Tower Block Fire

Some interesting statements on the Guardian live blog regarding the cladding of the building:

The Guardian wrote:

Rydon, the contractors who carried out the £9.7m refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, insisted it met fire and health and safety standards.

In a statement it said:

"Rydon completed a refurbishment of the building in the summer of 2016 for KCTMO (Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation) on behalf of the council, which met all required building control, fire regulation, and health and safety standards. We will cooperate with the relevant authorities and emergency services and fully support their inquiries into the causes of this fire at the appropriate time."

The Guardian wrote:

Christopher Miers, an architect and the founder of the construction dispute resolution group Probyn Miers, said he was surprised how fast the Grenfell Tower blaze had spread.

"Nowadays, in the UK, we don’t use materials with this degree of combustibility. They are sandwich panels which are two sheets of aluminium with a core, and the core can be made of different materials. [...] The panels are not likely to have a combustible element to them. It’s much more likely that the fire spread is not the panels themselves, but it’s more likely to have spread by other means.

Miers said Grenfell Tower appeared to have undergone fairly standard renovations: “The exterior of this building was clad in a rainscreen cladding system. What you see on the outside are aluminium composite panels. Behind that there is a void, to allow air to circulate, and behind that again is normally insulation.”

The Guardian wrote:

Dr Jim Glocking, technical director of the Fire Protection Association (FPA), an industry body which carries out tests on fire safety issues, among other things, said a major issues was that insulation underneath cladding on the outside of tower blocks did not need to be fireproof.

Glocking said that while he did not know the situation at Grenfell Tower, the rapid spread of the blaze indicated thus could be the case.

He said the association had received increasing numbers of reports about insulation on the outside of buildings catching light.

“They can be slapping on up to 300mm deep of polystyrene on the outside of the building,” he said. “It can be very significant. I have no knowledge of what happened in this particular case.”

Laboratory tests on such cladding carried out by the FPA “found that there was scope for really large-scale fire spread under certain circumstances”, he said.

All quotes taken from here - I've hacked them up to get the relevant bits about the building materials https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/liv ... timer-road

Tangled Metal wrote:

So would a properly refurbished building with working fire alarms, sprinklers, passive fire protection, etc.

This is the key point. If the building was refurbed correctly to the very stringent standards that exist surrounding fire protection (I deal with them on a semi-daily basis) I would have a hard time believing that this could happen.

Who is to blame is obviously unclear, whether it be contractors not doing their jobs properly, Health and Safety and or Building Control not inspecting thoroughly, or building landlords hiding things or cutting corners trying to save money.

But classic BikeRadar to spin it into a poltical/cuts debate. :roll:

KingstonGraham wrote:

bendertherobot wrote:

Gideon may be pushing a little too far with his 2nd edition front page today. Or perhaps a lot too far.

Do you mean the words or picture? Both shocking, but neither seem OTT to me.

2nd edition? Death trap. Rather than the earlier inferno. The latter being, quite clearly, factually true. The 2nd edition being more commentary on the nature of being a trap before we know anything.

When in 2009 was that report published? If it was such a clear cut requirement for action would it not be worth the dying days of new Labour government to act? If course Tories had longer time.

Also, what knowledge or evidence do you have to support the idea nothing has been done since that report? The technical standards relating to passive fire protection get reviewed and updated without a political song and dance. The approved document B is the building code IIRC. All passive fire protection is tested to BS 476 parts 20/22. It is all an interesting read BTW.

I would expect it to be a brave and very reckless company to use untested construction materials and techniques on such a building. Also a reckless company to sell products and construction systems that haven't been thoroughly tested against relative fire protection standards. In fact the actual installer would have produced a C&M file in think it's called on the work they did. It would have needed the fire test certificates from their suppliers for all elements requiring passive fire protection.

This quite simply should not be possible with modem construction. However the refurb might have been ok but something about the original building might have been an issue. That's pure speculation BTW which is all that's possible now. Investigations will find out why it happened and how.

The one thing to be clear about, this is not a matter of politics. It would have happened under any regime if it was going to happen. Disasters like this do not respect politics! Quite frankly anyone shoe-horning politics into it especially this close to the event are being totally disgraceful. At least let the smoke die down first!

Actually yes. Fire service always have put in long hours on big call outs. That comment is politics. They're there for a job and should be concentrating on that. Any issues with.manpower should be dealt with later not in the middle of the incident IMHO.

BTW you never gave a link or credits to that quote. Who gave it? What role do they have? It's a random quote without further info.

One thing I would point out, it's not unusual for the FBU and it's members off their own bat to use incidents to further their political aims.

Irrespective of that the posters on here making points aren't from the fire and rescue service. Is it appropriate for them to comment? IMHO I don't feel it is so close to the event. IIRC police cuts came a few days after the Manchester terrorist attack. At least let the dust settle, or rather the smoke to clear.

bendertherobot wrote:

Gideon may be pushing a little too far with his 2nd edition front page today. Or perhaps a lot too far.

.

I don't know who/what that is.

Capt Slog wrote:

bendertherobot wrote:

Gideon may be pushing a little too far with his 2nd edition front page today. Or perhaps a lot too far.

