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Wikipedia has aggregated reports on an apartment building fire in London.
The Grenfell Tower fire started shortly before 1 a.m. local time on 14 June 2017, at the 24-storey Grenfell Tower, a block of flats on the Lancaster West Estate in North Kensington, western London, England.
At least 200 firefighters and 45 fire engines were involved in efforts to control the fire. Firefighters were trying to control pockets of fire on the higher floors after most of the rest of the building had been gutted.
[...] At 17:04 BST on 14 June twelve had been confirmed dead, with more fatalities expected to be reported; police spoke of "around 200 residents and a lot unaccounted for". Sixty-five were rescued by firefighters. Seventy-four people were confirmed to be in five hospitals across London, 20 of whom were in a critical condition. Ongoing fires on the upper floors and fears of structural collapse hindered the search and recovery effort.
[...] [The building] contained 120 one- and two-bedroom flats and was renovated in 2015-16.
[...] As part of the project, in 2015-2016, the concrete structure received new windows and new aluminium composite cladding (Arconic Reynobond and Reynolux material) with thermal insulation.
[...] Experts said the cladding essentially worked like a chimney in spreading the fire. The cladding could be seen burning and melting, causing additional speculation that it was not made of fire resistant material. One resident said, "The whole one side of the building was on fire. The cladding went up like a matchstick."
[...] Multiple major tower building fires have involved the same external cladding, including the 2009 Lakanal House fire in Camberwell, London, the 2009 Beijing Television Cultural Center fire and the 2015 fire at The Marina Torch, Dubai. Sam Webb, the architect who investigated the Lakanal fire and who sits on the All Party Parliamentary Fire Safety & Rescue Group, said "This tragedy was entirely predictable, sadly."
[...] In 2013, [residents' organisation Grenfell Action Group] published a 2012 fire risk assessment done by a TMO Health and Safety Officer that revealed significant safety violations. Firefighting equipment at the tower had not been checked for up to four years; fire extinguishers on site were expired, and some had "condemned" written on them in large black letters because they were so old.
[...] In a July 2014 Grenfell Tower regeneration newsletter, the KCTMO [Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation] instructed residents to stay in the flat in case of a fire:
Emergency fire arrangements
Our longstanding 'stay put' policy stays in force until you are told otherwise. This means that (unless there is a fire in your flat or in the hallway outside your flat) you should stay inside your flat. This is because Grenfell was designed according to rigorous fire safety standards. Also, the new front doors for each flat can withstand a fire for up to 30 minutes, which gives plenty of time for the fire brigade to arrive.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 14 2017, @11:27PM (10 children)
Staying put may work if the fire brigade is quick and the property is maintained competently and the fire services are also maintained competently, and well funded. If there's any doubt in these matters that policy is a death trap.
Seems it may pay to get climbing equipment and a gas mask (plain carbon filter?) with eye protection. As an insurance policy. The fire alarm were also out of order so maybe some remote guerrilla installed smoke alarms with a radio transmitter would be beneficial to get a early warning?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @11:45PM (5 children)
Also a heat proof, smoke proof room with 6 hours worth of oxygen tanks. And guns to protect yourself from neighbors. Might as well keep gold coins in case the currency crashes. Fuck it, put it underground with 20k cans of tuna and salted beef and camo gear.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 14 2017, @11:52PM (4 children)
Being able to climb out on the non-smoked outdoors through the balcony does improve the odds to survive for a very small cost. The same goes for a face mask with breathing filter to enable running through smoke filled areas like the exit stairs etc.
Taking responsibility for ones own safety when the management is proven to be faulty usually pays off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @03:47AM
Good luck doing that from 5 or more stories up. At a certain point, you just have to be able to trust that people are going to be regulated in a way that prevents things like this from happening. It's just not practical to keep all the buildings to a few floors.
Personally, I'm on the second floor of the building I'm on and literally right next to a walkway, so, I don't have to worry about that. Worst case scenario would be if I were on the other side of the building and had to jump. Probably would break a leg or sprain something in the worst case scenario.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @03:57AM (1 child)
See new thread which starts with a note on sprinklers -- the main part of the fire was foam insulation retro-fitted to the *outside* of the tower.
Stepping out on a balcony (if there were any) would be instant incineration when the foam is burning. Foam might be up to a foot thick in some cases, not sure about this particular tower.
Firewalls on the inside would make little difference when the fire is on the outside
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 16 2017, @05:28AM
Thus the other tool of escape, a gas mask. Ie having basic tools to dodge different escape obstacles is essential.
