[Closed] 800 Families told to leave flats due to fire risk, immediately in london

Hopefully nobody on here works in a high or low rise block clad in the same materials and with faulty fire doors that dont close or stay shut.

working in them is a somewhat different scenario, different for fire drills, escapes, etc., and also people don't sleep there (OK, I might at my desk drop off during a teleconference but YKWIM)

Not sure how they've evaluated the actual short-term risk in order to justify turfing hundreds of families out into a leisure centre with no notice.

Did they find unexploded bombs in the blocks?

While it's nice that local authorities have woken up a bit about their responsibilities, this seems a little bit of a panicky arse-covering exercise.

So there's a fire tomorrow in a 4th floor flat which spreads via the cladding and the people are still living there?

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Does seem a bit knee jerky/band wagonny/arse covery, although I can't really blame the council for that reaction.

So there's a fire tomorrow in a 4th floor flat which spreads via the cladding and the people are still living there?

Can understand a desire to be actively doing something because of all the criticism aimed at gov and councils, but it could be handled without evacuation.

Regular fire patrols and fire service instructed to hose the outside of the building as well as inside when a fire is reported inside the flat, just in case it spreads. Part of the problem here was that they hadn't realised it had spread outside when they put out the initial fire in the flat.

Keep a watch on the outside, instant any hint of spread, instruct everyone to evacuate.

Other thing would be to get everyone to unplug all electrical items until the cladding is removed. A pain, but perhaps less than being turfed out of your house with no notice and told it could be weeks or months before you're back.

You could evacuate everyone from every property because of a risk of this and that.

So there's a fire tomorrow

I wonder if anyone has actually looked at the risk of that happening in just the day or two you need to find proper accommodation for a large number of vulnerable families, vs the risks to them of being turfed out in the middle of the night with no time to make proper arrangements for those who need extra care?

Does seem a bit knee jerky/band wagonny/arse covery,

I wonder if anyone has actually looked at the risk of that happening

Risk - lowish possibly - consequences - Very high = mitigate risk

According to the BBC the council even offered to pay for the Fire Brigade to station appliances and crew outside the buildings, but the Brigade said it still would not be able to guarantee the residents safety.

It seems they tried desperately to come up with a way of legitimately avoiding evacuating the blocks, which is going to be a major logistical headache and cost the council a lot of money, even if it does get it back at some point from the contractors or even central government.

The problem is that the fire safety of people in these flats is completely dependent upon being able to rely on residents staying put in the event of fire. The moment it is no longer possible to do that and evacuation is essential for all residents in the event of fire, then the single exit stairwells mean that the buildings are inherently unsafe.

Reportedly they also found other problems which aggravated the risk. There's mention of the insulation of gas pipes going into flats, which I think probably means that the holes made in the concrete walls for the pipes have not been properly 'fire stopped'. So fire would be able to spread very quickly internally, as well as externally via cladding.

It sounds like this was not a borderline decision: the council probably had no choice.

I think they are obviously doing the right thing, there's now a risk of arsonists setting fire to these tower blocks. Nutters, terrorists or kids.

Same residents that have been vocal since Grenfall saying they fear for their safety due to the cladding and can't sleep because of it.Now moved out so they can quickly remedy/remove it, tenants still not happy though.

According to the BBC the council even offered to pay for the Fire Brigade to station appliances and crew outside the buildings, but the Brigade said it still would not be able to guarantee the residents safety.

It seems they tried desperately to come up with a way of legitimately avoiding evacuating the blocks, which is going to be a major logistical headache and cost the council a lot of money, even if it does get it back at some point from the contractors or even central government.

so if the fire brigade camped out all day every day, who would cover their areas for other fires and car crashes etc.

and will insures pay out the extremely high costs, and will those firms that where responsible still be in buissiness a few days after the start of the inquiry, theyll just declare bankruptcy and start up again a few days latter.

