In February last year, hundreds of people were evacuated from one of the world's tallest residential buildings when fire broke out at the Torch, a 79-storey skyscraper in Dubai. An investigation by the building's management found most of the damage was to the exterior cladding.
In November 2012, a 34-storey residential building was partially gutted by a fire. An investigation blamed a discarded cigarette butt that fell on a pile of waste; the blaze swept through cladding panels on the tower.
The UAE revised its building safety code in 2013 to require that cladding on all new buildings over 15 metres (50 feet) tall be fire-resistant.
But the new rules do not apply to buildings erected before that year, and Barry noted that the vast majority of the country's skyscrapers fell outside the regulations; the Address Downtown was completed in 2008.
