Grenfell Tower fire in North Kensington - news and discussion
- Thread starter JTG
- Start date
I think modern building design is fairly decent with regards to fire stopping. Generally there is a process of compartmentalisation in new build residential (containing the fire in the apartment it broke out in long enough for people to escape and fire service to arrive) and sprinklers etc in larger open plan buildings such as offices. I think sprinkler systems should be mandatory but beyond that modern design and regulations are decent if adhered to.
For me the problem is with the existing architectural legacy we have in this country. I remember a few years back writing on a thread on here (possibly the Heygate one) that in itself I didn't really have a problem in seeing the old tower blocks being pulled down, it was that the residents were not moving back into the new ones. The two reasons I cited was poor energy efficiency and a fire risk, I remember clearly writing it because those two things collided at Grenfell.
Resolving the problems with old tower blocks without actually pulling them down is not an easy question to answer.
For me the problem is with the existing architectural legacy we have in this country. I remember a few years back writing on a thread on here (possibly the Heygate one) that in itself I didn't really have a problem in seeing the old tower blocks being pulled down, it was that the residents were not moving back into the new ones. The two reasons I cited was poor energy efficiency and a fire risk, I remember clearly writing it because those two things collided at Grenfell.
Resolving the problems with old tower blocks without actually pulling them down is not an easy question to answer.
Hollis
bloody furious
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
I see teuchter's bottled it
teuchter
je suis teuchter
It's one where a strategy is designed for the specific building, rather than by following prescriptive codes. You seem to want to establish a prescriptive code that says all high buildings must have at least two escape stairs. You may be unaware that such a code exists already, in the form of the building regs approved docs which require exactly that - minimum 2 stairs - for buildings over a certain (not very high) height. That is the default requirement.
You will find some high buildings that do not have this, or perhaps only have one stair for the uppermost part. In these cases, an "engineered" solution has been accepted instead. This might involve things like sprinkler systems, active smoke venting systems, lifts that can be used for evacuation, upgraded compartmentation and so on. Some might make the argument that beyond a certain height, evacuation isn't even a sensible response to a fire and it's better to design the whole building on the basis that a fire can be brought under control without any attempt at evacuation being necessary.
There will be lots of different viewpoints on this and also, the evidence base on what the principle risks and most effective strategies for high buildings are is continually changing simply because compared to other building types where risks are very well understood, high rise is a relatively new building form.
So, I could ask you to further expand on your proposed solutions for this rather complex area, which is not one which I am very expert in, but I think it's fairly obvious that you don't really have a clue what you're on about, so I'll not bother
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
There are many things you are not very expert in and I have yet to see you claim expertise in an area. Yet you never fail to affect the pose of a know-all.It's one where a strategy is designed for the specific building, rather than by following prescriptive codes. You seem to want to establish a prescriptive code that says all high buildings must have at least two escape stairs. You may be unaware that such a code exists already, in the form of the building regs approved docs which require exactly that - minimum 2 stairs - for buildings over a certain (not very high) height. That is the default requirement.
You will find some high buildings that do not have this, or perhaps only have one stair for the uppermost part. In these cases, an "engineered" solution has been accepted instead. This might involve things like sprinkler systems, active smoke venting systems, lifts that can be used for evacuation, upgraded compartmentation and so on. Some might make the argument that beyond a certain height, evacuation isn't even a sensible response to a fire and it's better to design the whole building on the basis that a fire can be brought under control without any attempt at evacuation being necessary.
There will be lots of different viewpoints on this and also, the evidence base on what the principle risks and most effective strategies for high buildings are is continually changing simply because compared to other building types where risks are very well understood, high rise is a relatively new building form.
So, I could ask you to further expand on your proposed solutions for this rather complex area, which is not one which I am very expert in, but I think it's fairly obvious that you don't really have a clue what you're on about, so I'll not bother
PM bullies people. He does it because he thinks that being "on a forum" gives him superpowers. Nonsense of course. The guy is a lowly clerk in a suburban library.It's one where a strategy is designed for the specific building, rather than by following prescriptive codes. You seem to want to establish a prescriptive code that says all high buildings must have at least two escape stairs. You may be unaware that such a code exists already, in the form of the building regs approved docs which require exactly that - minimum 2 stairs - for buildings over a certain (not very high) height. That is the default requirement.
