Looking at the pictures, you can see the fire deep inside the building, so I suspect it's pretty bad.
Tower block fire - london
- Thread starter robfosters
- Start date
Looking at the pictures, you can see the fire deep inside the building, so I suspect it's pretty bad.
Soldato
On this note I am sure I heard on the BBC that the fire was on the outer sections of the buildings and not it in its core. Hopefully people managed to wait it out in the core of the building and as the fire/smoke subsides more to the windows to reach out for help.
EDIT: just seen the above posts - really hope there isn't a fire in the centre, that would make survival impossible
serious query, though it might sound stupid:
if you're above a fire and trapped like this, if everyone on those floors turned on all taps full blast and flooded their apartments/floors, would it be of any benefit? theoretically the wet/flooded floors could reduce temperature, and smoke coming from higher vents etc would still be an issue, but would water flooding down from, say, three or four higher floors be able to retard the fire?
Soldato
Live pictures still showing fires inside. It appears they can only use an unmanned hose system at the moment. This is horrendous.
Andi.
Man of Honour
I'd imagine those systems aren't designed for everyone to be using their taps at once. Pressure would be miserable and barely have any impact.
hmm, decent point.
You have to be kidding me!?
Soldato
Doubt it - wouldn't get enough water through, and the heat would evaporate it off soon enough.
I wonder if a 'fire break' would work in principle. Basically throw everything from an entire floor or two out of the window so there's no fuel for the fire. Not really realistic, especially with the cladding outside of the building spreading the fire.
Soldato
The cladding was aluminum composite panels, there has been a suggestion that they were however fixed to timber cladding rails. No idea how true that is or if its a misunderstanding of the fixing details.
Caporegime
Tower block built in 1974.
Tower block refurbished in 2015.
Refurbishing involves flammable cladding, and no sprinklers.
Well done, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Well done you.
Tower block refurbished in 2015.
Refurbishing involves flammable cladding, and no sprinklers.
Well done, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Well done you.
Permabanned
I am amazed there haven't been more of these high rise infernos, packing people above one another for umpteen floors, with each group of people having their own cooker and electronic gizmos, in some areas with a lot of people often living a lifestyle where alcohol and drugs make them careless. It's remarkable that this is the first big blaze in a high rise for ages in the UK. One has to hope that most have had a remarkable escape. I believe it would be financially impractical to build such towers in a way that fire could not spread at all, it's a risk brought on by having to house excess population density in major conurbations.
Ahh jsmoke beat me to it and more succinctly too....
Ahh jsmoke beat me to it and more succinctly too....
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Several examples of building fires where cladding is in question can be googled in Dubai and other Arab countries. Dependant on the timeline this could present as a foreseeable risk.
That's literally unbelievable.
Unbelievable how they've been complaining to the authorities, management, everyone since 2013, especially reading stories about smoke billowing out of people's appliances and things fusing out randomly, due to a dodgy building power supply..
Sounds like the end result of utter incompetence
Caporegime
Friend of mine just told me the company he works for deal with the council in that area on a regular basis and they've had word the wiring in the building was so poor there were surges everyday, not electrically savvy at all so is that normal?
Soldato
Soldato
Seems to me, as a layman, that if fire couldn't spread on the outside of the building, then it actually would be difficult for fire to spread much at all. At any great rate anyway. Concrete structure with fire doors would do a pretty good containment job. Not especially expensive
Soldato
Its irrelevant to cite occurrences in other countries as the regulations that would need to be adhered to could be vastly different (there may not even be any at all). If it was Europe then its more relevant as we have a more or less level standard but even then there are variants. As Jim Mcloughlin (technical fire officer) just said on Sky though, our regs don't really cover this element of construction enough and its been used more and more.
Caporegime
Wow that's terrible, just watching sky news and seeing the tower block on fire .
RIP to the ones who have lost their lives, hopefully they can get the rest of them out safe. But from what I was hearing, death toll could rise.
. RIP to the ones who have lost their lives, hopefully they can get the rest of them out safe. But from what I was hearing, death toll could rise
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