London Fire
Sympathy to all caught up in the fire and thoughts with our emergency service heroes trying to save lives
Comments
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You beat me to it Oneputt. Sounds horrendous and confirms my belief it's not a natural way to house people.
Thoughts and prayers with anyone concerned with it, especially the emergency crews - running into the building whilst others run out.
Quite scary that there was no central fire alarm system. Let's hope they'll work out what went wrong quickly and ensure that other tower blocks are equipped as necessary as fast as possible regardless of cost. It's far more in compensation after the event.
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This is such a tragedy - and unbearable listening. I'm afraid I haven't been able to watch any of the footage on television. My heart goes out to anyone affected by this terrible event.
There are some terrible stories - apparently new 'gas risers' were installed in the stair wells, intended to be 'boxed in' but that was never done. There was no sprinkler system, and no other means of escape, and many residents said it would take a tragedy to make people sit up and listen to their concerns. Sadly, they were only too right.
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I'm getting sick of hearing that "lessons will be learnt". Why the hell can't they learn them before tragedies? People joke and moan about Health and Safety but if corners have been cut by the owners then I hope they face some sort of criminal charges and that where peoples' lives are put at risk that Health and Safety becomes less of a joke.
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Whilst there hasn't been any definitive analysis yet, there are reports of gas being installed via the service shaft(lifts/stairwell). I'm not a structural engineer/ architect but this sounds a particularly stupid idea.
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Hope this fund will bring some relief to the people so tragically affected.
link below
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Possibly not that stupid as the stairwell is one of the best protected parts of the building. Gas pipes have to be easy to access too in case of a problem. In an older building, the choices would have been limited.
It certainly does not sound to me (retired structural/civil/offshore engineer) as though the cladding used was a good choice, or it may not have been correctly installed.
I would be amazed if regulations did not demand that there should have been a decent fire alarm system for the whole building, and these days sprinklers would have been mandatory.
There is certainly a lot to look into.
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and these days sprinklers would have been mandatory.
It would appear, KjellNN, that the installation of sprinklers was not mandatory at all. Quite stupefying. Why wasn't it/isn't it mandatory?
It would seem that the cost of installing them in this block of flats would have been about 2% of the total refit cost. Hard to believe that peoples lives put at risk for 2%.
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I red that a fridgfreezer started the fire here in the states my friends that live in apartments have inspections once a month the apartment estate owns the frige the cooker and dishwasher when one has a falt the landlords job is to fix the aplyence in the inspection they look for fire safety
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Don't know why people are trying to blame the Government. Look at the landlords/owners of these buildings first. Bet there was a low budget. Need to lay the blame at the correct people and not to use scapegoats. Governments do not build them. All these high-rise flats are there because of lack of housing in the first place, so they build up. Figure how much 5 acres of houses against 5 acres of high-rise flats. It comes down to money and greed. Just look at Hong Kong - hate to see what would happen with a fire there
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Tom bar, we aren't allowed to discuss anything political, so all I will say is do some proper, in depth research about how things moved from inspection by the Fire Service to "self regulation" and how various legislation has watered down health and safety and duty of care throughout various parliamentary periods. It is an absolute eye opener, and very worrying.
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