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posted by n1 on Wednesday June 14 2017, @10:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the questionable-structure-updating-plus-bad-instructions-to-residents dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:18AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:18AM (#525762)

    No one said anything about having the government run the place. If you don't understand the incredibly obvious point about regulation, and the need for regulation to prevent these problems, well then you're a bigger idiot than I thought. Oh! I'm sure you always wanted a fancy medieval lord sounding name

    Kshallow the Deficient

    It just kinda rolls off the tongue.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:42AM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:42AM (#525781) Journal

    No one said anything about having the government run the place.

    The "landlord" was the not-for-profit Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation [wikipedia.org] created to manage a huge amount of properties, apparently all "council housing" of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the local government. So the government ran the place.

    And I'll note that a common effect of government-run institutions is that they're allowed to evade or ignore a lot of regulation that private entities can't. My bet is that we'll find out that there's a lot of regulations prohibiting the apparently very flammable cladding that was on the Grenfell Tower and the shoddy evacuation infrastructure and plans, but which weren't applied.

    In other words, there's no point to calling for additional regulation, when existing regulation was sufficient but not enforced. Forcing the building to meet existing regulation would probably have solved the problem (or shut down the building), but creating additional regulation which is ignored as much as present regulation would be an exercise in futility.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @06:41AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @06:41AM (#525888)

      The "landlord" was the not-for-profit Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation [wikipedia.org] created to manage a huge amount of properties, apparently all "council housing" of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the local government. So the government ran the place.

      No, it isn't that simple, don't be fooled by the 'not-for-profit' bit.

      In the UK, the control of most of the 'council housing' was given to various forms of 'housing associations', 'management organisations' etc as a stealth means of 'privatising' said publicly owned council housing stock by 'the back door', in a manner overtly transparent on the surface, but involving many rather 'greasy' deals going on in the background. There is no 'Government control' of this, it's pure cronyism and corruption running them.

      In my area, the largest of the housing associations had, at its inception, at least one property speculator 'on board', no history of, or interest in providing 'social housing' at all, and interestingly over the past couple of years 'fabrically sound' extant social housing on several sites has been demolished and cleared despite repeated bleatings of 'we need more social housing..' locally, coincidentally, these sites have rather scenic views over the local river..interestingly, the new housing they're proposing to replace these demolished ones will be on old industrial land elsewhere, and, knowing something about the history of said site I await the result of soil samples etc with anticipated amusement (on the metals side, there will be large amounts of lead, mercury and chromium for starters, with a possibility of a side helping of radium, and I won't even begin to mention asbestos..somehow I rather suspect that their results will be somewhat different).

      The sites with the scenic views?, I foresee they'll soon be sold to a 'private developer/speculator' at a bargain price (with no extant planning permission, it's land value alone, but lack of planning permission is not a problem locally, as we do indeed have finest planning department that money can buy, famously more overtly concerned with minutiae such as the colour of peoples houses than the destruction of local 'heritage' buildings), of course, the money from this purchase will be used to offset the costs of the new builds, no profits will be made for the housing association...all legal and above-board...all 'on the level', if you will...

      In summary, no, there's no government control..a lot of the tenants wish there was.
         

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:56AM (1 child)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:56AM (#525910) Journal
        Sounds like a typical government exercise in the absence of accountability: cronyism and corruption; ignoring/bypassing existing regulation; private profit, public loss; and the best connected get the best deals. Maybe this disaster will be big enough to break up this mess.
        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 16 2017, @05:37AM

          by kaszz (4211) on Friday June 16 2017, @05:37AM (#526319) Journal

          Pitchforks breaks up the mess, no way around that..