So many things to rant about!

The BBC using it to do a hatchet job on the fire brigade, without mentioning the “extraordinary courage and selfless devotion” part.

The FBU were right to fear a stitch up back in February.

It was always going to leak if you give a copy to the families in advance. Completely unfair to leave the LFB unable to defend themselves for two days.

Clearly designed to give the pressure groups a scapegoat.

Ultimately the fire brigade were doing their best to rescue everyone. They didn’t start the fire. They didn’t install the cladding.

Good people in the fire service will decide they don’t want this stress, will leave and we’ll all be that much less safe.

“Sir Martin’s report praised the courage of firefighters on the night.” \from the BBC article.

None of the media should have reported this until tomorrow IMHO and the report itself sounds like a total stitch up.

No easy way to communicate with the people inside and there was a long established policy that it’s safer for people to stay put. No doubt in future there will be another fire and they’ll tell people to evacuate and when people get killed in the stampede and the fireservice will be blamed in that report for evacuating.

I’m sure there are lessons to be learned but the fireservice should be given medals, not blame, from the top to the bottom of the organization.

The Guardian reporting of it is not exactly a hatchet job.
Plenty of comment about the materials with the main criticism of the fire brigade being that they didnt have any plans in place and so were reacting rather than acting.

I’m sure there are lessons to be learned

It would appear that Dany Cotton doesn’t agree

but the fireservice should be given medals
Absolutely

If anything the LFB were at fault for failing to understand that in warm weather windows would be open and in an old building, made from timber, helping the fire to penetrate into the interiors of the flats. Everybody has seen the videos of fires in modern tower blocks in hot countries where the windows are aluminium and usually closed for the air conditioning, meaning the fire rampages up the outside but takes much longer to penetrate inside. It was on that understanding that they told people to stay put.

I think we need to differentiate between;

1) the behaviours of the majority of people at the scene and in the control rooms who did the best they could according to their protocols and instructions.

2) the shortcomings of the protocols themselves and the failure of incident commanders to grasp quickly enough that those protocols had failed to predict how the fire was developing and that they needed to adjust their response accordingly.

It’s very easy to say ‘they were a brave bunch of lads and lasses we can’t attach any blame to them they deserve medals’ and not then look at systemic failures that put them in a position where they needed to be that brave.

There’s also clearly the second part of the enquiry and the police investigation to consider as well.

Whenever there’s an incident like this all parties are investigated to see what could have been done different, to perhaps help the loss of more lives in the future. This is about the fire service, their response, decisions made and reasons why.

Their response was incredible, the individuals working in horrendous conditions seeing things no one should see. It does not mean they can not look at the process to learn what went right and wrong.

I agree Drac, but it is they way that it is done and the language, which is about blame, fault and error rather than learning and improving.

I agree Drac, but it is they way that it is done and the language, which is about blame, fault and error rather than learning and improving.

The lawyers won’t be kind no.

“It would appear that Dany Cotton doesn’t agree”

She’s in a tricky position. The Met are poking around trying to prove manslaughter charges so she can’t say that they made mistakes. If she was a slick PPE graduate from Oxford then she might be more politically astute but she’s not, she’s a woman who’s spent her entire adult life in the fire brigade.

she’s a woman who’s spent her entire adult life in the fire brigade.

And has got to the top. I have my doubts someone who isnt very politically astute could have managed that.

she’s not, she’s a woman who’s spent her entire adult life in the fire brigade.

The fire service are very good at debriefing after incidents to see what went really well and what didn’t, they do it daily.

She’s in a tricky position.

I get that, but if the quote is correct “I wouldn’t change anything we did on the night.”
She is showing extreme naiivity. As has been mentioned earlier, emergency services thrive on an inspect and adapt culture (continuous improvement).
Given that she also said “fire was as unexpected as ‘a space shuttle landing on the Shard’” she should be expected to reinforce that message.

So we are speculating on some leaks on a report which will have been released to give a specific viewpoint. I think I would like to see the entire report without any selective culling before reaching any conclusions.

I would like to see the entire report without any selective culling before reaching any conclusions

very few people will read the whole report. Most will look at 2 or 3 news outlets and build a composite picture from their reports, at best.

It does not mean they can not look at the process to learn what went right and wrong.

I’m not sure a public legal blamefest helps with that one bit. I suspect it hinders it and leads to knee jerk policy changes that may not be long term sensible. (EG changing the ‘stay put’ advice in future seems very dangerous to me.)

She’s in a tricky position. The Met are poking around trying to prove manslaughter charges so she can’t say that they made mistakes. If she was a slick PPE graduate from Oxford then she might be more politically astute but she’s not, she’s a woman who’s spent her entire adult life in the fire brigade.

