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Grenfell Tower Fire

Chris SF Chew

"A total of 58 people are dead or missing, presumed dead, following the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower in west London, police have said.



Commander Stuart Cundy said that number "may increase". The BBC understands it could be about 70 people in total."


What can we learn and improve from the above tragedy?


Chris Chew

 


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    It does reflect upon the way fire safety is assessed and regulated in a cost driven scenario. It seems that 'common sense' fire safety doesn't apply. No sprinkler system, apparently no fire alarm, a single stairwell and no fire escape, combustible materials used in the construction. It is interesting that the shell of the building hasn't crumbled in the intense fire.
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    I suspect that the original concrete building was correctly designed to contain a fire.  But it will have been repeatedly modified over the years to "improve" it.  We will have to see what the inquiry reveals.
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    Since when have engineers signed off building work?  That's the job of Building Control officers.
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    What can we learn and improve from the above tragedy?






    We have to ask, what have we learnt from other historical tragedies, and why they repeat themselves. There is plenty of literature on how we progress to failure, how we rush to judgement, and even some on the failure to learn.


    For the Grenfell tower question, Has anyone notice that all the windows also appear to be away?


    What was the window construction type? (e.g. PVC vs Aluminium frame), and how did the windows and their ventilation affect the progression of the fire?


    I have a suspicion that the frames were almost all PVC, and that the intense heat from the external burning cladding then melted/burnt the frames, allowing the windows to fall out/in, exposing the occupents/contents to the fire, and further fueling it.


    If the windows were aluminium framed, I would have expected more of them to have survived (relative to the images on the news media, which may have been selective), and that the internals of the flats where the windows survived to be less damaged.


    In many of these big disasters there is often a super-exponential set of effects that pile one on top of another making the result worse that simple summation of efects, or even summations of percentages (basic compounding). Providing an easy fire path from the external insulation/cladding to the combustable internal of the flats trough the window opening would be a further exacerbation of the loss of fire safety.


    For the super compounding effects thers are still issues of the internal stair well, gas supplies, water risers, and fire stopping that have also been mentioned elsewhere that may have added to the horrendous conflagration.


    The effectiveness of the window systems during the fire should also be at least looked at.


     


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    It has been a while since I last posted on the blog as I have been very busy and for that I apologise to the community.


    As a professional engineer the Grenfell Tower fire and the aftermath makes me very very uneasy.  I am very concerned as to the urgency for a response to this as 'arm chair' experts jump to promote theories and solutions to this tragic fire without first applying due diligence to the thought and comment.  It is natural to seek someone to blame and that is a basic human reaction but as professionals we should disist from such behaviour and try to take human emotion out of the equation when seeking to learn.  Whilst the massive loss of life is tragic in the extreem and my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families we must seek the truth by thorough thought and understanding.  Whilst not an expert in construction I offer some thought provoking bullet points of my own.  Namely:

    1.  Do we understand the test parameters of all the materials used in the construction the point of fit.  This includes the cladding, the insulation, the polymer furniture (window frames etc)?

    2.  Was the test parameters of the assembly (using all materials and applied assembly techniques) known?

    3.  Was the building fitted out in accordance with OEM instruction for application? 

    4.  Was there OEM guidance in use of materials and application?

    5.  Council Planning.  Did this pass planning permission and more importantly - where is the documented evidence of stage-gate acceptance to building regulations throughout face lift?

    6.  What was the relationship between the contractor, the planning authority, architect, and the building inspector throughout the works?

    7.  Are the material tests being carried out fit for purpose?  Personally I doubt this as tests now being reported are no more than calorific test results which at best are flawed.  Yes it is ok to test and understand the calorific value of inividual materials but this is only half of the story.  The full assembly should be constructed and allowance for the 'draft' that occurs from the 'chimney' effect as the fire moves throughout the lamiated skin of the concrete, insulation and tiles.  I have seen no reporting of tests in this regards.

    8.  The fire inspections which are mandatory in law are obviously deficient when applied to high rise buildings.  Where was the sprinkler system?  Whilst they building may have been constructed before these were mandated it is unacceptable to just ignore that such buildings do not  have these.  This issue should be immediately madated in law with a given time span to retrofit buildings which are deficient.  Why is there no computer modelling for fire?  Again this should form part of the planning process and the responsibility of the architect to supply and the building inspectorate to police.