You will find some high buildings that do not have this, or perhaps only have one stair for the uppermost part. In these cases, an "engineered" solution has been accepted instead. This might involve things like sprinkler systems, active smoke venting systems, lifts that can be used for evacuation, upgraded compartmentation and so on. Some might make the argument that beyond a certain height, evacuation isn't even a sensible response to a fire and it's better to design the whole building on the basis that a fire can be brought under control without any attempt at evacuation being necessary.
There will be lots of different viewpoints on this and also, the evidence base on what the principle risks and most effective strategies for high buildings are is continually changing simply because compared to other building types where risks are very well understood, high rise is a relatively new building form.
So, I could ask you to further expand on your proposed solutions for this rather complex area, which is not one which I am very expert in, but I think it's fairly obvious that you don't really have a clue what you're on about, so I'll not bother
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Who were you before again?
editor
hiraethified
Thanks and bye.
Lurdan
old wave
The inquiry has commissioned a number of expert reports and this week it has heard initial presentations from some of the people commissioned to produce them. (The written transcript and video of Mondays session (available on this page of the inquiry website) includes a useful presentation of how these hearings are scheduled as well as the first of the presentations).
Five of these expert reports have been published on the inquiry website as PDFs. This page on the BBC site lists them and supplies some bullet points indicating elements of their content and conclusions.
These are initial reports. Various investigations into aspects of the fire are still ongoing and final versions of the reports and the detailed evidence given about them by their authors (currently set for October) will take account of the results of these.
The reports are linked on separate pages from that first link I gave above and also from that BBC page. Unfortunately the expertise deployed by the inquiry doesn't extend to optimizing PDFs - for example Luke Bisby's 260 page report is a ridiculous 589mb. I've made optimized versions for myself (my version of Bisby's is 18mb). Here are links to them in case they are of use to anyone else :
Colin Todd on the Statutory and regulatory background - pdf here (6.7mb)
Jose Torero on how the fire spread - pdf here (9.3mb)
Luke Bisby on the contribution of the cladding materials to how the fire spread - pdf here (18.4mb)
Niamh Nic Daeid on the initial cause of the fire - pdf here (7.7mb)
Barbara Lane's report on the fire protection measures in place on the night of the fire, the extent to which they failed to control it and the extent to which they contributed to it, is the largest of the reports at over 1500 pages. This is IMO the most interesting and the one which has attracted the most news coverage. On the inquiry website it is split into 32 individual PDFs which are thus of a more sensible size but this introduces its own usability issues. I've produced a single file version - obviously with a report this big that also raises usability issues but it means there is a choice of difficulties.
Barbara Lane on the fire protection measures and their consequences on the night of the fire - pdf here (71.4mb)
Five of these expert reports have been published on the inquiry website as PDFs. This page on the BBC site lists them and supplies some bullet points indicating elements of their content and conclusions.
These are initial reports. Various investigations into aspects of the fire are still ongoing and final versions of the reports and the detailed evidence given about them by their authors (currently set for October) will take account of the results of these.
The reports are linked on separate pages from that first link I gave above and also from that BBC page. Unfortunately the expertise deployed by the inquiry doesn't extend to optimizing PDFs - for example Luke Bisby's 260 page report is a ridiculous 589mb. I've made optimized versions for myself (my version of Bisby's is 18mb). Here are links to them in case they are of use to anyone else :
Colin Todd on the Statutory and regulatory background - pdf here (6.7mb)
Jose Torero on how the fire spread - pdf here (9.3mb)
Luke Bisby on the contribution of the cladding materials to how the fire spread - pdf here (18.4mb)
Niamh Nic Daeid on the initial cause of the fire - pdf here (7.7mb)
Barbara Lane's report on the fire protection measures in place on the night of the fire, the extent to which they failed to control it and the extent to which they contributed to it, is the largest of the reports at over 1500 pages. This is IMO the most interesting and the one which has attracted the most news coverage. On the inquiry website it is split into 32 individual PDFs which are thus of a more sensible size but this introduces its own usability issues. I've produced a single file version - obviously with a report this big that also raises usability issues but it means there is a choice of difficulties.
