[Closed] Greenfell Tower Fire

Talking about fire risks, remember why Samsung pulled their galaxy Tab and the issues Boeing had with fires and the Dreamliner? Li-ion batteries aren't really that stable. So really worth paying attention to how they are handled and charged.

trouble is, people had been advised to stay in their flats in the event of a fire, so whilst I dearly hope I'm wrong.....it sounds like there could be a significant number of people trapped and in all certainty, killed!

Doesn't bear thinking about. 🙁

Really terrible.

We have had two fires in the Paris apartment building in which we live in the past 18 months, both completely gutted the affected apartments but did not spread. One an electrical appliance fault the other an alcholic who fell asleep with candles buring as his electric had been cut off for non-payment. Advice is to remain in flat in the event of fire as per this tragedy. 1980's construction 8 story.. Not difficult to imagine 1970's council built to be of poor / lesser quality. That cladding seems to be a very poor choice. £2.6m for a whole building seems very little but still equates to £25,000 per flat.

Another good safety tip when staying in a hotel is to count the number of doors to the nearest fire exit from your room. This is in case you need to crawl along the corridor in smoke and you can find a way out. Hopefully the alarms and sprinklers will mean this isn't necessary though.

We are of course assuming that the materials used are the ones they are supposed to be and not a copy made elsewhere. Wouldnt be the first time.

We are of course assuming that the materials used are the ones they are supposed to be and not a copy made elsewhere. Wouldnt be the first time.

depends on the spec, yes the contractors may have substituted, but you would have to be a real cowboy* to substitute something totally different.

A rainscreen isn't that difficult to make, 0.5-0.9mm steel/alu skin with a PVC/PVF finish, 20mm-ish PIR boards only held onto to light steel frame and epdm gaskets between each panel.

At this point i would be inclined to wait for the enquiry to open and see what comes from there.

*this is the building industry so anything is possible

trouble is, people had been advised to stay in their flats in the event of a fire, so whilst I dearly hope I'm wrong.....it sounds like there could be a significant number of people trapped and in all certainty, killed!

Doesn't bear thinking about.

The problem is with a number of these buildings built in that time period, is that they only have a single stairwell.

The advice on people staying in their flat is relatively logical, as if a fire breaks out in a flat, it should be contained within the flat.

The fire brigade arrives and takes control, then deciding which floors to evacuate in an orderly manner. If everyone is trying to leave the building by the single stairwell at the same time the fire brigade are trying to get in, then chaos ensues.

Fire brigades across the country deal with several hundred fires a year in buildings similar to Grenfell, and the fire is generally contained in the flat.

Also, there is talk of no real fire alarm system, with that many flats the alarm system would be going off when someone burns their toast, and eventually someone will try to disable the system, or ignore it in the same manner people ignore car alarms going off these days.

In commercial and retail buildings there are fire wardens who should evacuate the building in an orderly manner, domestic buildlings don't usually have wardens.

Edit: Alex Simon, social cleansing has been going on there for a good 20 years, As I said before I grew up around there, and its been eye opening how the place has changed in that time. I have absolutely no doubt that the former residents of Grenfell tower will not be returning after whatever is built to replace it.

depends on the spec, yes the contractors may have substituted, but you would have to be a real cowboy* to substitute something totally different.

More likely is incorrect installation, especially for a built up in situ system that has various separate elements. I do not know if the specification for the cladding required any kind of horizontal fire barrier every floor or every other floor, but fire barriers are the sort of thing which often requires precise attention to correct installation if it is to work. The only way of making sure it's done properly is to monitor the installation very closely, since once it's complete it's extremely difficult to check afterwards whether or not it was done properly.

ignore it in the same manner people ignore car alarms going off these days

there have been numerous studies that show that people will ignore smoke alarms until someone tells them it's real and to move.

12 confirmed fatalities, with the tally expected to rise further.

I previously worked for both render and rainscreen cladding manufacturers.

It would be standard practice on a tower block to use a non combustible insulation such as rockwool to create a firebreak at every storey beyond the second d storey.