.

I don't know who/what that is.

The wonderful editor of the Evening Standard and our beloved ex-Chancellor.

Agreed. It's the modifications that need to comply.

Was it the 70s the doc b and all that came in? IIRC in response to the Woolworths fire. Mind you there's been a lot of improvements since it first came in. Simple things like stability and insulation for basic passive fire protection such as cavity barriers has had increases to the time. I remember 15 minutes insulation and 30 minutes test stability then minimum became 30/30. Even more stringent in places.

Then there's whole sections in the.documents about escape routes. Not my area of experience though but I've observed enough fire tests on products to appreciate the modern requirements.

You know you've got a test failure when the test technicians remove the camera because the lens cover started to melt and the security tags softened too. That's several metres back from the test oven.

narbs wrote:

Capt Slog wrote:

bendertherobot wrote:

Gideon may be pushing a little too far with his 2nd edition front page today. Or perhaps a lot too far.

.

I don't know who/what that is.

The wonderful editor of the Evening Standard and our beloved ex-Chancellor.

Thanks

Graeme_S wrote:

"Put it this way, you’re meant to work on a fire for a maximum of four hours, we’ve been here for 12."

Simple then! If it wasn't for the evil Tories then we'd have 3 times as many firefighters and everything would have been fine :roll:

Tangled Metal wrote:

Mambo I'm expressing my opinion not dictating what you do. I personally believe it's not the right time to bring politics into a thread that started to impart knowledge of the event.
It was rumbling along with people talking about the events happening, matters related to fire protection in construction, etc. Then politics came in. We don't know the cause, how it spread and certainly don't know the impact on the fire service's response of their budget.

I just stated in thought it was wrong to use it as an excuse to score points.That's what it feels like to me at times. You can ignore my comments if you like it's not like I'm dictating anything.

As i said this sort of thing happens under ALL Gov's

we had a similar fire in 2009, i dont know when the report into this was written but its inescapable that the tories delayed and indeed did not act on its recommendations, they came into pwr in 2010.

its the ability to learn from these incidents that is in question, its not points scoring at all to have opinions about the present level of council cuts, i ve been plenty critical about JC and labour in the past.

i do not see having a Labour Gov as some sort of panacea but the Tories are in government, ultimate responsibility lies with the Gov of the day, this isnt a fire in a waste bin.

if Labour had been in pwr and ignored this report, do you possibly imagine the more right wing posters would nt be all over it like a rash?

bompington wrote:

Graeme_S wrote:

"Put it this way, you’re meant to work on a fire for a maximum of four hours, we’ve been here for 12."

Simple then! If it wasn't for the evil Tories then we'd have 3 times as many firefighters and everything would have been fine :roll:

Oh good grief! In how many more threads have we got to have these arguments?

Tangled Metal wrote:

Actually yes. Fire service always have put in long hours on big call outs. That comment is politics. They're there for a job and should be concentrating on that. Any issues with.manpower should be dealt with later not in the middle of the incident IMHO.

BTW you never gave a link or credits to that quote. Who gave it? What role do they have? It's a random quote without further info.

One thing I would point out, it's not unusual for the FBU and it's members off their own bat to use incidents to further their political aims.

Irrespective of that the posters on here making points aren't from the fire and rescue service. Is it appropriate for them to comment? IMHO I don't feel it is so close to the event. IIRC police cuts came a few days after the Manchester terrorist attack. At least let the dust settle, or rather the smoke to clear.

OK, two things to add, Dad was a firefighter so have some possibly slightly different views. It's an extraordinary situation and you can see on TV what's left of the place. Now imagine the interior and what they are working through, it really is physically and mentally demanding work, they aren't shuffling numbers around on a spreadsheet for a day. They are from my experience a pragmatic bunch who accept what the job is (before the 'if they don't like it then do something else' crowd butt in) but equally sometimes a bit of understanding is required, they are still people after all.

Also, yes they are vocal at times like this and that's because it's the only time they have everyones attention.

I ve an old tree in my garden, which has a TPO on it, a branch snapped off a few years ago and i had a tree surgeons report done, i ended up with a bill of almost £1k for remedial work.
Imagine if i had ignored this report and paid off my rather large CC bill instead, the tree then falls on the house killing my daughter or my GF, who do you would be to blame? would any insurance be valid?

But if a minister sits on a report for 4 years regarding a known problem with these sorts of buildings, thats all ok.

The upgrade to the building in 2016 would have been an ideal time to fit sprinklers etc.

Capt Slog wrote:

bompington wrote:

Graeme_S wrote:

"Put it this way, you’re meant to work on a fire for a maximum of four hours, we’ve been here for 12."

Simple then! If it wasn't for the evil Tories then we'd have 3 times as many firefighters and everything would have been fine :roll:

Oh good grief! In how many more threads have we got to have these arguments?

That was my point. There's obviously a place for investigation, and if negligence or wrongdoing is found then appropriate action: but an awful lot of people seem really delighted - and I mean exactly that - to have a golden opportunity to bash the Evil Torees and the Evil Landlords