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Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2017 12:26:15 GMT
Nasty, plain nasty and there is still no way to tackle a fire that far up a tower block.
I wonder if the Politicians responsible for reducing the Fire brigades in numbers and stations will be regretting some of those cuts.
In a country so developed, having children thrown out of upper story windows beggars belief. Nice to see the locals responding in such a generous way.
A smaller block but so similar to the twin towers attack in the choices made by people in the unit.
This reminds me of my time as a paramedic and memories of fires are some of the darkest around.
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Post by Big Blue on Jun 14, 2017 14:25:33 GMT
I have to be careful what I say here on an open forum, but when looking at the pictures it is entirely clear how the fire spread and therefore I am very clear why it shouldn't have spread in the way it did. You're OK, the BBC have said that the cladding is looking like top suspect for the spread up the exterior. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2017 14:31:44 GMT
Just awful, and if it's true about cause and lack of internal warning etc, that's pretty hard to forgive.
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Post by Alex on Jun 14, 2017 17:21:32 GMT
You're OK, the BBC have said that the cladding is looking like top suspect for the spread up the exterior. Eye but they aren't professionally qualified and can just throw shit around. A similar thing has happened on a couple of high rise apartments in Dubai. The external cladding wasn't fireproofed. Reports have suggested this block underwent a major refurb a couple of years back, which is when the cladding was put on. If so and if it was this that went up, it's going to raise some questions as to why it wasn't fireproof, but it could well be in line with building regs depending how they have been interpreted. The design of the tower itself is going to raise questions. There appears to be just one internal stairwell and thus only one escape route. I appreciate that the tower was built in the 70's but too often getting buildings up to modern safety standards is not deemed reasonably practicable. Though if the cladding was ablaze I suppose an external staircase wouldn't have been much use. Difficult to know much more until investigators go in but it'll surprise me if it isn't the subject of numerous case studies on evacuating tall buildings in the future. |
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Post by Roadsterstu on Jun 14, 2017 18:22:12 GMT
Nasty, plain nasty and there is still no way to tackle a fire that far up a tower block. I wonder if the Politicians responsible for reducing the Fire brigades in numbers and stations will be regretting some of those cuts. In a country so developed, having children thrown out of upper story windows beggars belief. Nice to see the locals responding in such a generous way. A smaller block but so similar to the twin towers attack in the choices made by people in the unit. This reminds me of my time as a paramedic and memories of fires are some of the darkest around. I seriously doubt any fire service cuts had a role in this, there was loads of fire service staff there (the fire service are the only emergency service whose demand has drastically reduced over the last 30 or more years) The issue was tackling a blaze that high but more pertinently, it looks like something was seriously wrong with that building for fire to spread up the outside covering material so quickly. Plus, for people inside to be trapped so easily is shocking. Such a fire in this country, in this day and age, is startling. I suspect there are some squeaky bums at the local authority and associated agencies. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2017 19:36:31 GMT
I will accept I do not have the knowledge to properly judge what happened, I went with what I thought I knew. I do wonder how well the service could cope with another major incident at the same time. I wonder how that cladding passed acceptance scrutiny.
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Post by ChrisM on Jun 14, 2017 20:06:33 GMT
Truly shocking images and experience for the residents there.
Condolences to those who perished and their loved ones. I hope to never see or hear about anything like this again.
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Post by Roadsterstu on Jun 14, 2017 23:27:25 GMT
I will accept I do not have the knowledge to properly judge what happened, I went with what I thought I knew. I do wonder how well the service could cope with another major incident at the same time. I wonder how that cladding passed acceptance scrutiny. I think, ultimately, they would. They will fall back to mutual aid agreements with neighbouring services and beyond that, the military. |
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Post by ChrisM on Jun 15, 2017 9:47:29 GMT
The design of the tower itself is going to raise questions. There appears to be just one internal stairwell and thus only one escape route. (snip) ..... but it'll surprise me if it isn't the subject of numerous case studies on evacuating tall buildings in the future. Was listening on the radio in the car driving home last night, and a fair few "experts" were horrified that there was only one internal staircase saying that this wouldn't be permitted in many other countries, you'd have to have at least one other way out, be it another internal staircase or an external one or whatever. Also just because the new external cladding met building standards regs, doesn't mean that it was morally or ethically right to use it if it was flammable or not flame-retardant. OK to use on maybe a 3-storey building perhaps, but not on 24 storeys |
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Post by Alex on Jun 15, 2017 17:49:42 GMT
Jezza's called for anyone who owns an empty property in the Kensington borough to have it seized to house the homeless. So one tower block burns and now we turn to communism!? This is why you shouldn't make public statements based purely on emotion.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2017 18:02:57 GMT
I have to be careful what I say here on an open forum, but when looking at the pictures it is entirely clear how the fire spread and therefore I am very clear why it shouldn't have spread in the way it did. You're OK, the BBC have said that the cladding is looking like top suspect for the spread up the exterior. I don't know how building regs are in the UK but buildings throughout germany are being clad with Polystyrene in order to meet ever more stingent heating energy consumption regulations. It is practically impossible to meet the current regs without cladding the whole building in the shit. Absolutely outrageous. This is not the first such "accident" and will certainly not be the last. Here a similar fire in France: |
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Post by michael on Jun 15, 2017 19:06:42 GMT
Jezza's called for anyone who owns an empty property in the Kensington borough to have it seized to house the homeless. So one tower block burns and now we turn to communism!? This is why you shouldn't make public statements based purely on emotion. Didn't Kensington vote Labour? Sounds fair to me. |
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Post by PG on Jun 15, 2017 21:18:30 GMT
A horrific fire.