Barbara Lane on the fire protection measures and their consequences on the night of the fire - pdf here (71.4mb)
Miss-Shelf
I'll meet you further on up the road
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Thank you for doing that.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
even Brighton 60's tower blocks have twin staircases and fuckloads of fire doors.
so the fire brigades advice would have worked and the fire would have been out in minuties if the refurb hadn't been done on the cheap and bodged because the council didnt give a fuck about poor people
so the fire brigades advice would have worked and the fire would have been out in minuties if the refurb hadn't been done on the cheap and bodged because the council didnt give a fuck about poor people
Lurdan
old wave
Useful piece on Jules Birch's blog drawing on Barbara Lane's report for the inquiry. It illustrates the way in which her report, which covers the issue of the fire protection measures at Grenfell Tower as a whole, by virtue of that casts light on how multiple levels of non-compliance in design and failure in practise interacted in ways that often only succeeded in making things worse.
Grenfell’s ‘culture of non-compliance’ - Jules Birch. June 5th
(Birch writes a regular blog on the paywalled Inside Housing site but reposts it on his own. While written from a Housing Association industry perspective it's often very interesting).
Grenfell’s ‘culture of non-compliance’ - Jules Birch. June 5th
Yes it was the cladding but expert reports for the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire find multiple fire safety failures in the building and its refurbishment and management and in the wider regulatory system and construction industry.
The first thing that leaps out of the report by fire engineer Dr Barbara Lane is a timeline that shows that the conditions for ‘Stay Put’ advice to residents had ‘substantially failed’ by 01:26 on the morning of the fire.
This was within half an hour of the fire breaking out in Flat 16 and the London Fire Brigade did not abandon Stay Put until 02:47.
Those conclusions have already made some of the headlines but Dr Lane makes clear that there is a deeper context for them.
The way that high-rise buildings are designed and the way that fires in them are fought in them rely on the fact that multi-storey external envelope fires are not meant to happen.
So the fire at Grenfell rendered invalid all of the basic assumptions about fighting fires from the inside and telling residents of other flats to stay inside them because they will be protected by compartmentation.
That meant there had to be an improvised approach to fighting the fire from the outside on the night but most of the building was always going to out of reach even for aerial appliances – the whole reason why the risk of external fires should be designed out in the first place.
Fire safety relies on ‘defence in depth’ or multiple levels of safety, meaning not just compartmentation but a whole range of other levels such as provision of firefighting equipment, fire doors, smoke control, ventilation of the staircase, fire alarms and active and passive fire protection systems. But once the fire spread they began to fail one by one.
As Dr Lane puts it:
She concludes based on test evidence supplied to the inquiry that the construction materials forming the rainscreen cladding system ‘did not comply with the recommended fire performance set out in the statutory guidance of [Approved Document] B 2013 for a building of that height’.
But the problems went beyond just the cladding, with ‘multiple catastrophic fire-spread routes’ created by the construction form and detailing and the arrangement of materials used around the old and new windows increasing the likelihood that fire would spread from a flat to the cavities in the cladding system.
Attempts had been made to subdivide the cavities but both the horizontal and vertical fire stopping were installed incorrectly, and ‘no evidence has been provided that they were ever tested for performance in an ACP based rainscreen cladding system of the type installed at Grenfell Tower’.
The windows did not have fire resisting cavity barriers and ‘these unprotected openings themselves were surrounded by combustible material’, meaning that there was ‘a disproportionately high probability of a fire starting near a window spreading to the cladding.
The arrangement and type of construction materials in the cladding system then stretched the rest of the fire safety system to breaking point, with multiple internal fires, large amounts of smoke, an early need for external firefighting and a need to change the evacuation strategy.
She finds that the cladding system was ‘therefore non-compliant with the functional requirement of the Building Regulations’ but
All of that had severe knock-on effects for the firefighting operation with the Fire Brigade never told that there was a combustible cladding system.
