Grenfell Tower Fire
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Installation of the cladding could still have been a factor and if that's the case then someone will get the finger pointed. From what has been said this cladding is insulation with a waterproof shell attached. There is a gap between the two and witnesses say that once the fire took hold it shot up and out presumably through the gap and the draw of air through it.
When the product is installed it is meant to have some "fire strips" put in place to stop this draft effect from happening. If they weren't there.....
The cladding certainly looks to the untrained eye as a major contributor though. It is how a small fire spread around a building and by-passed all the other fire safety measures. -
Often the impact of such stories falls away after a few days... but this is one of those where I feel no less a sense of helpless frustration and sheer fury than I did on day one. I've never lived in an apartment, so I just took things like sprinklers, working alarms, and messages to not sit and wait as a given.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11876701
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@Crucial said in Horrific Fire in London:
Installation of the cladding could still have been a factor and if that's the case then someone will get the finger pointed. From what has been said this cladding is insulation with a waterproof shell attached. There is a gap between the two and witnesses say that once the fire took hold it shot up and out presumably through the gap and the draw of air through it.
When the product is installed it is meant to have some "fire strips" put in place to stop this draft effect from happening. If they weren't there.....
The cladding certainly looks to the untrained eye as a major contributor though. It is how a small fire spread around a building and by-passed all the other fire safety measures.Studied a wee bit of this during engineering undergrad, and yep that's basically it.
There will always be a gap between original outer wall and cladding (in fact, there is supposed to be one to improve insulation / prevent damp). This creates a chimney effect in a fire which is very effective at spreading flames. This is supposed to be mitigated by fire break around every external window/balcony and between each floor. The fire breaks are supposed to bridge the air gap and penetrate right through the cladding to the outer facade. It looks as though these were not in place at Grenfell, which is criminally negligent.
As for the flammability of the cladding, there will always be different options that are more or less fire-retardant, and commensurately more or less expensive. No prizes for guessing what they wen't with in this refit, given its social housing owned by a cash-strapped council, and managed by a for-profit private company.
Horrendous.
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@TeWaio said in Horrific Fire in London:
@Crucial said in Horrific Fire in London:
Installation of the cladding could still have been a factor and if that's the case then someone will get the finger pointed. From what has been said this cladding is insulation with a waterproof shell attached. There is a gap between the two and witnesses say that once the fire took hold it shot up and out presumably through the gap and the draw of air through it.
When the product is installed it is meant to have some "fire strips" put in place to stop this draft effect from happening. If they weren't there.....
The cladding certainly looks to the untrained eye as a major contributor though. It is how a small fire spread around a building and by-passed all the other fire safety measures.Studied a wee bit of this during engineering undergrad, and yep that's basically it.
There will always be a gap between original outer wall and cladding (in fact, there is supposed to be one to improve insulation / prevent damp). This creates a chimney effect in a fire which is very effective at spreading flames. This is supposed to be mitigated by fire break around every external window/balcony and between each floor. The fire breaks are supposed to bridge the air gap and penetrate right through the cladding to the outer facade. It looks as though these were not in place at Grenfell, which is criminally negligent.
As for the flammability of the cladding, there will always be different options that are more or less fire-retardant, and commensurately more or less expensive. No prizes for guessing what they wen't with in this refit, given its social housing owned by a cash-strapped council, and managed by a for-profit private company.
Horrendous.
Last night it was conceded that adding sprinklers to the refit would have only cost £200k extra in a £10M project. Outstanding that someone from somewhere made the decision that it wasn't worth spending that especially as the inquest into the 2013 fire recommended it.
A building standards lobby group also shared videos of tests they had been showing the Govt of how this cladding catches fire. They simply placed a recycle box with general paper and boxes etc next to the cladding and lit it. It went like stink pretty quickly.
The worst comment I heard was that the ministry officials kept rebuffing the lobbyists in talks by saying 'it's not as if anyone is dying in these buildings'
Talk about a clusterfuck.