More and more it looks like the external cladding burnt fiercly and allowed the fire to climb very quickly up the building. I was listening to somebody on the radio - speculating at this stage - saying that when this cladding is used (and it does meet fire regs, but there are two kinds - a mineral content cladding and a cheaper poly-foam filled cladding), there ought to be a fire break in the cladding between each floor and every o often horizontally too. The idea being that this contains a fire even if the cladding burns. But that the fire can obviously jump that break once it gets going - which is presumably what happened. Which rather negates the fire break concept. As one corner of the block looked pretty unscathed, that fire break must have worked to some extent horizontally, but not upwards.
If we take it that the fire started in one flat on the 4th floor (as per the reports) and then got out into the cladding, then that's as far away as possible to get from the central staircase. So unless fire doors were open or failed, or doors to flats were left open or failed, then the central staircase should still have been reachable and safe to use for enough time for everyone to get out and the fire brigades to get in. But the advice to stay put in case of fire and wait to be rescued is now seen as pretty bad advice. You don't do that in an office, work place or hotel - if the alarm goes off, the whole building is cleared. So why are residential blocks treated differently?
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jun 15, 2017 22:28:11 GMT
Wasn't the fire originally caused by a fridge exploding? That might tie in with reports of random power surges after the refurbishment. Once the fire is in the cladding it will act like a chimney and suck oxygen up and through it, intensifying the fire and driving it upwards.
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Post by Alex on Jun 15, 2017 22:46:31 GMT
If we take it that the fire started in one flat on the 4th floor (as per the reports) and then got out into the cladding, then that's as far away as possible to get from the central staircase. So unless fire doors were open or failed, or doors to flats were left open or failed, then the central staircase should still have been reachable and safe to use for enough time for everyone to get out and the fire brigades to get in. But the advice to stay put in case of fire and wait to be rescued is now seen as pretty bad advice. You don't do that in an office, work place or hotel - if the alarm goes off, the whole building is cleared. So why are residential blocks treated differently?[/quote]
The fire appears from the pictures and from how it's been described to have been on the outside of the building so you are right that the inner stairwell should not have been filled with smoke and that perhaps doors were left open by those leaving (understandable given the panic of the situation) but as fire doors they should have had self closing mechanisms for this very reason. Given the size of the building the stairwell should perhaps have been fitted with smoke vents but this may not be the case due to the age and design of the building.
Regarding the evacuation strategy it isn't always the case that in an office building everyone leaves at once. On a building that size you'd expect a phased evacuation to take place with compartmentalisation allowing those not directly affected by the fire to remain safe whilst they await instructions to leave.
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Post by Roadsterstu on Jun 16, 2017 7:06:20 GMT
Wasn't the fire originally caused by a fridge exploding? That might tie in with reports of random power surges after the refurbishment. Once the fire is in the cladding it will act like a chimney and suck oxygen up and through it, intensifying the fire and driving it upwards. I've never heard of a fridge exploding before. Unless it was being used to store something volatile? |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2017 7:28:15 GMT
I think the compressed gas refrigerant can explode in the compressor but it would surely take a heat source first so I suspect it may be a secondary event or later.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2017 7:31:58 GMT
While I was in Belfast in 78, one of the Divis flats residents bypassed the gas meter in his flat and then tried to solder the ends of the pipes. Cue 9 flats blown out. That fire did not spread beyond the flats involved and they were old flats then.
