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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: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @03:34AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @03:34AM (#525850)

    It's not weird, that's standard procedure in highrise buildings. If you can feel the door knob and it's cold, you can crack the door and if there's no smoke you can make your way to an exit. Otherwise, the safest thing to do is to shelter in place and put a blanket or similar out the window to let emergency crews know that there's somebody alive in that unit.

    Fire doors are supposed to be able to resist burning for long enough for fire crews to get to your unit and rescue you.

    People can be overwhelmed by smoke within seconds of inhaling. The smoke can easily be hot enough to scold the lungs and death is often quick.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 15 2017, @11:16AM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 15 2017, @11:16AM (#525949) Journal

    If you can feel the door knob and it's cold

    Don't feel the door knob. Metal conducts heat a lot better than the rest of the door. You could suffer burns from gripping a hot door knob. Feeling the door panel is safer.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @02:25PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @02:25PM (#526021)

      That's why you feel the door knob. You're going to feel that it's hot before you touch it if it's so hot that you're going to burn yourself. Heat travels by convection and conduction, so you should know that the knob is hot enough to scald even before you've actually touched it.

      Touching the panel is dumb as there's a gap in time between when it's no longer safe to be in the hallway and when it's hot enough to register as hot.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 15 2017, @11:04PM (2 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 15 2017, @11:04PM (#526242) Journal

        Touching the panel is dumb as there's a gap in time between when it's no longer safe to be in the hallway and when it's hot enough to register as hot.

        I disagree as doors aren't that good at insulating from extreme heat. The door will feel warm before it gets lethal on the other side. But the real problem here is that you're asking people to undertake complex instructions in the midst of an emergency. I think there will be a fair number of people who when told to "feel the door knob" are going to grip it like it's the only thing keeping them alive. Ouch.

        At least, when they're feeling the side of the door, they don't have their hands near the doorknob.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @05:22PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @05:22PM (#526515)

          You're an idiot then. Fires spread quickly and if you assume the door will be hot if there's a fire, you're opening yourself to all sorts of problems. If you don't feel heat coming off the handle it's safe to touch.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 16 2017, @07:05PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 16 2017, @07:05PM (#526574) Journal
            Look, I don't buy it. I've been trained the way I described for hotel fires, which would be very close to the sort of fire discussed here. And doors just aren't that good insulators. I guess we'll just have to agree that each other is an idiot. And you still haven't gotten around to explaining how your technique deals with the people who can't grasp complicated instructions in a time of emergency, but they can grab burning hot doorknobs.