In one of the most damning sections of the entire report she says:
On Stay Put, Dr Lane says she is particularly concerned about the delay between 02:06, when a major incident was declared, and 02:47 when the advice was changed.
However, she points out that there is no requirement in the UK for automatic detection and alarm systems in high-rise buildings and so no way to raise an all-out alarm in Grenfell Tower or to communicate with vulnerable residents.
As the report makes clear, Grenfell went through an extensive refurbishment between 2012 and 2016, including not just the cladding but also full internal refurbishment of the first three storeys, work on the building services on every floor and in every flat, replacement of all the fire doors and gas supply works.
The problems with the fire doors are now well known. The report says that the installed doors had different metal fittings and intumescent seals, which could have affected their performance and some were glazed and could have failed prematurely
Dr Lane concludes that ‘all the flat entrance doors (from Level 4-23) were non-compliant with the fire test evidence relied on at the time of the installation’ and that this non-compliance ‘would have contributed to the failure to prevent the spread of fire and hot smoke from the fire to the lobby’.
There were further failures of the ventilation system that was meant to extract smoke from the lobbies and of the fire lift, with the Fire Brigade unable to take control.
Grenfell also had a dry fire main rather than a wet one, making it non-compliant with design guidance at the time of the original construction and with current standards.
A wet main would have enabled a faster response to the original fire and enabled greater water pressure but even they are not designed for the multiple hoses needed.
That non-compliance contributed to a failure to prevent the spread of fire and hot smoke from the flat to the lobby.
Overall, Dr Lane finds that:
That and other issues such as the gas installation will be covered in Phase 2 of her report.
(...)
[Birch then summarizes a number of Lane's conclusions including] :
Communications with residents – even if the advice at Grenfell had been changed more quickly from ‘Stay Put’ to ‘All Out’ it’s not clear how the message could have been communicated to residents. Dr Lane points out change to Stay Put is not easy in the UK because there is no statutory requirement for automatic detection and alarm systems to warn residents of high-rise buildings.
The first thing that leaps out of the report by fire engineer Dr Barbara Lane is a timeline that shows that the conditions for ‘Stay Put’ advice to residents had ‘substantially failed’ by 01:26 on the morning of the fire.
This was within half an hour of the fire breaking out in Flat 16 and the London Fire Brigade did not abandon Stay Put until 02:47.
Those conclusions have already made some of the headlines but Dr Lane makes clear that there is a deeper context for them.
The way that high-rise buildings are designed and the way that fires in them are fought in them rely on the fact that multi-storey external envelope fires are not meant to happen.
So the fire at Grenfell rendered invalid all of the basic assumptions about fighting fires from the inside and telling residents of other flats to stay inside them because they will be protected by compartmentation.
That meant there had to be an improvised approach to fighting the fire from the outside on the night but most of the building was always going to out of reach even for aerial appliances – the whole reason why the risk of external fires should be designed out in the first place.
Fire safety relies on ‘defence in depth’ or multiple levels of safety, meaning not just compartmentation but a whole range of other levels such as provision of firefighting equipment, fire doors, smoke control, ventilation of the staircase, fire alarms and active and passive fire protection systems. But once the fire spread they began to fail one by one.
As Dr Lane puts it:
She concludes based on test evidence supplied to the inquiry that the construction materials forming the rainscreen cladding system ‘did not comply with the recommended fire performance set out in the statutory guidance of [Approved Document] B 2013 for a building of that height’.
But the problems went beyond just the cladding, with ‘multiple catastrophic fire-spread routes’ created by the construction form and detailing and the arrangement of materials used around the old and new windows increasing the likelihood that fire would spread from a flat to the cavities in the cladding system.
Attempts had been made to subdivide the cavities but both the horizontal and vertical fire stopping were installed incorrectly, and ‘no evidence has been provided that they were ever tested for performance in an ACP based rainscreen cladding system of the type installed at Grenfell Tower’.
The windows did not have fire resisting cavity barriers and ‘these unprotected openings themselves were surrounded by combustible material’, meaning that there was ‘a disproportionately high probability of a fire starting near a window spreading to the cladding.
