Tower block fire - london

A car is mostly the responsibility of the owner though, where i imagine only a few incidents are possibly caused by a bad road format/poor lighting/other things in a councils remit.

These people died because we're apparently a poor nation that can't provide basic safety equipment to problematic buildings.
 
ubersonic said:
The stuff they removed was harmless, it's just common to remove it anyway (even if a building is safer with it) becauses the public in general know nothing about asbestos except it's a super scary word of doom. I.E people moaning about asbestos sink pads in schools which present zero risk to anyone.
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Are you saying asbestos is harmless?
 
Caracus2k said:
why? If you lost a loved one in a road traffic collision and the government could have done 'something' about it that would potentially save 100's per year would your views be less valid?
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What can be done about people speeding? You want to ban cars?

This is a tower block funded by the council which had **** fire fighting systems installed, the fire brigade hasn't inspected it for a while due to funding cuts.

The two situations are incomparable.
 
balky12 said:
Are you saying asbestos is harmless?
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It depends on the context, working with asbestos in manufacturing is harmful, disturbing/damaging certain types of asbestos containing products is harmful, disturbing/damaging certain types of asbestos containing products is harmless, being/living in close proximity to an asbestos containing product is harmless.

Basically they removed stuff that was of no danger to the residents, simply because it's in vogue to do that (as most of the residents wouldn't know it was no danger to them and whined), and as a result the building because less resistant to fire.

It's not like ti would have made a huge difference, but just like functioning hose reels it would have made a difference.
 
grudas said:
It's such a tragedy this. All could've been prevented if the fire was contained in the flat, like it should have been.
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according to some reports the guy whose fridge caught fire left his door open... granted there ought to really have been a fire door closing automatically so that wouldn't have happened
 
StriderX said:
A car is mostly the responsibility of the owner though, where i imagine only a few incidents are possibly caused by a bad road format/poor lighting/other things in a councils remit.

These people died because we're apparently a poor nation that can't provide basic safety equipment to problematic buildings.
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the government could mandate speed restricted vehicles and tougher enforcement of the law, the government could restrict non essential road use.... The government could reduce road deaths by 100's per annum but doesn't
 
ubersonic said:
It depends on the context, working with asbestos in manufacturing is harmful, disturbing/damaging certain types of asbestos containing products is harmful, disturbing/damaging certain types of asbestos containing products is harmless, being/living in close proximity to an asbestos containing product is harmless.

Basically they removed stuff that was of no danger to the residents, simply because it's in vogue to do that (as most of the residents wouldn't know it was no danger to them and whined), and as a result the building because less resistant to fire.

It's not like ti would have made a huge difference, but just like functioning hose reels it would have made a difference.
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As you were. I just took your initial comment as a blanket asbestos is fine :P
 
dowie said:
according to some reports the guy whose fridge caught fire left his door open... granted there ought to really have been a fire door closing automatically so that wouldn't have happened
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There usually are however it's pretty common in rented accommodation for residents to disable the auto close mechanism on their front door (to prevent getting locked out or having to repeatedly open it when bringing things in).
 
Caracus2k said:
the government could mandate speed restricted vehicles and tougher enforcement of the law, the government could restrict non essential road use.... The government could reduce road deaths by 100's per annum but doesn't
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speed restricted vehicles, so you could still do 70 past a school?

and what exactly is "non-essential" road use? you could argue all non-industrial non-public transport use is non-essential as people can, and do, live their lives without a car.
 
ubersonic said:
It depends on the context, working with asbestos in manufacturing is harmful, disturbing/damaging certain types of asbestos containing products is harmful, disturbing/damaging certain types of asbestos containing products is harmless, being/living in close proximity to an asbestos containing product is harmless.

Basically they removed stuff that was of no danger to the residents, simply because it's in vogue to do that (as most of the residents wouldn't know it was no danger to them and whined), and as a result the building because less resistant to fire.

It's not like ti would have made a huge difference, but just like functioning hose reels it would have made a difference.
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I know you will question this in light of whats happened but our regs don't allow us to make protection worse during refurbishment. They may well have removed asbestos but it would have been replaced by modern fire barrier material, fire line plasterboard for example.