Aracer, I agree damned if you do, damned if you don't. How many fires have their been in those blocks in the ten years since they were installed? How many have reached the cladding? It does seem likely to be a bit of an over reaction - unless perhaps things like self closing fire doors etc are not working in which case there is a maintenance scandal there which is potentially worse than the cladding errors, because it would be obvious to anyone there is a problem and relatively easy to fix.

Personally I would have given people the option to move out UNLESS the remedial works themselves temporarily increase the risk e.g. By grinding off the fittings etc and make a fire more likely. It should be possible to significantly mitigate the risk without booting everyone out - fire extinguisher in every flat, more smoke detectors, hotline to report waste in hallways (and act on calls immediately) a different evacuation approach.

If I lived on the top two or three floors I would be concerned. If I had mobility issues that would impede evacuation I would be concerned. A blanket approach seems like an overreaction but I haven't seen the risks they have identified - we are assuming it is all about the cladding.

Given the costs involved in evacuation they presumably didn't think it could be mitigated by having 24/7 "fire wardens" in each block, until the cladding was removed.

It would be interesting to know however what powers they have to evict people from their homes at that notice and what judicial oversight there is of that? Does anyone know?

Simply no other option. The buildings are covered in flammable material which lets a fridge fire go up the outside and create a fire the fire service cannot put out.

In some respects its better this has been found to be a widespread problem as it will allow a truly national response. some serious questions to be asked about specifications / building regs.

been known about for years on other blocks.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-23738142

i think the issues with building regs is that tose panels do not meet them

Essentially we need more red tape to ensure this does not happen

It does seem likely to be a bit of an over reaction

Does seem a bit knee jerky/band wagonny/arse covery

For me the issue is the fact that we are talking about 4 blocks in one borough getting evacuated. I simply don't believe that these 4 blocks are so manifestly different to many others around the country or even the world in the way they were build and then renovated. This is either a proportionate response from one borough council and dereliction of duty from all the others or an over zealous response from one. I can't see it can be anything other than that.

Maybe the best solution is to rip down these old council tower blocks (across the country). Should have gone years ago anyway.

Awaits shouts of gentrification and ethnic cleansing...

Though I'm hoping it may put a stop to some of the modern tower block building schemes. Luxury flat towers that are going to blight the centre of Woking (worse than it already is at least). Has some awful bright coloured cladding on the plans too.

Some in Basingstoke have an amazing wind tunnel sort of effect with towers close together. Also a potential fire hazard as it could fuel fire.

i think the issues with building regs is that tose panels do not meet them

Essentially we need more red tape to ensure this does not happen

For products that don't meet Building Regs, you do not need any more red tape. You need to be able to rely on the people, systems and procedures which should already be in place to prevent it happening in the first place, and to identify it when it does happen so that it can be fixed very early on with minimal disruption. Are the councils' own architects/specifiers, Building Control inspectors, and Fire Safety Officers being given enough time (and training) to properly review contractors' proposals and drawings and to undertake adequate site inspections during and after construction work?

Yes I agree it was sarcasm - we need the market to be even further regulated /checked/controlled though as it appears that products that do not meet requirements are able to be sold and installed

the RW usually refer to this as "red tape" when its just essential safety checks to stop businesses being unscrupulous in the pursuit of profit

They could have mitigated the disruption through partial evacuation of these blocks (say 18m and above) + added fire marshals 24/7.

A significant portion of those evacuated could then have stayed if their flats we below a designated level.

Clearly in that scenario occupants should be given the option to go.

In all fairness to the authorities they are in a difficult position.

They could have mitigated the disruption through partial evacuation of these blocks (say 18m and above) + added fire marshals 24/7.

Untested and given the fact that 80 odd people just died, I'd not want to take the risk.

aracer - Member

So there's a fire tomorrow in a 4th floor flat which spreads via the cladding and the people are still living there?

The big threat isn't so much a fire as how you get people out. Obviously tall buildings are worse than little buildings. 4th floor you can run a ladder or platform up to a window, frinstance, and it's much easier to get the fire crews in too when they don't use half their air supply just going up and down.