Oh, and yeah it's all about personal planning when things don't go as expected and people not doing their job.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 15 2017, @02:10PM
The mask? Uhhhmmmmm - maybe. If you're willing to invest in an expensive flame retardant, non-plastic, non-rubber mask with an attached OBA - or Oxygen Breathing Apparatus. With a Navy issue OBA, I have helped to fight fires aboard ship. No major fires, thank God, but I've walked into those smoke filled spaces, along with the rest of a fire fighting team, and extinguished the small fires we had.
Let me tell you about the Navy's experiment with a cheaper mask. Some bright boys had the idea in the late 70's that the Navy didn't need to purchase high dollar breathing apparatus just for some personnel to evacuate non-essential spaces. They came up with a clear plastic head covering, with a mouthpiece that supplied air for about fifteen minutes. I never saw one, myself. I only heard of the disaster after some had been issued to a couple of ships. Panic may have played a role, or maybe overconfidence in those masks. But, some people found themselves actually facing fires, and attempted to pass through the flames. The masks rapidly melted into those men's faces. The masks were quickly recalled, and we never heard another word about them. Better to face the fire naked, than with a plastic mask that will melt at relatively low temperatures.
Synthetic fabric uniforms were rather popular among the ranks - especially doubleknit polyester. Those synthetics were ultimately outlawed for shipboard use for the same reason. If/when you face a fire, the fabric will melt right into you, and you'll be wearing the results for the rest of your life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_Breathing_Apparatus [wikipedia.org]
Note that we never had to use a candle to get ours going. The moisture from our exhaled breath started the process going - if it were to slow to start cooking, a few drops of water dropped down the exhalation port would get things moving along.
Following the link from the OBA, to SCBA - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-contained_breathing_apparatus [wikipedia.org]
Basically, it's the same as common scuba gear, but the facemask and fittings will be fire and heat resistant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hqEIMK14_I [youtube.com]
Engineered for comfort? LMAO - ain't NOBODY going to be comfortable in fire gear!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @03:39AM (3 children)
Even if that's not the case. If one asshole on a smoke filled floor leaves the door to the stairwell open that makes it impossible for anybody above that floor to exit the room. Bottom line here is that your best bet is to just remain in place if there's any reason to believe that the fire is on your floor.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:32AM (2 children)
You've probably nailed why there were so many deaths.
The building had 24 floors, and only one staircase. It is reported that the fire started on the 4th floor.
The 'stay put' policy is the only sensible policy that could be offered, as trying to evacuate residents down the single staircase while firefighters are going up just won't work. What is meant to happen is that the floor on which the fire breaks out is evacuated; everybody else stays put, and the structure
isshould be able to safely contain the fire on a single level while it is extinguished by the firefighters, who gain unrestricted access via the stairwell. The fire alarms are set up so that they sound on a floor-by-floor basis - if the alarm is not sounding on your floor, you are meant to stay put - you don't sound the evacuate alarm in the whole building*, as the stairwell can't support that level of simultaneous traffic. If the fire spreads, the thinking is that it will spread slowly enough to allow controlled evacuation.Of course, what is meant to happen didn't happen here, as the fire was not contained on the 4th floor, and looks to have quickly spread via external cladding to the whole height of the building. If the single stairwell got filled with smoke** (the fire started relatively low down in the building), people above had no means of escape. So some people jumped, and others threw children out of windows in desperation.
I would not be surprised if the firefighters had no means of force-ventilating the stairwell (positive pressure to keep smoke out, and expel any smoke that got in), especially if the integrity of the single stairwell had been breached by the fire.
The UK has a great deal less experience of building and operating tall residential buildings than many other countries, and as a consequence probably has less stringent and less stringently observed fire-codes in this area. Many of the buildings are old as there is no economic way to demolish residential blocks and rebuild incorporating hard-earned knowledge from elsewhere.
*You might get a 'be prepared' alarm. The fire alarm systems I have experienced have multiple zones, and what usually happens is the zone which the fire is in gets an 'evacuate' alarm; and neighbouring zones get a 'be prepared to evacuate but don't go yet' alarm. Some zones away from the fire may not sound. In this building, I expect each floor was a zone. Unfortunately some people interpret this as 'the fire alarm didn't work because it didn't go off near me'.
**People in the UK are not used to tall residential blocks. The majority of the population do not appreciate how important it is to keep stairways clear, firedoors properly maintained, and procedures regarding what to do in case of fire understood and practised.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 15 2017, @10:17AM (1 child)
Grenfell Tower was built in 1974. They had plenty of time to learn by then, and plenty of time to fix what was wrong since. It's not that hard to put in more stairwells or strengthen the building so it can support a sprinkler system. Or tear down the building and put up something better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @03:12PM
Not hard, but unfortunately not cheap either...