Whilst EPS doesn't necessarily burn it will disappear in a fire leaving a huge vertical chimney stack behind the cladding.

Look up Lakanal house fire.......

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We've done the steel frames for a few housing developments in the past. A few times the design has been changed to allow for lower ceiling heights , thus doing away with the need for a sprinkler system with its associated cost/ maintenance *
*Or that's what I have been told by various Project Mangers

So, I'm on a work trip sat in a hotel restaurant googling the best knots for escaping fires and the waitress walks past just as I'm basically scrolling through pictures of nooses 😳

So, I'm on a work trip sat in a hotel restaurant googling the best knots for escaping fires and the waitress walks past just as I'm basically scrolling through pictures of nooses

😐

Leaving aside the real, direct trauma of the event, what you can't see in the photos Drac has posted is the newly installed children's playground.

For me it's a reminder of the number of families you'd see there every day - and the inevitable direct impact this has had on people of all ages, including children.

It's thinking about the playground and the positivity that embodied that makes me most sad.

Woke up to this news this morning, as most people probably did. Really bad and upsetting. One of my customers today was in tears about it. Feel sorry for everyone involved.

drac, i hope the Sun dont get hold of that picture of all the lazy firemen laid down doing nowt.......

AlexxSimon - I think they got a Labour MP at the recent election who is very much against gentrification and empty flats owned by people who have no interest in the area. I'm not 100% sure on the constituency boundrys. Really is sad the way people are treated for not being born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

eight tower blocks all 10 storeys high in a local city, 2 have had sprinklers fitted despite the residents kicking up a fuss, about sprinklers being fitted, the risk of water damage etc was sited, these two blocks are rented to over 55,s so little risk of vandalism.

Hopefully they will now realise they may save their lives.

Indeed. Been comments on the radio from people involved in investigating these kinds of fires and compared other similar fires with rapid engulfing of the cladding, and the building interior suffered less damage and lives were saved simply because they had sprinklers.

very sad .

A lot of people still think sprinklers go off like in the movies, they don't, each head has a separate break glass. So actual risk of water damage is limited unless it's actually in your property or directly above.

Turned the TVs on late last night. Originally thought it was a film I was watching.

Sadly not. 😥

Sprinklers are the most effective form of active fire protection, but they are not a panacea. Their reliability levels are generally very high, but they can fail. Blocks of flats with sprinkler systems will usually have isolation valves in each flat, and it's not unknown to find after a fire which the sprinklers failed to control that some tenants had isolated the system in their flat because they were concerned about water damage from a leak or because decorating works had been carried out and they forgot to switch the system back on afterwards.

Moreover it looks like the external cladding on Grenfell Tower was a key factor, and internal sprinkler systems will not control a fire where it is the exterior of the building that is ablaze. Residential sprinklers rely on the fire being extinguished at an early stage by just a small number of sprinkler heads. If a large fire on the outside of the building breaks through windows into multiple floors, the sprinkler system will not be able to deliver enough water to all the heads that are triggered on each of those floors, and the fire will continue to grow and spread.

I'm not suggesting that sprinklers should not be retrofitted to buildings like these, but it will still be necessary to ensure that other aspects of fire safety are properly installed/in place and managed/maintained.

A major difficulty for those responsible for conducting fire risk assessments is that it requires skills and knowledge which extend over multiple disciplines, e.g. construction, systems like sprinklers and fire alarms, potential causes of fire and how fires may behave in different circumstances, human behaviour etc., and it is difficult for one person to be an expert in all those fields. If that were not enough, there are limits to the extent to which someone undertaking a fire risk assessment can assess and investigate. So they have to assume that previous building works will have been compliant with the relevant fire safety standards, unless they are some obvious visual indicators that contractors have failed to do the job properly.

There are no easy answers, and no substitutes for good standards of management to ensure that any building works are done safely and that the fire performance of the building is not impaired by such works, and that day to day fire safety is actively maintained, including regular checks and maintenance of all fire safety systems and equipment.

