can always be split up directly into very thin, durable and sound fibers, turning it strongly appropriate for apply as chemical and temperature resistance product, non-conductive and non-combustible materials. Such features furthermore, produce and cause asbestos a potential health threat when it is in a crumbly shape. Asbestos has been seen as a cause of many health diseases such as Mesothelioma, Asbestosis, Lung Cancer, along with other conditions in workforces and even the rescue team subjected to airborne asbestos materials over a prolonged duration of time. However, the effect of asbestos can be avoided during planned tasks such as removal as it is banned and replaced by a non-hazardous material or during a demolition work of the building before collapsing as a proactive action to avoid unwanted events such as disaster. However, what is in regards to the threats of unplanned or unexpected building collapse where the debris is shattered into a fine dust which may result in different hazards such as immediate cough for the residents. It is highly recommended not to wait till it can truly be too late and unwanted event attacks; the hazards live asbestos must be taken out of the building at the earliest opportunity without delay as building collapse/failure could possibly arise and happen without any warning.

Law/Legal Risks

Legal risk is the risk arising from failure to comply with statutory or regulatory obligations. Such risks related to building collapse include things like: triggering a major conflict, crises and legal tussle between all stakeholders. To tackle out such risks as a result of building collapse, most of the time, we need to do arbitration and mediation, resolution of disputes, blame and arbitrary rotation between stakeholders, etc. which are considered as other major risks. Business owners need to be well-prepared and organized to firstly avoid such unwanted events and conflicts by maintaining a proactive accident prevention strategy and full legal compliance. Secondly, they have to actively handle a number of conflicts as a result of unwanted events and dissatisfied customers. They will often lay claim/compensation that they are classified as the victims and affected by defective items and solutions, fake approved documents, rip-off promotional and even contracts/deals. They will usually sustain damages on the subject of property along with lay claim/compensation the business interest was in fact negligent. The most effective strategy is normally in an attempt to fix stakeholders' conflicts at the earliest opportunity without delay before they turn into legal issues. It is therefore strongly recommended to recruit an experienced legal consultant/advisor to deal with such risks to mainly eliminate or at least reduce such risks within such situations.

Based on what has been discussed about legal risks, it is true that stakeholders confront several legal risks and threats and sometimes the local and international laws that could be changed at any time. Typically, the threats listed above could be considered generic. The stakeholders could confront complicated concerns concerning environmental regulations, insurance, real estate, investors, licensing, shareholder contracts, joint ventures, etc. Proactively handling legal risks dealing within the building business market will certainly enable the business owner to have enough time to avoid such unwanted events, profitably increase the income, attain a high level of reputation and correctly grow.

Narrow Roads Risk

As a high number of collapsed or dilapidated houses and buildings located in Manama and Muharraq where narrow roads function as typically the main factor associated with fire safety in such old main cities in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Seen as a large population density as well as mixed land use styles which can be considered as a higher fire risk. Furthermore, such narrow roads which may be inaccessible for fire service machines/equipment delay the emergency operations such as evacuation and rescue leading to have a high loss in terms of life and property.

Why do we need a strong Accident Prevention Program?

Even though there are no data obtainable on building collapse in the Kingdom of Bahrain as the only one obtainable is usually from the local news agencies, however, some data has been picked up from different sources. As we know, that there are three primaries motivating for a strong accident prevention program. Moral motives seem to be dedicated to the call to safeguard people from personal injuries and illness. For example, the Indian National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has recently released an official report about the accidents related to building collapses. The report demonstrated that a total of 38363 individuals lost their lives as a result of buildings collapses in India from 2001 to 2015, seven structures have collapsed each day in India during 2010-2014 (Tanvi Bodhe |, 2021). A high number of such individuals lost their lives due to the collapse of residential buildings and houses. In China, there were 47 firefighters' fatalities caused by building collapse in 2106. Such record clearly demonstrates that there is a quite strong moral/ethical situation for the purpose of improvement in HS and maintaining a strong accident prevention program. In spite of this, building collapse cannot be just considered unusual to the Kingdom of Bahrain, it occurs on daily basis around the world especially in developing countries where a high number of lives are losing as a result of such collapses. The legal motives seem to be shaped within criminal and civil law. Hundreds of people around the world are prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned, and fined annually for liability and negligence in building collapses incidents. The total loss of the penalties of prosecutions has reached to an inestimable degree as a result of contraventions of different regulations. Therefore, there are evident legal factors for maintaining a strong accident prevention program. The financial motives appear as a result of a contravention of HS law aided partially by the resultant compensation payments, penalties related to financial expenses as well as in extraordinary instances, imprisonment. On an annual basis, hundreds of thousands of families are being left traumatized and homeless around the world as a result of building collapse. The total cost of such incidents is uncalculated as therefore, there is obviously a substantial moral, financial and legal reason to make more efforts to eliminate or at least minimize such disagreeable records of fatalities, injuries, property damages and homeless. The hope of achieving/maintaining this prevention program becomes the primary motive for values, humanity, investment, and building a community with serious responsibility.

What Should Be Done?

Building More

According to (CBRE, 2017) that the Kingdom of Bahrain is suffering from a housing shortage of about 75,000 units in 2017. As demand rises and reached critical stages, with 4000 on annual basis, therefore, the need of building new houses and apartments is a must to close out such demand gap, enable citizens in occupied unsafe condition houses to shift to new ones. It requires extraordinary efforts to end the real national issue of dilapidated houses and buildings and reduce the risk of participation between the citizens and the government because such issue normally causes a serious unrest security challenge in the Kingdom.

