Grenfell Tower Fire
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This post is deleted!
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apparently lots of other buildings with the same cladding, and one assumes similar fire risk.
Makes you wonder if those fuck-tards extremists would start a fire like this in the name of a friend in the sky?
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Major problem now, makes the issues we have in NZ seem like nothing really
Watched something online the other day re the fire. Startling fact that came out of it was the original fire was put out quite quickly. If it hadn't spread due to the cladding it barely would have registered as a news story
Also sounds like the original tower was much safer before the so called improvements. It was designed to contain fires to that what ever unit they started in. -
Interesting...
Concerns raised over NZ fire regulations
Plans for what will be the country's tallest apartment tower are stuck in a dispute over whether a single stairwell for its top 11 floors is good enough in an evacuation.
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@taniwharugby said in Horrific Fire in London:
apparently lots of other buildings with the same cladding, and one assumes similar fire risk.
Makes you wonder if those fuck-tards extremists would start a fire like this in the name of a friend in the sky?
Quoted as about 120 tower blocks now, which could house tens of thousands.
Fark.
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A really emotional piece of journalism from the BBC on the Grenfell Tower fire. Specifically about people living on the 21st floor, who they were, how they survived (or not). Harrowing in parts.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Grenfell_21st_floor
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Dragging this old thread out in case anyone else is interested.
We are at a big arm's length in NZ regarding reporting on the long inquiry into the disaster and it was only some random links I spotted the other day that had me back reading with interest as the second phase continues.
Fascinating reading. I have been cynical about any inquiry simply listing a whole bunch of minor failures leading to a major one with everyone finger pointing up and down the chain of decisions. After reading some of this I am more hopeful that the outcomes will be that there is some accountability.
The accumulation of greed based decisions from cladding manufacturer to marketing to sales to decisions to use while ignoring alarm bells (sic) is astounding.A short summary of stuff about cladding here. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56403431
This site provides some seemingly unbiased industry based news summaries following each day that make good reading. https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/grenfell-tower-inquiry-diary-week-40-an-exercise-in-concealment-and-half-truth-71332
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@crucial it would be beyond horrible if there was clear culpability for what happened and no prosecutions etc.
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@paekakboyz said in Grenfell Tower Fire:
@crucial it would be beyond horrible if there was clear culpability for what happened and no prosecutions etc.
the issue with this though is that there are almost always multiple layers of problem, and it's really hard to point at a single person/cause and say 'that was it'. I suspect the housing organisation will wear it, but don't really know enough to do anything other than a snap judgement. Whether an individual can be singled out, though, will be hard. It's never just one person's fault.
Pike River, leaky buildings, even Cave Creek - often these are emergent issues from complex situations.
It's a dead set tragedy, and thankfully super rare that this sort of failure occurs.
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@paekakboyz said in Grenfell Tower Fire:
@crucial it would be beyond horrible if there was clear culpability for what happened and no prosecutions etc.
holy crap, the more I'm reading, the more of a total disaster this is.
I'd temper my post above somewhat - there are serious, multiple failings in so many places it's not funny. I actually don't want to read or post any more on it, it makes me feel slightly sick.
Safety regulations are written in blood
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Phase One Report here https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/phase-1-report
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Been doing more reading at lunchtime and here is my summary of the summary of findings in Phase 1.For more detail read the Exec Summary in the link above
- Cause of fire was failure of a domestic appliance and foreseeable for planning purposes.
- spread of fire was due to construction materials that did not meet code
- LFB (London Fire Brigade) planning and prep for such an incident was gravely inadequate.
- no training to incident commanders on when to switch tactics from 'stay in place' to 'evacuate'
- no contingency plan for evacuation
- operational risk database (info on building) was out of date and of no use
- incident commanders were not experienced and delayed call to evac by one hour (lives would have likely been saved)
- serious deficiencies in command and control
- control room unprepared, overwhelmed, not provided senior support and made the same errors as a previous incident.
The phase two stuff is to try and find answers as to why these things happened(who did or didn't do what).
I'm actually quite impressed with how meticulous this inquiry is despite my reservations that something that takes this long only opens up avenues for the culpable to duck and dive, memories to become vague, companies to be discontinued, money to be squirreled away etc.
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@crucial I read a bit of the exec summary and was astounded by how many times site management was handed over in those first few hours. Plus how the turning off the gas was due to one guys initiative!
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@paekakboyz said in Grenfell Tower Fire:
@crucial I read a bit of the exec summary and was astounded by how many times site management was handed over in those first few hours. Plus how the turning off the gas was due to one guys initiative!
As @nzzp says, the whole thing makes you feel sick when you read the serious failures at almost every step of the way. Errors are one thing, incompetence, laziness, lying, greed however........
I have been reading a bit of the phase 2 stuff and the tenancy company only engaged a consultant to do a Fire Safety assessment after being forced to. The guy they engaged had hugely embellished his CV to get work and wasn't suited. Despite not picking up on some of the contributing factors to the tragedy (such as the panels and pvc extractor fans in windows that would melt and provide access for the fire to go back into the building at places other than the source) he did pick up on 19 other failures and pass them back in his report which was then kept quiet.
Things like needing individual plans to evacuate the disabled were scoffed at as impractical and too costly with the excuse that the LFB had a 'stay in place' policy anyway.
It is just mind boggling stuff.There is a smoking gun on the flammability of the insulation material. An email telling staff to keep bad results from a test strictly confidential.
The company that made the material for the panels is claiming no responsibility as they didn't provide the panels themselves or have control over use or marketing.
Council leaders are pushing responsibility to workers, workers to the tenant management company and those paid lots because they bear 'responsibility' somehow don't bear responsibility if they can claim that their minions didn't do their jobs properly.
Massive clusterfuck.
