http://news.sky.com/story/fire-at-bolton-student-flats-is-crawling-up-cladding-11862469

Video taken from my bedroom window. Hope everyone is ok. #bolton #thecube #fire pic.twitter.com/pgtnmrcCMG

— Colette Wiseman (@ColetteActor97) November 15, 2019

pic.twitter.com/ROYBeOqswI

— Nick Scott (@nickscottuk) November 15, 2019

https://twitter.com/megedwardss/status/1195463996633169921?s=09

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/15375081.amp/?__twitter_impression=true. cladding had been checked….

😥

Hopefully the nil reports of casualties remains that way.

Bloody students and there bongs!!!

Firstly, I hope there are no casualties and everyone is safe.

Secondly…

Bloody students and there bongs!!!

😉

Would that be referring to those that there bongs, or any bongs belonging to or in the possession of the students residing in the block? It need not be said, however I will, that it would be their bongs… Teacher?! 😉

will, that it would be their bongs… Teacher?! 😉

I r not Ingerish teachest!

Not good. I hope no one was injured and that the students didn’t lose anything that cannot be replaced.

My company has been doing some testing on cladding for a product we are trying to make fire resistant. I ordered around 60 Fire rated cladding samples from various companies Around the world. We have our own small furnace and tested every sample of cladding. Every one failed way before the claimed fire resistance time. Our test is different to the official test but I think it’s a more realistic real world test. Some perform better than others and some fail spectacularly. I think I could get the product through the official test with a fire resistant acm board but I feel the test is very different to reality and i wouldn’t be happy selling a product I had no confidence in even if I did have a test certificate telling me it’s safe.
In the end we switched to a different produce that actually is fire proof.
Incidentally we also found fire resistant plywood takes slightly longer to burn than normal plywood but when it does go it’s a lot more violent and toxic.
In short it has made me question how relevant laboratory tests are compared with real world.

In short it has made me question how relevant laboratory tests are compared with real world.

Agreed.

when it does go it’s a lot more violent and toxic.

Best not play with half the upvc in our buildings then…

@bigwatts does a test involve a vertical flame test on the cladding?

The problem with some fire rating tests is that a product receives its rating in controlled conditions. The application and then even modification of said product can then occur, this nullifying it’s original certification. It’s happened with certain doors I believe…

Meanwhile BBC thinks Prince Andrew story is more important.

Loads of tower blocks cladded like this still exist and more are going up. Nothing will change under Boris.

We tested vertical and horizontal. Vertical was substantially worse on every board. The fire climbed the board like you would expect.

bigwatts – the products are designed to pass the certification tests. I’m not sure about cladding but in the world of passive fire protection even running the same test in a different furnace can lead to different results.

If you are testing to a certified standard you are best trying to work out the theory behind it. There will be some justification. Again, in the passive fire protection world things like heat flux are calculated based on larger scale tests and real world incidents.

BRE, Warrington fire or the HSE in buxton might be a good source of help.

How does glass wool compare to the PIR style insulation’s in terms of fire resistance?

I work in quite a few buildings,and the risk of fire is quite high,fire doors damaged or not closing securely,fire alarms not functioning properly fire panel showing faults,upvc cladding for the full height of a 4 storey building,communal flats,and older persons retirement homes with letter plates not fire rated,poor access for fire engines due to parked cars blocking entrances,voids between compartments in ceilings and more.

But whos going to pay for all these repairs.

Finally somebody will making the choice of sending fire brigade staff into these buildings to save lives.

Student flats are a pretty bad fire risk even if they’re like ours and designed for high fire safety (mostly brick walls, reinforced floors, no continuous cladding where it’s used, and every room and corridor is its own contained fire capsule). Not a place where I’d think meeting the standards is good enough. (*)

We’ve had 3 or 4 series incidents in the last decade that I can think of where we’d maybe have lost a whole building, certainly big sections, if there’d been any easy way for the fire to spread- the evacuations wouldn’t have been hard (and it seems like that worked right here too) but still, no big fire evac is really safe, especially once you add in drunk/stoned/passed out from study frenzy/ignored the alarm because they had 4 false alarms in the last week/stealthily disabled the smoke alarm/propped the fire door open/arguably don’t speak english students… And no really set population either- has room 114 not evacuated, or is the resident in room 115, or somewhere else entirely? It’s not that hard to get people out but much harder to know when it’s empty.

(* and as Grenfell showed all too badly, “meeting the standards” is a movable feast)

It is mentioned in the article that the alarms were sounding in the hallways but not in the rooms. This points to the Sounders in the rooms being overridden or disabled, if this is the case someone has put a lot of kids life at risk and luckily got away with it.

Another worry in my eyes is the slow reaction rate to a fire alarm going off in the first place.

There have been a few instances in my long life where a fire alarm has gone off and not many people have moved themselves to evacuate the building.

