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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 isostatic on Thursday June 15 2017, @10:50AM (9 children)

    by isostatic (365) on Thursday June 15 2017, @10:50AM (#525941) Journal

    Indeed. I'm shocked that that much of the building was able to catch on fire. Around here there are rules about having firebreaks in highrise buildings. I used to work security in one years ago and they had a firebreak every few floors. So, the standard fire drill involved exiting via the fire-doors and going down several floors to a floor that was on the other side of the firebreak. It was more or less completely impossible to have more than a few floors on fire at any given time because they'd have to burn through a firebreak in order to do so.

    It looks on first glance to unexpert eyes that the fire spread via some cladding that had been recently installed on the outside of the building, which seem to have been made of tindling for some reason. Firebreaks don't help in that case, neither really do sprinklers. If you look at the flame damage on the shell you can see which side the fire started on.

    This cladding (Reynobond plastic core) has been linked to recent fires in high-rise buildings in France, the UAE and Australia.

    But you're right, building regulations in the 70s when this block was built were terrible - unlike America (NY especially), the UK hadn't had a century of experience with this density of housing when they were built, and nobody wants to replace them. Theres a lot of calls to remove more recent regulations from certain elements though.

    This fire is a complete clusterfuck though. It was predicted by residents that it would happen, and now it has, and dozens are dead.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 15 2017, @11:13AM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 15 2017, @11:13AM (#525945) Journal

    It looks on first glance to unexpert eyes that the fire spread via some cladding that had been recently installed on the outside of the building, which seem to have been made of tindling for some reason. Firebreaks don't help in that case

    You can have firebreaks in the cladding as well. It would have inhibited both the direct spread of fire and the alleged "chimney" effect that is thought to have caused a very rapid spread of fire around the cladding of the building.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @02:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @02:39PM (#526032)

      It's not just that you can have those firebreaks in the cladding, it's that the code at the time that the work was done required the firebreaks and they didn't install them.

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:47PM (6 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:47PM (#525975) Journal

    What's "tindling" ?

    The cladding material of mostly Polyethylene that melts completely at 135 °C and is likely to create acutely toxic vapors. Then combined with Aluminum that is a component of Termite where it reacts at high temperature which the chimney effect is likely to accomplish. It's just a recipe for disaster.

    I'll suppose all cladding for high rises in America is made of non-flammable material?
    Ie, even if you dose it in petrol and fire it. It won't spread?

    • (Score: 2) by jcross on Thursday June 15 2017, @01:42PM (1 child)

      by jcross (4009) on Thursday June 15 2017, @01:42PM (#526002)

      Portmanteau of tinder and kindling?

      • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday June 15 2017, @02:59PM

        by isostatic (365) on Thursday June 15 2017, @02:59PM (#526040) Journal

        Indeed, changing thought process halfway through a word, quite common for me I'm afraid, when typing on aphone and thus not looking at what I'm writing.

    • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday June 15 2017, @02:17PM (2 children)

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 15 2017, @02:17PM (#526014)
      Aluminum is a component of termites?

      The US and the UK both have strict laws on high-rise cladding but it needs to be properly installed, and in some cases if the temps exceed a certain threshold, well, anything can burn in the right conditions. It sounds like the fire got out of control on one or two level and ignited the cladding, causing it to run vertically.

      Still this is something you would expect to see in a place like China or Dubai (where several cladding fires have occurred in recent years), not a western country with more strictly enforced building codes.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @11:48PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @11:48PM (#526257)

        ISTM that this is the sort of thing that should have been tested in a laboratory. [ce-marking.org]

        Light a propane torch, point it at the material to be certified, start a stopwatch, and see if the stuff will burst into flames in under n minutes.
        ...where n is an extremely large number.

        One also wonders if Brexit will make this situation WORSE.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Friday June 16 2017, @05:23PM

          by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 16 2017, @05:23PM (#526517)
          Actually reading up on it today I was wrong about the UK regulations. They do not require fire-rated cladding which is unbelievable. The cladding used on the building here is banned in the US on structures over 40 feet. It's just polyethylene foam between two aluminum sheets and is know to burn easily. Considering how health and safety regulation happy the UK is, I'm really surprised by this.
    • (Score: 1) by oldmac31310 on Thursday June 15 2017, @09:19PM

      by oldmac31310 (4521) on Thursday June 15 2017, @09:19PM (#526210)

      I'd take termites over a raging fire any day.