There’s no suggestion that the Grenfell Tower fire was arson.
No, but there’s now 60 out of up to 600 highly-populated matchsticks sitting out in the open.
I see your point.
They have increased security at the moment, though. Intentionally starting a fire at one of those buildings would be very difficult right now.
Additionally, while the cladding definitely seems to be part of the reason the fire spread so quickly, we don’t know if other factors came into play too, like the way it was put on (possibly leaving a gap) or fire breaks being compromised, etc. Those faults may not be repeated in other buildings as well. One of the buildings in Camden that’s being evacuated has had a fire since the refurbishment and it didn’t cause an inferno like this one. That’s one of the reasons a lot of the residents are unwilling to leave.
…Mike G posits this over at the ISF forums (formerly the James Randi forums)
[QUOTE=Mike G at the ISF]
For those who missed it last time I said it, I’ll say this again, in a different way. The original building was solid concrete, making it fireproof by any standard on the planet. You could in theory smear napalm over the outside of the entire building and set it on fire, and still have plenty of time to get all of the occupants out safely. OK?
So, given the above, adding some cladding onto the outside of the building shouldn’t make any difference to the fire safety of the building and its occupants, whatever the flammability of that cladding. And if that is only what they had done, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion, I’m sure. But it wasn’t all they did. They replaced the windows, and put them outside the line of the concrete. That one decision could be the most important of the whole saga.
Even then, that shouldn’t necessarily have caused the fire to engulf the interior of the building, because if the window/ concrete interface had been properly fire-sealed then the building should have remained safe. The drawing I have seen doesn’t show any such fire-stopping. That isn’t to say that it wasn’t there, but the drawing shows Celotex insulation there, not firestopping material, so if it was built as per the drawing then the window board (erroneously called cill) becomes effectively the only fire barrier. Understanding the window surround detail could be the most important technical thing the Public Inquiry reports on, and the hysteria over the flammability of the cladding will come to be seen as a side issue.
[/QUOTE]
I imagine the changes to the window configuration will have been repeated quite commonly elsewhere - if you add cladding to a building, you are increasing the thickness of the walls - if you leave the original window line, you’re essentially recessing all of the existing windows, which will decrease their utility in terms of natural light and view (not to mention that it might look aesthetically weird from the outside).
So I expect that it will be quite common for windows to have been moved out to the surface level of the cladding - and fitting a broader windowsill on the inside. If it could be done safely, the residents would probably even welcome it - as windowsills are useful places to grow houseplants.
Er… just how thick do you think this cladding stuff is? Does anyone know? Would it really make a significant difference in how recessed the windows are?
In the reno, they removed the old leaky metal windows and replaced them with vinyl air tight windows. You know, the type that melt at fire temps, give off poisonous gasses and let fire in?
In a libertatian paradise, you are reponsible to your own safety, but you don’t have to conduct the tests yourself, nor do you have to be an expert on everything. In fact, in a libertarian paradise, the only thing you have to be an expert in is finding the right people and/or companies to employ, to do those things you can’t do for yourself. i.e. you need to be an expert on due dilligence and background checks. Not that that’s any better. 
A centimeter or less, but then there’s how it’s applied - standoff, shaping, etc. Still shouldn’t be a significant challenge.
As I understand it, Grenfell had 70 or 75 mm of insulation, a 50mm air gap, then the cladding layer which was only 5 or 6mm, but in total, that’s 5 inches of extra wall thickness - and the original windows would have been set in a little, so the effect of maintaining the original window line would have been aesthetically weird and undesirable.
Updates today.
There’s been a lot of speculation that the death toll is far higher than publicly acknowledged. The Metropolitan Police put out the following statement today:
(from this press release page http://news.met.police.uk/news/update-six-fatalities-following-the-fire-in-north-kensington-246230?hootPostID=001ad7be6805c6adcbcb704405700556. It’s a continuously updated page, with no copyright restriction as far as I can tell, so I’ll just post the relevant release)
That’s seems to me to be a sensible, and possibly overdue, statement to make. I bolded this badly expressed part:
as it might be confusing to some readers as it was initially to me. For clarity that means 26 calls to the 999 emergency number.