Worth a listen:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p056nw0f

It's not clear if this relates just to the cladding, or whether it's tied in with previous renovation work too.

[quote=Northwind ]4th floor you can run a ladder or platform up to a window, frinstance, and it's much easier to get the fire crews in too when they don't use half their air supply just going up and down.

Yeah, but I only picked 4th floor because that's where the fire started in the Grenfell Tower - the assumption if it spreads via the cladding is that they'll be having to rescue people from much higher as with Grenfell.

Not that I'm entirely sure what the correct answer is, but I'm hoping they have better advice than that available from a forum of bike riding keyboard warriors.

Oh I see, sorry! I misunderstood, I read "4 storey flat"!

Those high-rise blocks need to be knocked down and the area redeveloped with better designed housing. Cladding a cold damp building in plastic sheets at £2.6m cost is still the cheaper option though.

I wonder which construction company(s) is going to put in the tender to carry out all the repairs ...

so what would YOU do if faced with potentially letting hundreds of people burn to death AND 100% guaranteed getting banged up for corporate manslaughter if that did happen?

Didn't stop Ford when they faced the prospect of a massive recall on a model that would burst into flames if rear ended. Many instances of the occupants dying. They did the sums, compo verses recall costs and decided not to do the recall. Let them burn, was written on the paperwork.

Hasn't harmed Ford from what I can see

ford do not stand for election and I assume they do not have corporate manslaughter rules in the US??

I wonder which construction company(s) is going to put in the tender to carry out all the repairs ...

Do you ?

I'm not bothered who does it. as long as it gets done properly and the people are able to move back in and live safely.

ford do not stand for election and I assume they do not have corporate manslaughter rules in the US??

Also, that all happened 45 years ago.

I suspect Ford would react very differently now.

(Not just because they got their sums wrong, and ended up doing a recall of 1.5M cars anyway)

Luxury flat towers that are going to blight the centre of Woking (worse than it already is at least).

How is that even possible?

Unless they build them who is going to eat at all the new restos ?

and tonight another flat block fire in london town

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40392587

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/24/government-u-turn-over-fire-safety-controls-for-new-schools

Another conservative u-turn - this time theyve decided not to risk burning your children to death on an alter to deregulation and saving some money.

The Tories really are pond scum.

Another conservative u-turn - this time theyve decided not to risk burning your children to death on an alter to deregulation and saving some money.

The main problem with fires in schools is arson, and this is usually caused by teenagers and youths starting a fire outside school hours. Protecting the building from these sorts of fires, not life safety, has been why insurers and others have been pushing for sprinklers in new schools.

School fires/arson are far less common outside the UK, and this is a social problem. So we are having to spend more money on new schools to include sprinklers because of the people who start those fires, money which would otherwise be better spent on teacher salaries (I know it's not either/or, but at the end of the day resources are limited: money spent to rebuild schools that are destroyed by arson and on sprinklers to protect against arson takes away from the total available pot).

For me the issue is the fact that we are talking about 4 blocks in one borough getting evacuated. I simply don't believe that these 4 blocks are so manifestly different to many others

Theres two factors really (or probably more) one is what the cladding is made of and the other is how its applied. The lay out of the panels at Grenfell seemed to effectively create vertical chimneys up the outside of the building.

So the application may be different in other blocks - the heights/ sizes / densities of the buildings might be different - the facilities for evacuation might be different. We're getting news of numbers of building checked and declarations of those effected but the may not all be high rise blocks.

Emotively - though the 4 blocks being evacuated were clad by the same company so while all the blocks being tested and checked have shown similarities these 4 are perhaps that bit more similar in the eyes of the people who have to sleep in them.

For those that are trying to politicise the Grenfell fire its worth noting that the 4 Camden Blocks where rennovated between 2006 and 2009

[quote=jambalaya ]For those that are trying to politicise the Grenfell fire

That would be you IIRC

Another conservative u-turn - this time theyve decided not to risk burning your children to death on an alter to deregulation and saving some money.