    I could go on defining the scope of investigation but I know that the readers of this post will understand my concern.  It is only by stripping the emotion out of the response and avoiding the rush to judgement that true learning will be attained and through the application of such......the avoidance or effective mitiagtion of such a future disaster achieved.  Afterall, whilst we all seek to achieve and promote excellent engineering solutions our collective priority is our social responsibility and the protection of life.
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    Louis,

    Good post, but......

    I share your concern, but I hope you will forgive me for saying you have fallen into your own trap. You stated:
    'arm chair' experts jump to promote theories and solutions to this tragic fire without first applying due diligence to the thought and comment

    You then went on to say:
    Where was the sprinkler system? ... This issue should be immediately madated in law with a given time span to retrofit buildings which are deficient.

    I am not saying your answer is wrong. The fire spread up the outside of the building which would not have been prevented by a sprinkler system inside the tower block, but crucially a sprinkler system would probably have protected the escape route and allowed many more to survive.

    I have seen too many regulations changing due to a knee-jerk reaction of people needing to be seen to do something which has resulted in less than optimal requirements. I would like to see the public enquiry proceeding apace and interim findings published as early as possible so that the broken parts of the system can be fixed. The questions you raise are very pertinent and if these can be answered it would go a long way to identifying where the changes need to be made. If the enquiry can also confirm that a sprinkler system would have saved lives then this will be a big boost to getting the law changed in that regard for existing tower blocks.

    I think your final paragraph was a very apt summary.

    Alasdair

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    Hi Alasdair


    Thank you for the reponse and constructive comment with which I whole heartly agree.  I pose the points as thought provoking prompts only which I hope trigger non-emmotional discussion.  I totally agree that the forum is now the public enquiry and I feel it should have three distict areas......

    1.  The hard technical facts and suggested improvements

    2.  Social impact and mitigation in the event of such an event.  More effective disaster planning and response procedures if you will.

    3.  The interface of 1 & 2 above.


    I think that it is vital to keep politics and the blame culture out of 1 above as to do otherwise will not result in learning.

    Items 2 and 3 will be far more difficult due to public demand for action and response.

    Difficult times await in this process but a far worse situation in my opinion would be to fail to obtain maximum learning and if necessary revised legislation due to political pressure.  What really makes me sad is when we witness politicians seeking to use this sorry affair for political advantage.  For fear of yet again falling into my own trap Alasdair may I say that the actions of politicians at the moment might only serve to put in danger other residents of these buildings through non-robust findings and solutions.


    Let us hope that we all learn from this as a profession

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    Personally I agree with the suggestions above that I'm not sure debating the technical specifics of this is terribly useful - this is undoubtedly a complex problem, and the only people who will actually have access to all the info will be involved with the enquiry and couldn't (or shouldn't or won't) comment. Unfortunately when the enquiry results come out, which is when we could and should look at lessons learnt for our professional fields, the impetus to discuss it tends to have disappeared. So I can think of a couple of points from this:
    1. What can we as an IET community do to promote discussions on lessons learnt when detail information on major engineering (in the broadest sense) failures becomes available - maybe 2-3 years after the headlines?

    • How can we persuade "the public" (whatever that means) and the media that events such as this are very complex and need a detailed investigation down to true root causes - and that in the end there may be no-one to blame (but they can be stopped from happening again which to my mind is more important)?


    There does seem to be a huge movement in the UK (and the US) at the moment - in all sorts of areas - to suggest that approaching problems thoroughly and steadily is "whitewashing" or "brushing under the carpet", a sort of lynch mob mentality (I'm not suggesting anyone here is doing it by the way!). I have no idea how we counter this but I think it's vital that it is countered. 


    Sorry, I don't like being a wet blanket on discussions...but actually I think as engineers we should feel confident when we start getting dragged into pub conversations on issues like this (as I am sure many of us have after Grenfell) to quote Sherlock Holmes "it is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data". Might not help the reputation of engineers as being boring though...and maybe not those actual words!


    (P.S. I do have my own ideas as to what we can technically, legisilatively and politically learn from this, but since they're only based on newspaper reports, which will be selective at best, I'll keep them to myself smiley )


    Cheers, Andy
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    That DCLG Guidance Note link doesn't work.  It just links back to this discussion forum.

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