The fact that it was signed off by building control would suggest this occurred but again we wont know until the investigation is complete.
 
ubersonic said:
It's called a sequence of unfortunate events:

1: Fridge explodes, owner can't do anything because he decided £10 was too steep for a kitchen fire extinguisher he would probably never need.
2: Fire from Kitchen spreads to outer cladding of building via window, cladding ignites because the (now liquidated) subcontracted who installed it used cheap non fire resistant type.
3: Fire spreads to multiple floors, the decision to remove the asbestos fire protection due to the mythical health risk means it now spreads throughout those floors at increased speed.
4: Multiple floors are now burning, due to the decision to remove the hose reels (HSE now prefers people to run from a fire not fight it) the fire is unfightable from the inside, the decision not to replace the hoses with automated sprinklers renders escape almost impossible.

By the time the Fire brigade arrive the tower is completely engulfed in flames, all because of a fridge.
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Re point 1:

IIRC the advice is mixed, but goes either you shouldn't attempt to fight an appliance fire (other than to try and kill the power if it's just the appliance on fire and has not spread), or that it is up to the person to try and fight it if they think they're competent/able to safely on a cease by case basis (so putting out a fire you can see is small might be fine, trying to put out a larger one that is behind built in units not such a great idea).
Given the speed at which fires can spread, and knowing some of the gases that can be released by the materials used in the modern kitchen and appliances, I probably wouldn't try to fight such a fire unless I knew I could get out within seconds (in our garage we have a fire extinguisher, it's just inside the personal door so in the event of a fire I'm next to the exit before I make the decision)

Re point 3:
Given the age of the building I suspect it still had asbestos if it was used during construction (the cost and time to remove it from a residential property would have cost far more then the refubishment costs quoted), otherwise it would have been designed and built to not need it (using alternative materials).

Point 4: IIRC the risk from untrained personal using fire reels, without breathing apparatus is almost certainly higher than the that of telling them to either stay put (assuming fire containment measures work), or get out as fast as possible.
Anything that encourages people to stay and fight the flames without any access to equipment that lets them breath safely is a very high risk.

By the sounds of it in this instance the fire containment measures didn't work, were not fitted, or were possibly made worse by choice of materials used - hasn't it already been claimed by the residents of the tower and others run by the same people that things like automatic closing mechanisms were not necessarily fitted/working on as many of the doors as would be expected (one of the most basic measure expected in multiple occupancy dwellings with shared access).


We have a block of flats, and an old people's home (now a vulnerable persons home) near us that routinely had fires in individual flats, none of which ever spread largely because the fire containment measures worked (even when the flat affected as completely gutted the worst that happened to others was some smoke damage), however both buildings have full (and working) fire alarm systems and every door that opens onto the common areas has a self closer.
 
ubersonic said:
1: Fridge explodes, owner can't do anything because he decided £10 was too steep for a kitchen fire extinguisher he would probably never need.
2: Fire from Kitchen spreads to outer cladding of building via window, cladding ignites because the (now liquidated) subcontracted who installed it used cheap non fire resistant type.
3: Fire spreads to multiple floors, the decision to remove the asbestos fire protection due to the mythical health risk means it now spreads throughout those floors at increased speed.
4: Multiple floors are now burning, due to the decision to remove the hose reels (HSE now prefers people to run from a fire not fight it) the fire is unfightable from the inside, the decision not to replace the hoses with automated sprinklers renders escape almost impossible.
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Do you have any evidence for these claims?
-Resident did nothing to combat initial fire
-Cladding was not rated fire-resistant
-Asbestos was removed from building
-Hose reels were removed from building
 
adolf hamster said:
speed restricted vehicles, so you could still do 70 past a school?

and what exactly is "non-essential" road use? you could argue all non-industrial non-public transport use is non-essential as people can, and do, live their lives without a car.
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males under 25 are responsible for a disproportionate amount of road deaths and injury... Let's ban them?

there's plenty of non essential road use you could restrict car ownership to those assesed as Essential users by the government.....

I'm not advocating for any if this just pointing out my view of the perceived inconsistencies in the 'something' must be done brigade
 
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