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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)
This is what I am reading it as - hence the police involvement.
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.