It's still burning!

On the news now.... crazy.

Lots of combustible stuff in a flat, plastics, settees, beds, flooring etc, all burn and getting enough water into the building, there will be a dry riser, but probably more hoses will be required, then there is the problem of water pressure and mains pressure, also with safety of the fire fighters, working upwards, probably in the dark as the one staircase is internal to the building core.

we do have some contemptible pigs in government.

Get those politcial swipes in why don't you ?

Jambo - in the circumstances, that link is fair comment.

The building is still burning even now at 10pm (news live).

Heard about this on the way into work, having now seen some pictures/video online I was truly shocked at the state of the fire, [b]it almost looks like a line of fire climbs 20 stories across the face of the building.[/b]

Seems that the response from the council has been quite lacking, 24hrs and not everyone displaced is in shelter

Food and supplies being handed out largely by volunteers

Not expecting a council to have every disaster eventuality covered, but it's sounds like leadership is lacking there,

Still cant believe how horrific it is

Completely wrong, so sad makes me sick. It seems that improvements to the tower have made it less safe.

Hat raised.
[img] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCTqV_kWsAA60tf?format=jpg&name=small [/img]

Thank you.

it's so ****ing grim.

Jambo - in the circumstances, that link is fair comment.

No, Jambalya is right. Many people are dead and it is wrong to use this situation to make a cheap shot like that, regardless of how you might feel about Boris Johnson or any other politician.

Jambalaya was lambasted on the Trump thread for this comment:

So a Trump hating Bernie Saunders fan shoots Republicans. You can imagine the headlines and STW outrage the other way around

There seems to me to be little difference between these comments, and I think both are wrong, but it does seem that these threads exhibit the sort of double standards to which Jambalaya was objecting.

With regard to the issue being discussed in the video clip, it was not particularly relevant to the loss of life in Grenfell Tower. There are no reports as far as I am aware that the brigade took too long to arrive because of reduced cover.

There is a very compelling argument that it makes sense to reduce fire cover. Those resources need instead to be directed to better strategies to reduce the number of fires and their severity, which is what Boris Johnson is talking about.

there are reports of fire men and women working 13 hr shifts because everyone is there on site and there is no spare crew to relieve them.
Bloody heroes firemen, every last one
I did an extra hr in work and had to have a lie down when I got home

The head of the fire brigades union made no direct mention of cuts on newsnight, but the Tory MP on the all party fire safety seemed very angry that the government had ignored their warnings that regs needed updating he said there shouldn't be a price on fire safety when asked about cuts.
Housing expert pointed out that if review had been undertaken, cladding used would've been banned after Dubai & french tower fires, but our gov believes in less regulation- no one disagreed

the council do not have enough resources to deal with this, so charities are doing the job.

'Politician' means someone who works for the citizens of the city.

it's all about politics. the economy, country, borders, trade, all of that exists to make sure the people who live there are safe and secure.

they seem to have forgotten that.

Can we refuse to pay tax as they are misusing our money?

All new residential buildings in Wales have had to have sprinkler systems fitted since 2016.

there are reports of fire men and women working 13 hr shifts because everyone is there on site and there is no spare crew to relieve them.

That's pretty much a normal shift not extra hours. It's what most emergency services work.

14 hr nightshift is the norm sunday to friday. 16 hrs on a Saturday night.

[url= https://twitter.com/crispymick/status/874999483326754817 ]https://twitter.com/crispymick/status/874999483326754817[/url]

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There are no reports as far as I am aware that the brigade took too long to arrive because of reduced cover.

Agreed, I think it was minutes, what is concerning is that government ministers sat on an enquiry and have done nothing. This is why it is the right time, if the government through incompetence has got us here then they need to be held accountable. If a minister has blocked the enquiry then they need to be personally accountable, and jailed.

Remember the government bonfire of red tape, all the opportunities once we leave the EU to scrap burdensome regulation. Regulations exist for a reason, but they do need to be reviewed as times change. To scrap or ignore is in the interests of very few.