Proper HSE Design Approach

Proper HSE Design Approach is the best approach to completely eliminate or at least minimize the risk and hazard to minimal levels. To have a proper safe design, the designers should pick a selection of modern engineering and technology methods. The design stage is considered as a part of a proactive strategy and a task where building designers are legitimately expected to take into account the working environment, what can go wrong? and factors within their designs to develop a proactive plan to manage such factors which could affect the structures via the lifecycle of buildings and propose effective mitigation approaches. The perfect risk management mitigation approach is eliminating a hazard which is usually more affordable and even practicable to success at this stage as compared with risks afterward within the lifecycle. It should be quite possibly beyond whatever should be applied by rules, and standards. Such can be achieved through a considerable concentration on the technique of the building hazards elimination via design as this will help significantly maintain a proactive prevention strategy and eliminate such unwanted events as globally around 40% of building collapse death cases have been connected to the design stage. In short, the designers are required to generate smart design and style of buildings with adequate solutions which will certainly assist produce an advanced and a high level of proper precaution for the citizens as end-users as they without a doubt have the right to the best standard of precaution, where it will normally be somewhat practicable.

Proper Pre-Planned Demolition Strategy

A strategy either for demolition or renovation needs to be established, fully implemented and regularly reviewed to fulfill the modern health, safety and environmental standards. Such a strategy should include a monitoring mechanism to monitor buildings that are old or in danger of collapse and other hazards. A well-studied and systematic procedure that will reduce the effects of potential risks resulting from the demolition, whether, on community members, the environment, or public property needs also to be included within such strategy. This should come within the framework of efforts to preserve the structural integrity of buildings located in all Governorates, demand strengthening and intensifying the role of oversight of dangerous buildings. Such a current system seems to be less well-planned as well as more challenging to cope with ongoing change within the kingdom.

To correctly implement such a strategy and increase such sector practices, there is a desire for higher attention/care in managing demolition work. Therefore, it is very important to notify the building owner about the current situation of his/her building to take necessary actions to correct such situation to avoid unwanted events. Such actions can be done either through demolition or renovation following the Bahrain laws, regulatory requirements and decisions taken by local authorities with s specific time scale. In the event of the owner's lack of response and cooperation, the matter should be referred to the Public Prosecution through the Legal Affairs Department, and when the judge's decision to demolish is issued, demolition signs are placed on the building, and then a notice is Posted at the entrances to the building, followed by a cutoff of utility services from such building such as power, water, telecom lines.

Previously, the demolition process is to be carried out in coordination with the competent authorities represented by the Security Directorate, Municipality Council, the Electricity and Water Authority (EWA), the Civil Defense, and a licensed cleaning company. In the event of dilapidated house renovation, the engineering offices have a role in supervising and verifying compliance with regulations and laws and ensuring the quality of the renovation work. Finally, seeking the benefit from the experiences of other countries in this field is essential to develop the application of procedures and achieve the benefit of all.

Awareness Campaign

A regular public awareness campaign needs to be organized via employing print and social media, electronic, etc. to sensitize the local community members about the benefits of such a new strategy as the best approach of understanding the safe and sound buildings and the benefits of reporting system of dilapidated houses and buildings, etc. The campaign should assist in creating knowledge regarding the benefits of creating a safe community, different challenges facing such national issues such as lack of resources i.e. financial concerns, cultural alteration regarding urban development within the region.

Emergency Management

Sewerage Gases

The emergency response team (ERT) must have the necessary instruments to detect any sewer gases such as Methane; Hydrogen sulfide which are extremely flammable and explosive gases and can accidentally be released during building collapses or during emergency operations such as the evacuation of residents, demolition, and removal of debris, etc. Exposure to such gases by EPT or residents can cause health problems or even loss of consciousness and death if the area is not fully vented.

Asbestos

The ERT must also have the necessary instrument tools to detect and confirm whether an asbestos-containing material (ACM) is present or not. Such dangerous materials may be potentially released during such an emergency operation. It might be found in collapsed old buildings and houses in many parts such as floor tiles, pipe coverings, cement pipes heating ducts, and others. Exposure to Asbestos can cause major health concerns and even fatal. Specialist contractors with proper safety gear must be made available to deal with such critical situations. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to conduct a survey to detect such banned materials.

Hazardous Energy Sources

The ERT must have emergency access to enable them to shut off all hazardous energy sources such as electricity etc from the collapsed or dilapidated houses and buildings. The purpose is to protect the ERT and residents from such risks and hazards. For any given worksite or any raise case of such houses and buildings, the most important thing for officials to do is not to intentionally or unintentionally allow unauthorized entry into a potentially dangerous place. Unauthorized access is a common mistake which most firms do not highly consider and adequately implement. Therefore, all dilapidated or ramshackle buildings must be fully secured and clearly identified to avoid unauthorized access. The hazardous energy sources must also be isolated to avoid unexpected threats. It is strongly recommended to create an effective Municipal Rodent Management in order to avoid any disease and property damages such as computer crashes, internet blackouts, and fires as a result of rodents cutting the gas hoses and electrical connections.

Improve Safe Access & Egress Way

There should be an effective plan for heavy equipment machines such as fire engines, demolition machines such as excavators, wheel loaders, trucks, etc. to avoid delay of fire operations, evacuation, rescue, demolition and removal of debris, etc. This should be included at the planning stage exactly at risk recognition and prevention. It is highly recommended that the ERT should prepare an emergency route if possible in advance, introduce and use innovative and technological tools such as drones to professionally manage such critical operations i.e. taking samples, scanning the area, gas detection, fighting the fire, etc. Such effective measures need to be proposed, implemented and regularly tested during mock drills.