So 60 out of 60 failed so far but only the 4 evacuated because extenuating circumstances of other risks in the building dictated it necessary and they are all within a mile or so of each other and run by the same people. Granted these 4 were architectural 'sisters' but still not convinced that quite rings true as a reflection of proportionality though no idea which way is correct.

Some in Basingstoke have an amazing wind tunnel sort of effect with towers close together. Also a potential fire hazard as it could fuel fire.

Have noticed a similar effect in the bits of Cardiff that are being redeveloped. The new flats down Cardiff Bay and the new BBC building in the city centre are having this effect even before they are finished! The John Lewis building has created the same effect too down Bute Terrace, can turn a gentle westerly breeze into a 30mph gale down there sometimes.

The NUT consider the arson attacks to be a major risk to the lives of children - so what you would like to do - is blame the victims for the actions of a tiny minority and punish them for it? Sounds a bit Toryish/Hillsboroughish.

What illogical emotive drivel. As I explained, the drive to install sprinklers in schools over the last 20 years has been to protect the buildings and their contents, not life safety. Any decision to install or not install sprinklers in a school is partly purely financial (low probability of any one school suffering a fire vs. the high cost if a school is destroyed) and partly about ensuring community resilience (loss of school in a fire may be hugely disruptive and damaging to the education of the pupils, although depending upon the alternative options and resources available this might vary between different local authorities and academies).

The NUT consider the arson attacks to be a major risk to the lives of children

Where have they ever said this? What the NUT have said is:

Sprinklers virtually eliminate fire deaths and injuries of both inhabitants of the buildings and the emergency services. In fact, there have been no reported deaths from fires in buildings with maintained sprinkler systems.

However this is overly simplistic. In reality extremely few buildings in the UK have life safety sprinkler systems, the main exception being shopping centres with malls (and they have sprinklers for the specific reason that it is largely technically impossible/very difficult to design a shopping centre that is safe without sprinklers, because the evacuation travel distances are too great: any fire in a retail unit needs to be controlled by sprinklers otherwise the mall may become smoke logged before it is evacuated). The overwhelming majority of sprinkler systems in the UK are property protection systems, and whilst many of them will help to reduce the risk to life as well, this is an incidental benefit, and the life safety is primarily provided by other means (building design and fire resistance, fire alarms etc.), and it is the correct provision of such other means that has saved lives (and incorrect provision of those means that is usually responsible for fire deaths).

Only a small percentage of buildings in the UK have sprinklers, and given that fire deaths are relatively rare anyway it is dangerous to extrapolate from no deaths in sprinklered buildings to infer that sprinklers are the best - or the right means - to protect life in a given class of buildings like schools. As I have said previously on this thread, a significant number of the property protection sprinkler systems installed in the UK (and globally) are flawed and will be likely to fail in the event of a fire. These include some systems that are far more expensive than it would take to install in a tower block or in a school and which are subject to more scrutiny and better maintenance than a system installed in flats or a school would receive.

It's important that whatever decisions are taken about fire safety in schools, tower blocks or any other class of building, they are taken based on good information and sound research and analysis, not on badly informed knee jerk responses.

I struggle to recall many tower fires in the UK that have killed almost 100 people. Keep up the vitally important Tory work that is blaming the victims though.

This is a stupid unpleasant remark, but as it happens many private schools are much higher risk by virtue of being boarding schools (buildings providing sleeping accommodation are the highest hazard priority for life safety and the Fire Brigades), and typically of combustible construction in semi-rural areas with poor Fire Brigade response times and inadequate water supplies available for fire fighting.

So 60 out of 60 failed so far but only the 4 evacuated because extenuating circumstances of other risks in the building dictated it necessary and they are all within a mile or so of each other and run by the same people. Granted these 4 were architectural 'sisters' but still not convinced that quite rings true as a reflection of proportionality though no idea which way is correct.

I suspect that the evacuated buildings have both the same ACM polyethylene cored cladding and PIR insulation boards behind that were used on Grenfell Tower, which appear to have a significant synergistic effect in a fire. Other buildings may have different types or combinations of cladding and insulation, and I suspect non-combustible mineral wool insulation behind the cladding may be common.

