Fire codes are not the problem. Concrete tower blocks contain fire in an individual apartment extremely well, as has been repeatedly demonstrated over the past 50 years or so. It’s only after the architectural geniuses decided to wrap them in flammable plastic panels that bypass the firebreaks and compartmentalisation built into the structure that we see horror like this.
Sprinklers would have done precisely fuck all in this case. A second stairwell would have done about as much. The building was safe until they covered it with what are effectively firelighters. As I type, I can see several tower blocks out of my window covered with exactly the same materials. They need to come off.
The real problem is that many of the shitty concrete towers of the 50s should just have been torn down and replaced with something modern, which would have been better all round.
Before the makeover, these buildings were often barely habitable - water running down the walls, fungus growing out of the plaster, wind whistling through the gaps in the window frames, plus all of the knock-on effects that arise when people live in a horrible place. If you hate where you live, why not piss in the stairwell? How could it be worse?
Cladding them was a least-cost measure that provided these shitty, leaky buildings an extra layer of weather resistance, and made them objectively (and subjectively) better places to live in, as long as they don’t catch fire and kill you.
None of that is an excuse of course. it’s perfectly possible to makeover an old building using materials that would actually improve the fire safety, or do the better thing, which is: bite the bullet - tear down, rebuild better.
I guess that must be based on things like records of who was registered living there (not sure that will include minors). Frankly, that still seems like a low number given the size of the building and the way it went up.
Firefighters only got as far as the 12th floor (halfway up). There were 6 flats per floor - so If there was only one person per residence in the remaining 12 floors, that would be 72 people.
I hope the death toll turns out to be lower than everyone thought, but I fear it will be higher.
It’s going to be difficult to put any real estimate on the numbers. People will have had lodgers (possibly to help with bedroom tax), friends visiting, possibly using their flats as air b&bs given the location, and the private flats may well have crammed in many times the number of people supposed to be living there. Although it’s likely that everyone who survived has reported in, that doesn’t help much. I mean they won’t just be able to say “right, here’s the number of tenants, and here’s the number of survivors, so what’s left must be the fatalities.”
And given the length of time the fire went on and the young age of some of the missing it might well be hard to even find their bodies.
A Sun journalist allegedly impersonated a relative to try and gain access to a survivor at a hospital. The Sun deny it, which is good evidence that it happened.
Disagree.
Yes, the exterior would’ve still gone up like a roman candle… if the sprinklers didn’t suppress the oringal fire in the first place. Also; sprinklers would’ve limited/uinhibited the fires’s abiilty to penetrate back into teh building at higher levels. Additional benefit, sprinklers may suppress smoke, giving people more time to escape.
In general:
[ul]
[li]Sprinkler presence is associated with a 29% reduction in injuries per 100 reported home fires[/li][li]Sprinkler presence is associated with a 53% reduction in medical cost of injuries per 100 reported home fires; and[/li][li]Sprinkler presence is associated with a 41% reduction in total cost of injuries per 100 reported home fires.[/li][/ul]
(NFPA)
I think it fair to suggest that a sprinkler system wouldn’t have hurt, and may very well have helped, possibly even preventing the catastrophy entirely.
I understand that in this case, the landlord is the borough but are you saying that in UK construction the owner inspects or the local borough inspects?
I find that hard to believe. So a building like The Shard (for example) had no governmental or otherwise authoritative inspections? The owner says “yeah that’ll do” and signs off on it?
So we have chartered engineers, surveyors and architects, but some bloke with a clipboard has the last say?
I’m still getting angrier by the day. The way Tories relentlessly ‘cut red tape’ in their self-interest as landlords … I just can’t bear it.
If there is a march tonight to the town hall I can’t go along, but I plan to go over very early on Sunday morning. I’m very aware of ‘recreational mourning’. I’d like to be gone by the time most people are waking.
The owners here weren’t precisely the council - it was a Tenant Management Organisation. Technically that’s supposed to be mainly actual tenants but in practice the tenants on the board very ignored. It’s just a form of buck passing by the council.
Local councils do have it hard at the moment. The Tories have them extra responsibilities (“to increase transparency and local power”) at the same time as slashing their budgets by 40%. Lots of other cuts (like the bedroom tax, change in council tax reduction for low earners, reductions in social care money for disabled people) have meant desperate people turning to the council for help. Oh, and the local population is increasing.
Plus, remember those over 1000 long-term empty properties I mentioned? They don’t pay council tax (a local property tax intended to pay for things like bin collection, street lighting, etc) And the properties that are second homes pay less council tax too. They still expect their streets to be lit and rubbish-free to keep their investment healthy though.
So if it turns out, as accused, that part of the cause of the fire was saving just £5,000 on the cladding, it won’t just be because the council are corrupt but because they’re broke.
