Damaged Fico Place building covered by Bt230m fire insurance policy
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The Fico Place office building, which was damaged by a three-hour blaze on Saturday, is covered by a Bt230-million fire policy from Generali Insurance (Thailand), the Insurance Commission said yesterday.
Director-general Prawet Ongartsitthikul said the agency was asking companies that had rented offices that suffered fire damage in the building off Asoke Road for details on fire or damage policies they might have.
Police and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) started inspecting the 13-storey building to determine the cause of the inferno and estimate the damage it caused.
No date for completing the investigation has been specified.
Bangkok Deputy Governor Theerachon Manomaiphibool reiterated that owners of all high-rises in the city were encouraged to install water sprinklers in their properties, although more than a thousand of them were constructed before 1992 when a law requiring automatic sprinkler systems took effect.
A directive will be issued to make installation of sprinklers in all high-rises mandatory, he said, referring to the delay in fighting the fire because the first ladder trucks to arrive at the scene could not reach the flames, which broke out on the seventh floor of the building.
LOUD BANG HEARD
Wanitcha Sukkhuwitchanant, who lives next to Fico Place, said he heard a loud bang and saw smoke and flames spewing from the seventh floor.
The retiree said he saw a few workers in the building looking out of the windows on other floors at the fire but they ran away, and that it was him who called emergency authorities.
Wanitcha said his house was smeared by the ashes and filled with shattered glass. He called on the Fico Place building owner or Watthana district staff to deal with the clean-up.
Pol Maj-General Anuchai Lekbamrung, who led a team of Thong Lor police and BMA inspectors into the building, said the seventh to ninth floors were heavily damaged.
Police do not yet know the cause of the fire, saying it could have the result of an accident, carelessness or arson.
Staff from the Engineering Institute of Thailand under royal patronage also looked around inside the building and said a more thorough inspection was needed to judge whether the structure could still be used as is. EIT head Thanes Weerasiri said a building subjected to the intense heat of a fire for more than 10 hours would not normally be used or reinforced, but was a candidate for demolition.
The Fico fire lasted about two to three hours, according to two media reports.
Pol Colonel Ratthasak Raksalam, superintendent of Thong Lor Police Station, said police would rely mainly on evidence supplied by their own investigation, although the inspection was carried out with BMA fire-safety experts and independently by the EIT.
Fico Place building management held meetings with staff and later with tenants. Personnel chief Theerathat Khongjan said the tenants had been informed of the situation in general and another meeting with them would be held today.