The arrangement and type of construction materials in the cladding system then stretched the rest of the fire safety system to breaking point, with multiple internal fires, large amounts of smoke, an early need for external firefighting and a need to change the evacuation strategy.
She finds that the cladding system was ‘therefore non-compliant with the functional requirement of the Building Regulations’ but
All of that had severe knock-on effects for the firefighting operation with the Fire Brigade never told that there was a combustible cladding system.
In one of the most damning sections of the entire report she says:
On Stay Put, Dr Lane says she is particularly concerned about the delay between 02:06, when a major incident was declared, and 02:47 when the advice was changed.
However, she points out that there is no requirement in the UK for automatic detection and alarm systems in high-rise buildings and so no way to raise an all-out alarm in Grenfell Tower or to communicate with vulnerable residents.
As the report makes clear, Grenfell went through an extensive refurbishment between 2012 and 2016, including not just the cladding but also full internal refurbishment of the first three storeys, work on the building services on every floor and in every flat, replacement of all the fire doors and gas supply works.
The problems with the fire doors are now well known. The report says that the installed doors had different metal fittings and intumescent seals, which could have affected their performance and some were glazed and could have failed prematurely
Dr Lane concludes that ‘all the flat entrance doors (from Level 4-23) were non-compliant with the fire test evidence relied on at the time of the installation’ and that this non-compliance ‘would have contributed to the failure to prevent the spread of fire and hot smoke from the fire to the lobby’.
There were further failures of the ventilation system that was meant to extract smoke from the lobbies and of the fire lift, with the Fire Brigade unable to take control.
Grenfell also had a dry fire main rather than a wet one, making it non-compliant with design guidance at the time of the original construction and with current standards.
A wet main would have enabled a faster response to the original fire and enabled greater water pressure but even they are not designed for the multiple hoses needed.
That non-compliance contributed to a failure to prevent the spread of fire and hot smoke from the flat to the lobby.
Overall, Dr Lane finds that:
That and other issues such as the gas installation will be covered in Phase 2 of her report.
(...)
[Birch then summarizes a number of Lane's conclusions including] :
Communications with residents – even if the advice at Grenfell had been changed more quickly from ‘Stay Put’ to ‘All Out’ it’s not clear how the message could have been communicated to residents. Dr Lane points out change to Stay Put is not easy in the UK because there is no statutory requirement for automatic detection and alarm systems to warn residents of high-rise buildings.
(Birch writes a regular blog on the paywalled Inside Housing site but reposts it on his own. While written from a Housing Association industry perspective it's often very interesting).
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
mauvais
on reddit or something
Just coming back to this now I have a moment more time - he absolutely is critical of the victims, sometimes subtly, sometimes not.
Merely a selection. Lots of explicit criticism that is veiled in something else too, like 'community leaders' and 'activists' - what, are none of those people residents?
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
In any case it is a bit much to criticize the survivors for that when it (a) is as we have all seen how MPs and many senior council executives behave anyway with their expenses, and (b) it is a direct consequence of the decision taken by the council to support people by paying them cash on demand rather than take on the expense of rehousing them all at once (by compulsory purchase of a suitable development, of which there are loads in London).
Plumdaff
joy in people
I'll give you the buggy one, although tbh, when reading, I thought "why the fuck not" about both that demand, so didn't pick up on the implicit criticism. If I'm right - and it's too long an article to check through - the zoopla quote comes from a passage about the council being fucked over by Javid announcing they'll permanently rehouse everyone within a couple of weeks, even though that's likely not advisable let alone currently doable, which in context changes the meaning for me from it being perceived as an unreasonable demand on the part of the resident to the council being set up to fail on promises made.
However the first two; I think we should be able to back up our criticism with evidence, and I think it was very telling that people didn't associate their local housing and social workers with 'the council'. I think it was important to point that out. What the article got wrong was equating those front line staff with the leaders of the council and displaying a complete lack of curiosity about why the split in perception might be the case.
