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GRENFELL TOWER FIRE

The cladding was not fireproof but just fire resistant and the mistake was that the building regulations did not spot the difference quickly enough. The survivors are looking for someone to blame but this is not appropriate as it was a mistake by the authorities not the design engineers..

BUT more importantly what do we do about the other buildings that are at risk; to avoid another disaster?

Well, the fire fighters problem was that they could not get up above the fire and douse it or rescue the residence in the upper floors.

SO priority must be to remove the cladding on the tall tower blocks first and at the same time arrange for roof access for all residents in the case of fires. Once the roof is a secure place then crane helicopters can be used to evacuate any residents that are unable to escape downwards due to the fire.

In my book, the loss of life at Grenfell would have been minimal if the roof had been equipped with a secure area, i.e a fireproof [asbestos cement clad] container on its roof.

0 Zoomup over 5 years ago

I found some of these modern fire fighting solutions very interesting and promising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJiHrzdhgNQ

Z.
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0 Zoomup over 5 years ago

Talking about fire fighting.............I have seen several videos of U.K. firefighters arriving and setting up to tackle house fires etc. They can take up to 2 minutes to assemble their hoses before squirting water at the burning house. In this D.M. story it shows fire engines with water cannons on the top. If we had fire pumps in this country and they had water cannons on the top, upon arrival the firefighters could start immediately to squirt water at the burning premises. Much more efficient.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7199819/Wildfires-rage-Spain-temperature-records-tumble-Germany.html

Z.
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0 mapj1 over 5 years ago

It depends how close you can park, and how much force you dare hit the building with - a forest fire no-one cares if you knock over a burning tree, not so sure that is true with a building that may still have people in it, that needs to be assessed before firing willy nilly.

Some UK fire engines do have permanent nozzles that work rather like a cannon - its not a new idea, some of the the the old Dennis "Simonitor" models we had for Civil defence were equipped such a feature, and the more modern engines that have it take it to a new level with a camera on a 'stinger' boom. example Such things are very effective in some cases. However there are other cases where it is not really the best thing to use, and the majority of tenders are not used this way.

A modern fire engine is a complex thing with some tonnes of water, foam mix and much portable kit on board, for fighting all sorts of fires in different situations and at full pump the on-board water supply is short lived, so connecting to a water source almost immediately on arrival is pretty much essential anyway.
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0 Former Community Member over 5 years ago

Zoomup:

In this D.M. story it shows fire engines with water cannons on the top. If we had fire pumps in this country and they had water cannons on the top, upon arrival the firefighters could start immediately to squirt water at the burning premises. Much more efficient.

Z.

Didn't BoJo buy a few to quell the riotous behavior of the capital's great unwashed

OMS
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0 AJJewsbury over 5 years ago

I'm not a technical expert but have a lot of experience of the UK's Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations; and would appreciate your views on what I believe to be a largely ignored contributor to the Grenfell Tower fire (for possibly obvious reasons). Specifically, in 2014 the Department for Business (responsible for the FFRs) went out to consultation on a new 'match test' that would have hugely reduced flame retardants in cover fabrics. At the same time, its research and testing had discovered that the current ignition test fails in practice up to around 90%, i.e. UK sofas and mattresses are flammable when believed not to be so. The changes were and are being blocked by the chemical and furniture industry. Under media pressure the Department went out to consultation again in 2016 with the same proposals. However, it is refusing to comment on the consultation returns or say when or if it's going to make safety changes. In the meantime - as demonstrated by the Hull/Stec paper in Chemosphere in December 2017 - a typical UK chemically treated sofa is more dangerous than a non-treated EU sofa, because it gives off vastly more toxic fumes such as hydrogen cyanide almost as soon as it catches fire. All of which means, logic suggests, that the Grenfell Tower fire was a) more toxic than it needed to be, if the Department had made changes in April 2015 as originally proposed, and b) mostly made toxic by burning flame retardants in furniture, not cladding. While cladding was obviously toxic, most of the fumes/smoke would have stayed outside the tower. Once furniture inside it caught fire, the result was huge amounts of toxic fumes/smoke - and it's this that mostly killed people, not cladding effects.

While that does sound like a cause for concern, I'm not sure it would have made a huge difference in the Grenfell case. Had the defend-in-place strategy been properly implemented then neither fire nor smoke should have been able to escape from the flat what the fire started into the rest of the building - after all each flat should have been its own fire compartment all front doors were meant to be fire doors, presumably with the usual intumescent draught seals. For sure, unnecessarily toxic smoke is not great especially for the occupants of the flat where the fire started, or the firefighters, but as I recall the occupants of the flat where the fire started survived.

- Andy.
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GRENFELL TOWER FIRE

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