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Post by Alex on Jun 16, 2017 8:41:11 GMT
Wasn't the fire originally caused by a fridge exploding? That might tie in with reports of random power surges after the refurbishment. Once the fire is in the cladding it will act like a chimney and suck oxygen up and through it, intensifying the fire and driving it upwards. I've never heard of a fridge exploding before. Unless it was being used to store something volatile? Exploding is probably an exaggeration made by an excited witness. It is likely just an old unit that had an electrical fault of some sort - this is one of the most common causes of domestic fires. Either that or it was plugged into an extension socket which was eventually overloaded. I'm sure the fire service will work out the exact nature of the fire caused by the fridge quite quickly. |
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jun 16, 2017 9:41:31 GMT
While I was in Belfast in 78, one of the Divis flats residents bypassed the gas meter in his flat and then tried to solder the ends of the pipes. Cue 9 flats blown out. That fire did not spread beyond the flats involved and they were old flats then. Yes, I've seen the old bypass the gas meter trick a few times and once someone gets it done then they tell their friends and you end up with half a street getting free gas. The other one is dodgy electrics in rigged up cannabis farms in lofts and empty flats. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2017 10:34:04 GMT
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Post by alf on Jun 16, 2017 15:50:16 GMT
Interesting comment from FB, we seem to have experts on most things on here!
I've seen media comment that one staircase is not uncommon or necessarily a problem, especially if its a large concrete-encased one impervious to fire. However from the harrowing accounts of people calling trapped above both flame and smoke in that stairwell, it evidently failed in that respect - which sounds like a failure of the "fire zones" and fire doors. The cladding may have moved the fire far faster than expected, but as people have said, its moving it up the outside of the building so there must be other areas of concern here.
My employer's UK head office is on the 20th floor of 30 storey "Euston Tower", built 4 years before Grenfell, I have walked up the 20 floors of the fire staircase before when the lifts were knackered. The fire doors on each floor are quite flimsy and have windows on them... I can't see them holding out a proper fire for long, and the idea of hundreds of people coming down that tiny staircase while firemen try to get up it is a terrifying one.
The accounts of this fire are truly horrific, all the more now we are in an age where people can call relatives while they die.... Just like with the Manchester attack I feel genuinely shaken by this. Damn my old-man empathy! I think it's being a parent.
And as to one party's attempts to politicise it - shamefull. It's nothing to do with cuts, any more than the terror attacks were. Like the aviation industry everyone should be working together here to improve safety, it sounds like plenty of other buildings are clad in this shit and that well be a big problem. Not a Tory scum austerity scandal...
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Post by johnc on Jun 16, 2017 16:31:01 GMT
I was talking to a client who is involved in building renovation today. He reckons that when these towers were built there would have been asbestos to stop fire passing from one floor to another or one flat to another. However he wondered if during the renovation the asbestos was removed without proper thought as to why it was there in the first place. I think FB said something similar earlier.
In my client's words, these towers might have zero architectural merit but generally they were fairly well built. |
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Post by Alex on Jun 16, 2017 17:02:36 GMT
I was talking to a client who is involved in building renovation today. He reckons that when these towers were built there would have been asbestos to stop fire passing from one floor to another or one flat to another. However he wondered if during the renovation the asbestos was removed without proper thought as to why it was there in the first place. I think FB said something similar earlier.
In my client's words, these towers might have zero architectural merit but generally they were fairly well built. Well indeed. Asbestos wasn't called the miracle mineral for nothing. The cost of extracting ammosite from South African mines and crocidolite in Australia was absolutely fuck all. You just dug a hole and there it was. You then formed it into boards equally cheaply but which were the most fire resistant boards in the building trade with full thermal, chemical and electrical resistance. We've never really found a material that matches it. It's just a shame the fibres cause lung cancer! |
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Post by Alex on Jun 16, 2017 19:46:38 GMT
I suspect that's a perfect explanation and sadly shows they may have taken a perfectly safe escape route and turned it into a death trap. With the public hysteria surrounding asbestos (which is understandable even though if it was encapsulated it wouldn't do anyone any harm), you wonder how many other buildings of this age and height have similarly compromised escape routes.
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Post by Roadsterstu on Jun 16, 2017 21:24:03 GMT
There may well be a "human element" to the fire systems failures, too, such as removal of extinguishers, fire doors permanently propped open, some residents being rather less careful with cooking/heating/electrical appliances than they should be, etc.
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Post by Alex on Jun 17, 2017 13:44:02 GMT
There may well be a "human element" to the fire systems failures, too, such as removal of extinguishers, fire doors permanently propped open, some residents being rather less careful with cooking/heating/electrical appliances than they should be, etc. It's reasons like that which prevent a lot of fire safety systems being installed in blocks of flats like this in the first place. Without wishing to cast any aspersions, how long would fire extinguishers have lasted in a tower block full of council tenants before being misappropriated? There were complaints that there was no alarm system. But who would be responsible for the weekly testing of it if there was one? And how long before the alarm bells were disabled by tenants fed up with them going off every time someone burnt some toast or had a crafty fag in the early hours of the morning? But as has been stated before, none of this would have mattered had the compartmentalisation worked and the cladding been fire resistant. |
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