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@Crucial I would like to "like" that last post but it doesn't seem right. if you now edit: (know - I was typing in a frenzy, just so fucked off with the situation itself and then the political grandstanding) what I mean.
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$200000 sounds very cheap to install a sprinkler system in a 27 storey building .
I'd say the prick that made the calls about the shortcuts is sorting out a plane ticket to parts unknown if he hasn't done so already. Unless this goes the way of the CTV building and there's lots of talk and reports and no one behind bars 6 years on.
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@jegga said in Horrific Fire in London:
$200000 sounds very cheap to install a sprinkler system in a 27 storey building .
I'd say the prick that made the calls about the shortcuts is sorting out a plane ticket to parts unknown if he hasn't done so already. Unless this goes the way of the CTV building and there's lots of talk and reports and no one behind bars 6 years on.
Yet. Alan Reay must be sweating in his jocks...
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@jegga said in Horrific Fire in London:
@nzzp excellent .
The designer I feel sorry for. Reay... well, not so much. What really rips my nightie is that it appears that Reay came in late to the party and leaned heavily on the Council to approve the build after concerns were raised.
The 80s were a bit wild west at times, with minimal regulation and some 'economic' designs in the pre-crash boom.
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@jegga said in Horrific Fire in London:
$200000 sounds very cheap to install a sprinkler system in a 27 storey building .
I'd say the prick that made the calls about the shortcuts is sorting out a plane ticket to parts unknown if he hasn't done so already.
The irony being, cutting a couple of hundred gorillas from the project probably got him a handsome bonus, which he used for a plane ticket to go on holiday
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@jegga said in Horrific Fire in London:
$200000 sounds very cheap to install a sprinkler system in a 27 storey building .
I'd say the prick that made the calls about the shortcuts is sorting out a plane ticket to parts unknown if he hasn't done so already. Unless this goes the way of the CTV building and there's lots of talk and reports and no one behind bars 6 years on.
That was the number but pounds not dollars. I guess it was additional cost as they were doing a lot of work anyway.
It would probably be a pretty basic setup and, in this case, probably not have halted the spread on the outside but who knows how many lives would have been saved. -
@Tim said in Horrific Fire in London:
According to the Times, the cladding used on that London tower block is illegal for tall buildings (> 40ft) in the US. Also, using the fire resistant version of the cladding would've only cost ~ £5,000 more for that building.
Yeah, 2 quid per tile difference - 22 vs 24 apparently. Mind-boggling stuff, and apparently there are hundreds or thousands more buildings around the UK with similar issues.
Edit: and the stuff is banned in Australia for tall buildings as well.
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@dogmeat Only banned recently.
Nick Smith, Building and Construction Minister, said on Thursday that flammable aluminium cladding had only been banned from multi-storey buildings in New Zealand earlier this year, following high-rise fires in Dubai and Melbourne.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11878927
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Great recount from one of the firefighters at Grenfell.
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@Virgil said in Horrific Fire in London:
Great recount from one of the firefighters at Grenfell.
I have so much respect for firefighters, especially volunteer ones. The things they would have seen in their time, pure hell. Our local brigade is first response for incidents on the Kaimai Ranges, and every time the siren goes off in shitty weather we all know it will be to save some fuckwit who couldn't be bothered slowing down. Also apart from fires, they are back up to the ambulance service too, so often get called to things like heart attacks.
Firefighters are amazing men and women.
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@Mokey said in Horrific Fire in London:
@Virgil said in Horrific Fire in London:
Great recount from one of the firefighters at Grenfell.
I have so much respect for firefighters, especially volunteer ones. The things they would have seen in their time, pure hell. Our local brigade is first response for incidents on the Kaimai Ranges, and every time the siren goes off in shitty weather we all know it will be to save some fuckwit who couldn't be bothered slowing down. Also apart from fires, they are back up to the ambulance service too, so often get called to things like heart attacks.
Firefighters are amazing men and women.
Only people to run into a fire when everyone else is running out.