What a grim prospect the recovery and identification process is 
Oh, and the testing of building claddings is now at 120 failed samples out of 120 submitted, across 37 local authorities.
Thanks for update, Baron. That number right there is astounding. I know I’ve read that people are being evacuated from many if not all of the places with that type of cladding.
Presumably they are prioritising testing the most at-risk samples first, but yeah, something stinks really badly here.
That is a heartbreaking sentence
Isn’t it? And they have 999 calls from some of the people in those flats. I don’t envy the people having to listen to them.
I’m glad this is still being taken so seriously. It’s happened before that disasters involving mainly poor people (Hillsborough, Aberfan) did not result in serious attempts by the authorities to bring anyone to account, but so far it’s not looking like that here.
(There are charges relating to Hillsborough now but that’s nearly three decades after the events).
David Lammey said they could get an accurate number of deaths by looking at DWP records (tax, benefits, inc. Child) plus school absentees, plus triangulation of mobile phone calls. Other stuff too, I assume.
Apparently they used this technique re the 7/7 attacks and we’re a decade further down the Big Data road now.
Going on the statement above I think they are using all those methods but the problem is that not everyone in the flats might be recorded like that. Illegal immigrants and subletters (both of which are more likely because of the location) probably won’t be on any official records (hence the cop saying they’re not interested in pursuing charges on those grounds) and visitors who just came round - like for Iftahar - won’t be either. Quite a few of the known dead didn’t live in the building.
The cops’ focus on this may partly because of evidence from neighbours; I knew a flat at my previous estate was being illegally sublet but I didn’t know the full names of the subletters. Neighbours at Grenfell might have passed on similar information. And then there might be no contact with any survivors from flat 118 and the cops can’t tell if it’s because the tenants are hiding, afraid of being deported, or because their bodies are in there too burnt to be identified.
It doesn’t sound to me like the cops are missing any tricks when it comes to locating people, it’s just that there’s a perfect storm of circumstances making it much more difficult than you’d expect.
From the press conference quoted by Baron Greenback:
It appears, based on information my mother has received from the London police, that my aunt and my cousin are very likely among those missing presumed dead.
I noted, back in post #180, that my mother had information about them living in Grenfell Tower earlier in the year. The police detective who has been helping my mother has managed to find a doctor and a lawyer who, separately, had both visited the two women in the apartment. The lawyer had apparently been there as recently as about a week before the fire.
Based on information the police detective got from the doctor and lawyer, it seems very unlikely that my aunt and cousin would have been anywhere BUT the apartment on the night of the fire. The detective said that it is reasonable to assume they both died. Because they were living as semi-recluses, estranged from the family, the police might not even have known who to look for if my mother hadn’t called them. They haven’t yet been announced in any public lists of missing or dead, because there’s just no real confirmation yet.
For what it’s worth, my mother said that the police detective who has been handling her case has been absolutely fantastic. Apparently she has called my mum four or five times over the past week, giving her updates on the situation. I believe that she’s also going to put mum in contact with the lawyer who was visiting them.
[Please, no expressions of sympathy. I don’t want to hijack the overall discussion. As i said earlier in the thread, i hadn’t seen either of them for the better part of 30 years, when i was a teenager, so this is not a personal loss for me, in that sense. I just thought people might be interested to know what’s happening.]
Will you accept a thank you, mhendo? Your posts may be the closest most of us come to knowing someone personally affected by this tragedy, and I think it’s a good reminder that these were real people, not just anonymous (and therefore unknowable) names in the sea of humanity.
That’s certainly a popular media theme; or is it lazy journalism. Someone - from a named, identifiable bank account - is paying the rent to the council for every single flat. Even if it’s a sublet, that is ultimately traceable as money moves between accounts.
Even if the deal is cash, money is moving and the address associated with the accounts tells the truth.
Sure,that doesn’t allow for visitors, but most visitors will be missing from somewhere - work, school, home, bill-paying, etc. You can see why it might take until next year, though.