What is puzzling and alarming is the extent of test failures. It's not clear what the products/samples are which are being tested, e.g. just Reynobond polyethylene cladding as used on Grenfell Tower, or are they testing other manufacturer's ACM cladding with polyethylene core, or are they testing the various other types of cladding that have been installed on tower blocks, e.g. ACM with fire retardent cores, composite panels with PIR cores etc.

If it is a standard BS476 small scale surface spread of flame test that is being failed, that raises major questions about the tests that the manufacturers have done in order to put their product on the market.

I am not familiar with the detailed protocols of the tests, but one posibility that occurs to me is that application of a flame to the flat aluminium outer sheet of an ACM panel with polyethylene core may not cause ignition of the polyethylene behind within the time limit, whereas a flame applied to the edge of the panel, i.e. impinging directly on the exposed polyethylene around the edge, would probably produce very different results.

It is certainly the case that for composite panels containing expanded PIR foam, the ability of the panels to pass large scale fire tests is dependent upon the panels being correctly installed, with the plastic foam at the edge not being exposed, and sometimes with the panels also needing to be stitched together. Those large scale tests (which are what property insurers seek) are much more rigorous than the small scale tests such as for surface spread of flame (as typically required by Building Regs for life safety).

The development of the large scale tests is insurance industry driven/funded, and there is only one testing body in the UK (the Loss Certification Prevention Board). The tests are expensive and will take time to arrange, so manufacturers will usually be confident of their product passing before they submit it for testing.

In contrast, small scale tests are much simpler/cheaper to undertake, and manufacturers can set up their own apparatus for small scale testing, and I'm not aware if they need any accreditation from a third party or if any independent tests of samples are required as well.

jambalaya - Member
For those that are trying to politicise the Grenfell fire its worth noting that the 4 Camden Blocks where rennovated between 2006 and 2009

So it was the fault of the Red Tories, not the Blue Tories? Not really much difference in their philosophies until Corbyn came along.

In no-way are these any form of rigorous or standardised tests, however the difference of performance is quite startling. I remember trying to burn the cellulose, hemp and woodfibre insulations I used to sell, using a blowtorch and chucking on a bonfire. What you expected to just go up (cellulose particularly) just didn't. Plastics and foams on the other hand....

What is puzzling and alarming is the extent of test failures. It's not clear what the products/samples are which are being tested, e.g. just Reynobond polyethylene cladding as used on Grenfell Tower, or are they testing other manufacturer's ACM cladding with polyethylene core, or are they testing the various other types of cladding that have been installed on tower blocks, e.g. ACM with fire retardent cores, composite panels with PIR cores etc.

I'm not clear from the way its being reported exactly what test the samples are failing - as in whether they fail regulations as they stand (and therefore rules were broken at some stage in the specification, manufacture or procurement and application) or whether with they fail a test made in hindsight of the circumstances of Grenfell (in which case the rule themselves are broken)

whether they fail regulations as they stand (and therefore rules were broken at some stage in the specification or procurement)

Even the cheap and nasty mock facing bricks that are about half inch thick, are being stripped off g/fs of flats in Chester, possibly foam backed.

WTAF!

http://www.itv.com/news/2017-06-26/more-high-rise-buildings-fail-fire-safety-tests/

1000 fire doors missing?

WTAF!

http://www.itv.com/news/2017-06-26/more-high-rise-buildings-fail-fire-safety-tests/

1000 fire doors missing?

So thats a 1000 fire doors and frames then, as they both fit together to form a fire sealed room or corridor, add in new locks, door closers,letter plates, fitting, hinges and seals youre looking at a huge skilled job.

Then google stoke on trent fire door failures and you can see the huge scale of the failures, and even higher cost.

Say 300 quid per door including door, locks, hinges and fitting, for basic flush fire doors, and youre looking at a huge figure, then where are all the skilled people going to come from to fit them, and whos going to coordinate residets being in or available to fit the doors.