Filinvest One Oasis CDO Bldg 1 is first fire safety compliant mid-rise building in Cagayan de Oro

The first occupants of Building 1 of Filinvest’s One Oasis Cagayan de Oro can rest easy. According to the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), it is the first “fire safety compliant” mid-rise building in Cagayan de Oro which complies with all of the BFP’s fire safety standards for mid-rise buildings in the city. 

This was stipulated by Fire Chief Inspector Rommel E. Villafuerte, BFP District Fire Marshall, after he issued the First Safety Inspection Certificate (FSIC) No. 16-0025394 to Filinvest One Oasis Cagayan de Oro’s Building 1 last February 1, 2016. This is in line with the government’s main objective on ensuring safety of the occupants or residents as reiterated by Presidential Communications Operations Office, Secretary Herminio Coloma. Malacañang has asked LGUs to strictly implement the government’s “no fire safety inspection certificate, no business permit” policy following a deadly fire last year in Valenzuela City. 

An FSIC is a pre-requisite prior to the issuance of an Occupancy Permit by the Office of the Building Official (OBO). It signifies that the owner/administrator has substantially complied with the standard fire safety and protection requirements set by the Fire Code of the Philippines of 2008, and it is implementing rules and regulations. It is the BFP’s duty and responsibility to inspect all buildings and establishments within an area and inform the local chief executive of those which did not comply with fire safety requirements for their appropriate action, either through the closure of establishments, or cancellation of business permit and building occupancy permit. “Aside from being equipped with state-of-the-art Automatic Fire Alarm and Smoke Detection Systems, One Oasis CDO Bldg. 1’s Fire Alarm Control Panel is equipped with auto-fire department notification, which immediately alerts the BFP Central Fire Station on the exact location of the smoke it detects in the building,” said Franz Josef Ll. Enriquez, CDO Branch Manager. 

“This feature considerably cuts down the response time of the BFP to any emergency, because they know exactly where the fire originates through the electrical panel indicator installed in Building 1,” he added. To further improve the firefighting capabilities of fire trucks to any reported emergency in One Oasis CDO Bldg. 1 and four other forthcoming buildings, the whole complex is served by an underground domestic cistern with a 450,000-liter capacity equipped with three booster pumps of 3 h.p. each linked to fire hydrants, which pumper trucks of the BFP can immediately tap even if they have little or no water in their onboard water tanks.

On top of this, all stairwells, which serve as fire exits, are equipped with Stairway Pressurization System, which maintains a higher pressure of air within to keep out smoke, often the leading cause of deaths in building fires. Since it is part of the emergency response protocol of the local electric company to cut electricity to an area upon receipt of a fire alarm, the Fire Alarm and Smoke Detection systems are backed by a standby genset, which is further backed up by a battery system with a 2-hour battery life. 

Source: Kagay-an
*Minor corrections made