Firefighterists

Just wondering with this thing in London (especially after Grenfell), buildings like this aren’t fitted with proper fire alarm systems? By the sound of it the only signal to evacuate the building was other residents banging on doors.

Can’t understand why they wouldn’t have a central system that goes into caution when one flat triggers its alarm (if smoke) and then escalates into a full warning if a heat detector triggers or a second flat in the same zone gets a smoke warning.

Because landlords have not been forced to take responsibility for the properties they manage. There’s still loads of buildings post Grenfell with dodgy cladding, the landlords have just tried to push the costs onto the placeholders. Combine that with the massive cuts in public services and I doubt fire inspections take place often enough and enforcement action is difficult. My hate his buying the building he’s currently a tenant in, he has his business downstairs (dental lab), there are three flats upstairs. In order to get a mortgage hes spent 10s of thousands getting the place to be fire reg compliant, removed all the downstairs suspended ceilings and replaced with double thickness fireproof plasterboard, hes sorted all the fire doors so the close properly and have the smoke seals in them, installed new fire alarms, provided fire blankets for the flats plus a load more. The current landlord should have done all that but no one checked. The 3 storey building behind him has a Chinese takeaway on the ground floor with grease soaked suspended ceiling tiles. It’s a proper fire risk with 2 stories of residential above, no one cares about forcing them to be compliant.

Can’t understand why they wouldn’t have a central system that goes into caution when one flat triggers its alarm (if smoke) and then escalates into a full warning if a heat detector triggers or a second flat in the same zone gets a smoke warning.

Pre-Grenfell “nobody” thought it was needed as “stay in place” was expected to be sufficient based on the containment design they thought flats have.  Given the major risk with this stuff is the cladding and 7 yrs after Grenfell last nights building was still in the process of having that removed and the inquiry was still on going I’m in no way surprised that additional systems like Alarms are not added – who pays? who maintains? what’s the right “trigger” level?  e.g. if you’ve 200 flats someone probably sets of the smoke detector in one of them multiple times a day – anyone who lived in student halls will remember being evacuated often multiple times a week, then people get complacent and stay put or disable sensors etc… what design would you install with the possibility that post-inquiry a new standard is published and you have to rip it out or upgrade?

I’ve seen the headlines today but I’ve not read any detail – was there a problem with evacuation?  it doesn’t sound like it – but the argument against early evacuation was always they get in the way of fire fighters trying to deal with the initial fire, no idea if that was an issue last night.

Fire safety and inspections were removed from the authority of the fire services and just assigned to the building owner/landlord as a ‘cost saving’ measure by the Tories in the interests of their property owning sponsors. You then have local authorities like Kensington & Chelsea duck that responsibility despite protests from residents and you end up with situations like Grenfell. Unless we see corporate manslaughter prosecutions, expect to see it repeated.

The 3 storey building behind him has a Chinese takeaway on the ground floor with grease soaked suspended ceiling tiles. It’s a proper fire risk with 2 stories of residential above, no one cares about forcing them to be compliant.

Id not want to live above any fried food establishment. I’ve seen the inside of the ductwork off the cooker hood, even in some of the posher establishments. Although they tend to have fixed suppression systems. A fire in the duct is pretty catastrophic.

As to the fitting of fire systems throughout blocks of flats, it’d be ideal but to mandate that would need a huge growth in the fire industry. To do it properly over the whole country would be massive.There is already a labour shortage..

The ongoing maintenance would, as mentioned be huge. Every detector needs to be tested, call-out cover would be required etc. large buildings such as hospitals usually have static guys to keep on top of the fire systems as an example.

Im not saying it shouldn’t happen but it’d be no small feat.

Fire safety and inspections were removed from the authority of the fire services and just assigned to the building owner/landlord as a ‘cost saving’ measure by the Tories in the interests of their property owning sponsors.

Was just coming here to say the same thing. I was a fire warden in my old job in a 12 storey building and was amazed when the owner told us this.

I wouldn’t want to live 300 yards from a fried food establishment more due to the constant manky smell and the risk of vermin

I wouldn’t want to live 300 yards from a fried food establishment more due to the constant manky smell and the risk of vermin

At that distance, I doubt you’d ever notice any smells. There’s a Chinese restaurant 420 yards away from me, there’s no smell, in fact walking past it you can’t smell it.

From memory it was actually labour who changed the rules regarding inspections, after the 2003/4 strikes? We used to spend most afternoons inspecting the main risks in our area but then RRO’s were brought in and the responsibility handed to the property owner. Don’t need so many Ff’s then! Tories are certainly no friend of the fire service but Tony and his tubby, punchy mate did just as much harm and started the race to the bottom.

@chestrockwell I think you’re correct. Prescott and his constant references to “fire people” and “joint control rooms” and their apparent hatred of firefighters continued and broadened cuts started by previous governments. We used to do inspections of high risks on a monthly basis but also inspections of care homes, flats, shops and small businesses. As operational staff we were able to explain with experience exactly the problems and initiate enforcement action where necessary. It was then decided to let companies “self assess” and building regulations were supposed to engineer out problems. The number of health and safety inspectors were cut, the number of building inspectors were cut, and then along with them, the fire service has suffered tremendous cuts, despite taking on more responsibilities (flood rescue, rescues from height, bariatric patient moving etc). It always surprises me that there aren’t more disasters!