One memorable time was in a fancy bar in Didsbury near Manchester (full of poseurs, we just went to people watch). The alarm went off. I leapt to my feet (with sister in tow), shouted and quickly got outside. We realised that nobody was following us, because it didn’t look cool to suddenly rush out of a building.
The manager started to push people out and was getting a little agitated at the lack of response.
He later came up to me and said thanks for shouting and getting out quickly. These punters would have looked more foolish if the place had started to fill up with smoke quickly.

Other times were in the Ambleside YHA, also in a ski resort hotel (this was really bad as the fire escape was blocked with trolleys full of towels). Once again people thought it were just a false alarm and not worth getting out of the building for.

As a child of the 60’s and 70’s we had ‘bomb and fire’ drill in school at least once a month as it was the era of the IRA.
Yes you may look stupid standing outside in your jimjams on a cold night but I’m not willing to take the risk, that is wasn’t a prank or a false alarm.

So pleased that nobody was injured last night in Bolton

Bloody students and there bongs!!!

I thought bongs came with their own fire suppression system!

Two injured, I could not find how seriously, I hope they make a full recovery and aren’t traumatised by this, as for everyone else involved. When it say no injuries, mental effects are not considered. And for the emergency service staff too, seeing these things must have an effect, especially cumulatively.

There have been a few instances in my long life where a fire alarm has gone off and not many people have moved themselves to evacuate the building.

I am reminded of the experiment where people in a room doing a test or something and it’s slowly filling with smoke and no one dares to make the first move to evacuate. They just sit there looking around at each other waiting to be told what to do.

Bunnyhop

Member

Another worry in my eyes is the slow reaction rate to a fire alarm going off in the first place.

This is basically a fact of life for student accomodation. False alarms, malicious/prank activations and little minor incidents setting off the alarm without any real risk (hair straighteners, bad cooking, weed smoke) are pretty much inevitable and so people get blase. It’s always a false alarm til its not

It’s one of the reasons I’d say you just can’t build these things to the minimum building standards, you should really be shooting for the absolute highest realistic safety.

(I am neither an architect, a fireman or an arsonist- I know a bit about building standards and a lot about bloody students, but it’s totally possible that there are really stringent additional rules for student rezzes that I don’t know about. Doesn’t much look like it tbh)

Right I’m going to have a rant.

19 year experience city firefighter so believe I have a right to an opinion

Firstly the social media armchair experts have already decided what’s happened, without the fire investigators doing their thing anything else is just guesswork and supposition.

I’ll await that before passing any judgement on building construction, procedures or any part of the response.

independently, and the biggest piece of grit in my chamois cream

the number of times I’ve been to student accommodation for fires and fire alarms and ended up kicking them out their stinky little sex pits because ‘oh it’s always going off’ or ‘I didn’t hear it’ thereby not being able to do what Im actually there to do.

codswollop!

every student block I’ve ever known has always had an evacuation on sounding policy, the incredible majority of these false calls are because someone thought it hilarious for the millionth time to smash the break glass, cook some toast or smoke a joint in their room.

Most of the blocks in our patch now hold a sizeable deposit that if there is a disproportionate amount of malicious activations gets kept by the uni. Self policing made a big difference to the hilarity of a 3am malicious activation.

The number of residents stating they ignored the sounder beggars belief, if you have a son/daughter please please impress upon them the importance of following their buildings policy on automatic fire alarms.

Rant over

it must have been terrifying for the residents and the parents watching it unfold.

Also spare a thought for the fact 40 pumps attended, that’s a ridiculous amount of resources and would have stripped them bare. Without mutual aid (thereby depriving another county) there would have been zero resilience to deal with the Rtc’s, house fires etc etc that would still of been occurring.

Just remember how much we the emergency services have been slashed and continue to be under the Tories when you come to put that little x on the paper. We can’t be everywhere

Fair comment Lummox. I remember at uni hall the amount of false alarms was ridiculous, there should have been fines. Towards the end of the first year our block’s alarm went off due to a fault. We waited outside and the firefighters picked on me, gave me an absolute bollocking. I understand now that they were annoyed at the time thinking it was stupidity.

Lummox

the number of times I’ve been to student accommodation for fires and fire alarms and ended up kicking them out their stinky little sex pits because ‘oh it’s always going off’ or ‘I didn’t hear it’ thereby not being able to do what Im actually there to do.

Yup. I mean, I totally get why people don’t rush out when there’s “just” an alarm… but we’ve had people refuse to move when our security guys have gone in to do an enforced evac (ie, when there’s more than just an alarm- some underlying concern or actual risk), and then again when the brigade turn up.

It’s an automatic eviction from the accomodation with us if you refuse to comply, unless there’s some sort of extenuating circumstances, and it happens enough that everyone knows it’s an instant eviction, but it still happens. Mental.

Northwind – I think I was one of the first students to move into Robert Bryson Hall in 1992. The fire alarms would go off every few days – mainly caused by the fire detector being located just outside the shower door… Definitely not a new problem!