This. Whatever she has said it’s completely implausible that she would genuinely consider there were no lessons to be learned at all from any incident let alone this one. What she said must have been either a slip of the tongue, quoted out of context or said due to some legal necessity. It cannot be her genuine opinion, that’s just not credible.

I think the “I wouldn’t change anything we did on the night” is out of context, the BBC News had a separate interview where she clarifies with the information she had at the time she wouldn’t have done things differently but if they had the information learned afterwards (the combustible cladding etc.) the response would have been different.

I can see it being a nightmare decision to make at the time whether to abandon the established protocol (of advising people to remain inside) and switch to an evacuation as it could have already been unsafe to evacuate by then and if the victims had died in stairwells etc. instead of their flats it’s probably very hard to prove it was still the correct call to override established procedure.

As for not being prepared to deal with such a fire, I guess the key question there is did they have the budget to properly train for such a fire and if not what did they prioritise higher for training and was that the correct decision. No idea what the Fire Service’s IT systems are like but keeping up-to-date plans of buildings themselves seems a challenge on it’s own.

“This is about the fire service, their response, decisions made and reasons why.”

“The fire service are very good at debriefing after incidents”

You can’t have both of these. They are either very good at learning or they need help from a public enquiry.

If it were all about learning then it wouldn’t have been necessary to publicly name the watch manager and leave him and his family exposed to personal attack. There’s no learning benefit in doing that.

If it were about learning then the report would have made practical recommendations and not 20-20 hindsight criticisms (of course the report may do when we see it, but if it does they haven’t been reported).

You can’t have both of these. They are either very good at learning or they need help from a public enquiry.

Of course you can.

If it were about learning then the report would have made practical recommendations and not 20-20 hindsight criticisms (of course the report may do when we see it, but if it does they haven’t been reported).

That’s what the enquiry will decide.

I suspect it hinders it and leads to knee jerk policy changes that may not be long term sensible

They are there to help prevent knee jerk reactions.

Our comment on the leaked first phase report of the #Grenfell Tower inquiry#GrenfellInquiry pic.twitter.com/CgWkHFfBFS

— Fire Brigades Union (@fbunational) October 29, 2019

until I can “skim” read the report later on I’ll be following the FBU stance

until I can “skim” read the report later on I’ll be following the FBU stance

Whereas I shall be noisily spouting my uninformed opinions and speculation on the internet as fast as my ignorant little fingers can type. 🙂

It should be more about the building standards and cost over safety.

I don’t think anyone is criticising the actual firefighters on the ground – the did the best according to their training and processes they were working to. But regarding the planning and approach of how to deal with the fire there clearly are improvements that can be made based on the fact people died. If the fire brigade had processes that were completely effective there would have been zero deaths. Having a target of zero deaths and getting everyone out in the event of a fire is a perfectly normal and appropriate target for the fire brigade to have no matter how hard or seemingly impossible. That drives a culture of continuous improvement and small marginal gains of improvements ultimately saves lives.

Scenario planning is a key part of things and they should have had an action plan for that building in the event of a fire…they obviously didn’t, or not a very adequate one, because their advice was wrong regarding telling people to stay put and that ultimately lead to loss of life. Not blaming anyone…that was obviously advice based upon the best knowledge available to them – the problem was they didn’t know enough and we need to understand why. It’s vitally important to understand why people died despite the best efforts of the firefighters. What were the sequence of events that led to loss of life and what can we do to prevent that same sequence of events re-occurring if another fire were to break out. If the fire brigade had known the building better, the fact the cladding was going to make the spread of the fire worse etc. then they would have approached the whole thing differently and maybe everyone would have got out alive, or at the very least a lot fewer deaths. Who knows….but the answer is simply not “they gave it their best shot but the odds were stacked against them”….change the odds.

The big question is why were they so unprepared? The answer is bound to be that it is not all the fire brigades fault…how could they know the cladding was such a problem and that their planning was so inadequate? What other construction techniques and materials are there out there that might cause other similar hazards? These are all the things we need to understand about this disaster so we know how to change things going forward and what to change to prevent another occurrence and if another fire breaks out in a similar building that the fire brigade are better prepared.

This is what should happen and it should not be a finger pointing witch hunt. I’m not sure what the ultimate intention of this report is and just how independent it is – i hope it isn’t a witch hunt or looking for scapegoats. Clearly if there is negligence then that should be exposed and dealt with wherever it may be and at whatever level, but exposure of failings of the Fire Brigade in terms of planning an execution is not necessarily negligence. The biggest failing here would be that proper lessons are not learned for the fear of hurting a few peoples feelings.

“I don’t think anyone is criticising the actual firefighters on the ground”

“the watch manager from North Kensington fire station and the commander on the scene for most of the first hour, was criticised”

The FBU appear to have changed their “no comment” stance and the BBC have improved their reporting.

