Tower block fire - london

Above&Beyond · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:12

dowie said:
it's in the movies because it is in real life too - in US cities with lots of tall buildings and experience dealing with tall building fires!

It was a raging inferno with the building falling to pieces, not exactly the best place to set up a bouncy castle to catch people.

dowie · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:13

Above&Beyond said:
It was a raging inferno with the building falling to pieces, not exactly the best place to set up a bouncy castle to catch people.

better than letting them burn to death or die from smoke inhalation

Hagar · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:14

balky12 said:
Besides being potentially abused by drunks.. why don't high rise apartments have strong attachment points, and emergency rope/ carabiners, so occupants can abseil themselves down, perhaps one in each room or ones at communal areas?

People might say training needs to be involved, which is probably out of the question, however if you are at the point of abseiling out of your high rise apartment you are probably at last chance saloon and out of options. Learning to abseil, or just climb down the rope, on the fly probably has a higher chance of survival than jumping...

There are self braking rope escape systems but to have enough for all the occupants of an apartment would be difficult. There would be overlapping ropes from each floor. People becoming entangled or trapped in the flames.

They are OK for low rise hotel rooms etc. but probably not in this case.

StriderX · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:15

Frankly this is one of the main reasons why High-Rise was uncouth after the 70s. A fire warning system with no redundancy? Aye ok.

Rids · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:15

One of the girls from work volunteers with the Red Cross and is going up there after work to help out providing support for those affected. Better person than me, don't think I could deal with it.

balky12 · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:15

iamtheoneneo said:
As a former climber the majority of the general public know nothing about abseiling, carabiner management, and putting on a harness/roping up.
You start endorsing that and your be asking for trouble and many unnecessary deaths

Maybe carabiner and abseiling were the wrong terms. Surely there are pieces of equipment out there than could be attached to a anchor point and used to climb down a vertical facade with little effort, fuss and knowledge?

I suppose cost might come into it then.

adolf hamster · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:16

iamtheoneneo said:
As a former climber the majority of the general public know nothing about abseiling, carabiner management, and putting on a harness/roping up.
You start endorsing that and your be asking for trouble and many unnecessary deaths

not disagreeing with you, but how about something similar to the systems used on oil rigs? they have a sort of mesh tunnel arrangement that drops down and you can slide down, even drop an unconscious body down, with relative safety.

although tbh it's kind of a pointless argument when we're talking about a situation where even basic fundamentals like fire alarms dont work, the building is too flammable and there's no sprinkler system installed.

edit: this:

touch · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:17

Ayahuasca said:
hopefully a member of the fire service is on here and can explain why nothing is used to cushion falls.

Probably because it should never get to the point where people have to jump out of a building.
The outcomes of this event wont be that the fire brigade should have a way to extract people from the outside of buildings, it should be that these people have a safe fire exit within the building.

StriderX · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:17

No word from Barwell yet?

Wretched swine.

Above&Beyond · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:18

balky12 said:
Maybe carabiner and abseiling were the wrong terms. Surely there are pieces of equipment out there than could be attached to a anchor point and used to climb down a vertical facade with little effort, fuss and knowledge?

I suppose cost might come into it then.

Or just fit a sprinkler system. A load of people on fire abseiling down a burning building would be a horrific sight.

balky12 · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:19

nkata said:
There are self braking rope escape systems but to have enough for all the occupants of an apartment would be difficult. There would be overlapping ropes from each floor. People becoming entangled or trapped in the flames.

They are OK for low rise hotel rooms etc. but probably not in this case.

Yes, logistically it's difficult, however you are only ever hopefully talking about a small percentage of people that need this last resort escape mechanism. I appreciate a few hundred people attempting to evacuate in this manner would be hugely problematic.

I'm not saying it's the solution, however I have seen similar things in smaller buildings, as you said. Wondered why it couldn't be applied to these buildings.

Cern · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:19

Rather than speculating on whether the emergency services could have done things different (they did the best they could with what they have available), shouldn't the focus be on why this tragedy was able to happen in the first place?

Either there's inadequate fire regulations, or they were inadequately enforced. Were corners cut during the refurbishment? Why no sprinklers? Why no central fire alarm? Why a policy of telling residents to stay put when the fire is raging up the outside of the building? Why no provision for external fire escapes of any kind (and only one internal route out)? Why no 'cherry pickers' that can extract people for the emergency services to use? So many questions.

Angilion · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:20

Rroff said:
Initial reports were of 3 explosions from a flat on the second floor - someone was saying there have been chip pan fires in flats there before and they've never caught like that - lot of fingers pointed at the ongoing renovation work.

Meth lab? Terrorism? Fire in that flat that was contained in the flat (as should happen - each flat should be an almost completely fireproof box) until the heat caused something in that flat to explode?

Going to be hard to find out when the evidence has been burning for hours and soaked in huge quantities of water at high pressure.

d_brennen · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:21

Climing down the outside of the building in an emergency is one thing... it was the bloody outside of the building on fire!

StriderX · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:22

balky12 said:
Yes, logistically it's difficult, however you are only ever hopefully talking about a small percentage of people that need this last resort escape mechanism. I appreciate a few hundred people attempting to evacuate in this manner would be hugely problematic.

I'm not saying it's the solution, however I have seen similar things in smaller buildings, as you said. Wondered why it couldn't be applied to these buildings.

Because its 40 years old and filled with poor people? Why would the toffs in the council care?

balky12 · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:22

Above&Beyond said:
Or just fit a sprinkler system. A load of people on fire abseiling down a burning building would be a horrific sight.

Well yes, that obviously would be a priority. But if that fails, and failing that evacuation via fire exits is not possible, some rope and a pre built anchor point in the structure seems like a pretty cheap ultimate last chance escape option, and has to have a higher survival rate than jumping.

Chris Wilson · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:23

Screeeech said:
Yeah I read that, the guy should get some sort of official award/recognition for that - in exactly what form I'm not sure, but he should certainly be highly rewarded,

He should take up cricket, we need him! What a star!

Ayahuasca · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:24

touch said:
Probably because it should never get to the point where people have to jump out of a building.
The outcomes of this event wont be that the fire brigade should have a way to extract people from the outside of buildings, it should be that these people have a safe fire exit within the building.

Fair point, I just don't think it'd take much to stop even just those on the lower floors from breaking bones or worse if they fall wrongly (head first).

No blame at all on the emergency services, jumping is always a last resort and it should never get to that stage.

Richdog · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:25

Cern said:
Rather than speculating on whether the emergency services could have done things different (they did the best they could with what they have available), shouldn't the focus be on why this tragedy was able to happen in the first place?

Either there's inadequate fire regulations, or they were inadequately enforced. Were corners cut during the refurbishment? Why no sprinklers? Why no central fire alarm? Why a policy of telling residents to stay put when the fire is raging up the outside of the building? Why no provision for external fire escapes of any kind (and only one internal route out)? Why no 'cherry pickers' that can extract people for the emergency services to use? So many questions.

We can already guess that it was a case of gross negligence from the news reports coming out. Residents had apparently been warning the building owners for years.

I hope someone goes to jail over this.

balky12 · 14 Jun 2017 at 15:25

d_brennen said:
Climing down the outside of the building in an emergency is one thing... it was the bloody outside of the building on fire!

Completely agree. It's not an effective or safe evacuation method. However I was coming it from an ultimate last option approach for a (hopefully) few that unfortunately got trapped inside. Instead of jumping.

Agree with others though... this should never have been allowed to happen and preventative measures are the best approach.