We definitely ended up as really blasé because of this – the lads and lasses in the local fire brigade must have been properly hacked off by the stupid students sauntering out looking for the miscreant with wet hair!

Massive sympathy for Lummox and his/her mates who have to deal with this situations every day.

AD

Subscriber

Northwind – I think I was one of the first students to move into Robert Bryson Hall in 1992. The fire alarms would go off every few days – mainly caused by the fire detector being located just outside the shower door… Definitely not a new problem!

Aye, though the alarms are a lot better now. Hairspray/deodorant was the classic in Horner.

Bryson’s a bit of a shit design too, it’s got really good safety features but there’s so much linked building that any alarm evacuates everyone… The next lot of halls, Hume etc, are basically the same construction but smaller and more compartmentalised. Doesn’t really change the fire risk but does change the evac/alarm impact.

Our soviet bunker aesthetic does make it easier I suppose… breeze blocks don’t burn, they kill you with depression instead.

Just remember how much we the emergency services have been slashed and continue to be under the Tories

**** remember this when you go to vote on the 12th……!

Bryson’s a bit of a shit design too, it’s got really good safety features but there’s so much linked building that any alarm evacuates everyone… 

But with modern addressable /zoned panels there really isnt any need for that.

There has a big push to reduce unwanted calls, unwanted fire alarm calls (UFAS) Many of the student accommodation places in aberdeen have “double knock” detectors fitted, this has drastically reduced the number of call outs along with CCTV to identify those responsible for activating manual call points and the risk of being evicted if you breach the hall fire safety rules.

All that has cut down on the number of times we are called to these types of premise, so why didn’t you evacuate? “its just another false alarm” claim doesn’t meet with a sympathetic reply from me.

wrightyson

Member

But with modern addressable /zoned panels there really isnt any need for that.

The alarms are zoned, but the shape of the building means any evacuation means clearing the whole thing out, even though it’s very nearly 2 separate buildings- even though any fire’s incredibly unlikely to spread far. It has some smoke spread issues too. The newer halls are the same overall design but with complete firebreaks. Literally just a lesson learned from the first build but kinda obvious with hindsight.

Does make it better for late night piss-ups though.

It’s the one area on my builds that we take a lot of time over. As an aside our insurers are hugely keen on fire prevention full stop, during construction and completion, I also walked round with the clients insurer pre handover and again the main talking point was fire, he was telling me of various recent incidents and how the fire brigade hadnt sent persomel in to big warehouse type buildings unless there was a risk to life, how true that is I’m sure others will know.

he was telling me of various recent incidents and how the fire brigade hadnt sent persomel in to big warehouse type buildings unless there was a risk to life, how true that is I’m sure others will know.

cant speak for other areas, frequent false alarm offenders with non high life risk such empty premises,warehouses, office blocks etc that have made little or no effort to reduce unwanted calls from their premise will get a reduced attendance the worst wont get unless its backed up by a 999.

If such a place is on fire and there are no persons within why risk ff’s lives buy putting them inside to save a building that will be knocked down and rebuilt by the insurance co.

why risk ff’s lives buy putting them inside to save a building that will be knocked down and rebuilt by the insurance co.

These weren’t false alarms but fires. Can totally understand the thinking though, if the fire can be contained/tackled from outside. He questioned our construction methods regarding venting the roofs of the buildings and how withou these types of ventilation the brigade were even less likely to enter.

Insurers are very twitchy after the whole grenfell incident.

These weren’t false alarms but fires.

nope not believing a FS would never not send anything to a confirmed fire.

No they sent the units out but wouldn’t commit firefighters in to the building. One was a garden centre warehouse that was apparently littered with rechargeable batteries in things like garden gnomes.

Risk versus benefit

Saveable life, we’ll do our utmost and risk ourselves to get to you.

saveable property, we’ll risk our lives in a highly calculated manner to save property and prevent greater infrastructure damage.

life and property lost, very situation dependant but highly highly unlikely to commit firefighters internally (it’s not America) however we will do our utmost to bring it all under control with the minimum risk and disruption.

most services I expect use a similar rational.

Its all a very calculated plan and relies sometimes on putting trust into the manufactured fire safety designs- however all to often were let down by Joseph’s new coat.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-49071456  

I thought bongs came with their own fire suppression system!

I always got lit up!!

Of false alarms, office I’m at had alarm go off recently and came down to the vape of an e-cig setting it off. E-cigs now banned in the office.

Our pump from Leeds went to Bolton and one from Bradford went standby too I think it ended up in oldham, we’ve also currently got pumps in south Yorkshire, and still they reduce our numbers nationwide

E-cigs now banned in the office.

And so they ruddy well should be.

Our lot won’t even let you charge them in the office such is the fire risk of unregulated and home modified e-cigs.

I used to share a 2 person office with someone who thought it was ok to smoke it in the office…. He was told several times. Then his e cig was locked in my drawer. Did my tits in the stink and the fog.