I grew up around there and having been in the building in question many times, there was always one problem when the building was constructed: One stairwell.

If all the fire barriers within the building were intact, then the stay put advice would have been sound. The building was concrete with metal window frames. This changed with the cladding and new window frames, and air gap between the cladding and the building.

One thing that has been mentioned before this report was the slow reaction of the LFB to change from the stay put policy, to evacuate during the fire. While the usual newspapers will have a field day on this, what probably won’t be mentioned is their “hero” the current PM was a London Mayor who oversaw large cuts to the LFB.

In the past, the only way you could close a fire station was with permission from the Home secretary, a holdover from WW2, the fire brigades being the last line of Defence.

Blair Changed all this with deregulation and the commercialisation of safety. And speaking of Blairs Government:

What should also be reported on in the future parts of the report was the ability of the buildings material firms to literally write the building regs. Once again Blair privatised the part of government responsible the testing of materials and the writing of the regulations.

Privatisation eh? And there are still people who think this is the only way forward.

And let us not forget the Council and their failures. Their objective with the cladding was part of the plan to “gentrify” the area, which when I was growing up in the 70’s was just pulling down the last of the Victorian slum housing built in the 1850’s. The tower being right next to one of those other ideological objects so loved by the current government: an academy school.

I find it odd that the first part of the report focuses on the LFB, feels politically motivated, almost scapegoat like. I wonder how hard the next part of the report will be on the other parties involved, and whether the media will be quite so vociferous.

It’s vitally important to understand why people died despite the best efforts of the firefighters. What were the sequence of events that led to loss of life and what can we do to prevent that same sequence of events re-occurring if another fire were to break out. If the fire brigade had known the building better, the fact the cladding was going to make the spread of the fire worse

They did know the building. As I have said above, when you have a building industry that can write its own rules on what’s fire resistant or not, then all the fire brigade can do is point to the fire at lakanal house in 2009, and the fires on the towers in the middle east using similar cladding. In fact in May 2017 the fire brigade wrote to the London Councils warning the about the cladding.

without mentioning the “extraordinary courage and selfless devotion” part.

They prefaced the report I heard with exactly this.

Why would the MSM be so keen to put the blame on the LFB rather than their political masters?

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2818928728147022&id=185180654855189

This is only the first part of the report. Is it not the case that the enquiry will now look at the technical aspects of the cladding, and those designing, installing, authorizing their use and maintenance?

We listened to quite a lot of the inquiry, especially testimony from the firefighters.

It was very, very clear that the fire service were going to be criticized for their response – and justifiably so, in my opinion.

Edit: the individual firefighters acted heroically – had me and the mrs in tears quite regularly. I don’t think anyone is criticizing them at all, this is more about the preparedness, strategy/tactics of the response.

Scenario planning is a key part of things and they should have had an action plan for that building in the event of a fire…they obviously didn’t, or not a very adequate one, because their advice was wrong regarding telling people to stay put and that ultimately lead to loss of life.

The big question is why were they so unprepared?

This is what I kept coming back to, I can’t understand why there was no (effective) plan for dealing with a worst-case-scenario fire in this building. If your “patch” had a chemicals factory in it, I assume that the fire service in that area would have a well drilled and thought-out plan to deal with a whole range of incidents – so why not a old tower block? “Stay in place” seems like the absence of a plan to me….. and with no escalation/fall back position, it proved to be completely inadequate. At the point that the initial strategy had failed – they were just unable to do anything else.

I’m most interested in the disconnect between the fire service’s strategy and changes to the building regs/inspections/risk assessments.

Just Wait till Part 2! This is an analysis of events on the night. Whilst it may be slightly unpalatable, it would be unreasonable to expect that in extraordinary circumstances, everything went exactly according to plan. This report has drawn attention to systemic failures to learn from past events, without apportioning blame – that’s the job of the courts. It is self-evident that more people would have survived had the building been evacuated earlier. The bigger question is what were the reasons for not doing so, what procedures were followed to make that decision, and how were those procedures arrived at.

Personally, I thought the reported points were pretty mild. I’ll withhold judgement on everyone covering their behinds with media statements.

And remember the courage, dedication and sacrifice of the firemen faced with such an awful emerging tragedy has never been called into question and was in fact praised in the report.

A blog from one of those on scene that night.

https://stevedude68.com/blog/

How can anyone be surprised that an emergency service that has been gutted of resources and facilities should fail to be optimum in an emergency despite the courage and determination of the individuals?

This is a metaphor for what neo-liberal policies have done to this country. Look at the state of the once great RN.

In particular Boris should be getting reamed over this.