D'wards
IT'S YOUR DECISION DANIEL
Imran Khan wants to be careful throwing accusations of racism at the Firemen and women - that won't play well in the public gallery. Especially when all evidence suggests they did what they could, at great personal rsik to themselves, and lots are living with the physical and mental consequences of that night.
Grenfell firefighters deny response was affected by racism
Grenfell firefighters deny response was affected by racism
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
when i've been on the silent march i've seen many, many people go and shake the hands of the firemen and -women at the end: but none approach or shake the hands of the line of police waiting for their malign services to be similarly recognised.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
That is sadly typical for him; he makes a whole load of common sense points (about why it was the council ignored everything, whether they ignored everything because the population of Grenfell was not one that would vote for them and the reasons why minority groups are overrepresented in tower blocks / lower quality housing generally) and then ruins it by a claim that is so offensive and so demonstrably wrong that it winds everyone who reads it up.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
the thing about imran khan is his fame's not actually based on him being a good lawyer, but on him being in the right place to represent the lawrence family. every time i went past his offices on theobalds road i thanked my lucky stars i would never require his services.
mauvais
on reddit or something
Ultimately Daffarn's home burnt down and nearly killed him; perhaps it can be argued that the concerns he raised beforehand weren't well evidenced or pertinent to the fire itself, I don't know, but I think it rapidly becomes unreasonable to expect the man to have his narrative fully together, now or indeed at any point before the fire, for he is an amateur, and it doesn't necessarily diminish his relevance. If it really must be dissected then it ought to be possible to do it without tackling the man himself or losing sight of the fact that he nearly died in a fire.
The lack of identifying council workers is certainly interesting and a point worth making one way or another, but like everything else, it's just done in a way that at best is sympathetic to the council before anyone else. In a harsher light it's saying that the victims are wrong to have criticised the council because actually if they'd just paid more attention they would have noticed who it was that helped. If you think this is pedantry then ask yourself how you would have tried to make the same observation either as a matter of fact or sympathetically - I don't imagine you'll find it that difficult, e.g. probably writing in a different voice for a start.
It's this grossly misjudged tone throughout that aggravates the most, but it's not the only issue with the thing.
Chilli.s
mingling jets and statuettes
I'v read the LRB thing now and broadly agree with the criticisms levelled on this thread. It strikes me as the start of the change of aired opinion that moves from the must find someone to blame angle and arrives at the it was all a sad culmination of mistakes and no one could foresee the consequence so none to blame point.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
He's either been nobbled or shown his true colours
19force8
For the avoidance of faith
likesfish
You can't park here sir
72 people died in a bloc managed by C&K the Leaders may be lovely people to chat down the wine bar but they fucked up and were the ones where the buck stopped.
Same unfortunately with the leadership of the fire brigade on the night they cocked up it was probably a disaster anyway but they made mistakes.
Survivors not being the grateful poor well if the council had done its job you wouldn't be dealing with the traumatised survivors buying a 100 odd flats is would not bankrupt chelsea council even in london
Same unfortunately with the leadership of the fire brigade on the night they cocked up it was probably a disaster anyway but they made mistakes.
Survivors not being the grateful poor well if the council had done its job you wouldn't be dealing with the traumatised survivors buying a 100 odd flats is would not bankrupt chelsea council even in london
19force8
For the avoidance of faith
The council's "mistakes" were part of an ideological attack on the welfare state. The fire brigade made mistakes on the basis of what they thought was best practice.
The former resulted in dozens of deaths, the latter made Herculean efforts to save lives.
Definitely not the same
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Furthermore, if the council had not already turned the place into a deathtrap whereby fast decisions made under pressure on the scene had such potential for catastrophe, that responsibility would not have rested with the fire service in the first place.
There's a bit too much of this "so we take this situation as read, NOW look what a fuckup the people at the sharp end of things made" thinking going on - from Brexit, through benefits, to stuff like this. The buck stops a long way back from the fire service's actions on the night, and anyone who is trying to shift the blame there can only be up to no good.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
from my pov it feels like the cops trying to exculpate themselves from the disdain and contempt which is felt for them round grenfell by saying 'we're not racist, it's them the firemen, they're racist'. but that cock won't fight.
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