I don't think a tower would have worked on a fire of this scale with the burning debris coming off, from the post I seen from a fireman who went inside they were already breaking policies and going above and beyond anything they'd trained for.
Tower block fire - london
- Thread starter robfosters
- Start date
They do - however not in the UK.
Money does obviously play a factor... but it's also a fix for a problem that shouldn't really exist.
1. if the flats acted how they were designed to a 60m firefighting platform wouldn't be needed. (however the cladding appeared to be this blocks downfall)
2. Sprinkler systems are pretty effective against fighting fires and are now required on anything above 20m. (But do not have to be retrofitted).
Nor did they have time to sit and analyze like we and everyone else are currently doing.
no necessarily..... Vehicle access in london is generally quite poor compared to most cities. London is also a relatively low rise city overall...therefore specialist (presumably quite large?) high rise fire fighting equipment may not be practical for deployment in London
you may be right to a degree that 'Everything comes back to money'
problem is people can't distinguish between legitimate choices to make about where to spend finite resources sensibly and thinking that its all about austerity....
Not sure if 'not in the uk' matters. There's only not any in the UK because one hasn't been bought. You can buy them within the EU.
I think you're right that the cladding is key. Without that, most fire circumstances could have been dealt with by conventional means from within the building with minimal loss of life. As it was, though, the fire spread faster than the fire service could deal with it.
Still, dozens could potentially have been saved if a tall platform had been available to rescue them. In hindsight, though reliant on knowing the cladding issue - which should hopefully never be repeated, the ~£1.5m cost of a tall platform would have been money well spent.
Also the problem with access - by all accounts poor planning (or just disregard for the outcome) by the council with regard to roadworks was funnelling a lot of people through the small roads around the tower block causing the roads to be congested with traffic and double parking even at that time of night.
Anyone watch Panorama last night?
One thing that stuck with me, was how bewildered the fireman were on the way to the fire - many of them could be heard wondering how a fire like that was even possible, in terms of the size and speed of it.
One thing that stuck with me, was how bewildered the fireman were on the way to the fire - many of them could be heard wondering how a fire like that was even possible, in terms of the size and speed of it.
This whole cladding business makes me absolutely livid. Cannot believe the level of failure that occurred here. I can't get my head around it. The lack of legislation (and even that appears a grey area) around the cheap cladding variant, the lack of fire inspection when it was put up, the lack of acknowledgement about all those Grenfell Action Group concerns (including vehicle access). It is sick.
It is shocking.
And shocking that the regulations are seen as almost a get-out for the company doing the work. Just because regs don't prohibit you coating the outside of a tall building with flammable material, doesn't mean you don't have a duty of care to consider what the consequence will be if you do so!
Just to illustrate the point.
Worth mentioning however that this was the worlds tallest one as of 2010, so the London fire service having one like this is a bit unlikely. I think any fire service which might need one should have one, but it comes back to money...
Exactly. It is a lack of basic morality. Almost downright contempt for the residents. And to think that even amongst all that there were still signs of them trying to "gentrify" that block to some extent with privately rented apartments going on RightMove for £1700 per month or so and specifying "No DSS" etc. Beyond scandalous. Whole thing should, in a just world, be exposed in a proper inquest. One that shocked our Country to the core and eventually allowed us to do the right thing for social housing tenants.
Just to illustrate the point.
Worth mentioning however that this was the worlds tallest one as of 2010, so the London fire service having one like this is a bit unlikely. I think any fire service which might need one should have one, but it comes back to money...
Problem with that is it apparently only took half an hour for the fire to spread from the 4th floor to 23rd floor. That thing must take at least half an hour to arrive, park and setup.
May have worked but flames and smoke on outside of building would have surely melted anyone in the lift I think. There was nothing the services could realistically done.
I think another issue at play here was the location of the building, in one of those areas where access via vehicle is blocked off via way of green areas with bollards in the way.
I heard the fire brigade on tv (female fire chief of some sorts, seems to do all the interviews I've seen)
Saying as a unit it's too large to actually get around London streets and also set up outside of most of the tower blocks, including Grenfell.
It spread fairly quickly on one side, I don't know the timescale without checking, but there were people trapped on the other side without fire for at least a couple of hours.
That's a legit reason, to be fair (if she's correct)
The fire caught our brave fire service off guard and they just didn't have the right equipment deployed for it. Even if they had it and wanted to deploy it, as others have said it wasn't possible to get it there anyway due to access.
I still maintain jumping rings would have helped though but I guess falling debris was a major issue with that idea. It was totally unprecedented, so I am not blaming them. They just didn't envisage this. It is kinda like expecting a Doctor to cure you of an illness at the very last min it is about to kill you and has entirely consumed your body. And in this case, that "illness" was one the profession considered wiped out anyway (a fire that can spread the entirety of a tower block without being contained).
I still maintain jumping rings would have helped though but I guess falling debris was a major issue with that idea. It was totally unprecedented, so I am not blaming them. They just didn't envisage this. It is kinda like expecting a Doctor to cure you of an illness at the very last min it is about to kill you and has entirely consumed your body. And in this case, that "illness" was one the profession considered wiped out anyway (a fire that can spread the entirety of a tower block without being contained).