SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
From ABC News:
The list of high-rise apartment towers in Britain that have failed fire safety tests grew to 60, officials said Sunday, revealing the mounting challenge the government faces in the aftermath of London's Grenfell Tower fire tragedy.
All of the buildings for which external cladding samples were so far submitted failed combustibility tests, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said. As of late Sunday, that includes 60 towers from 25 different areas of the country — double the figure given a day earlier.
More from the BBC:
The Local Government Association said some councils have introduced 24-hour warden patrols to mitigate the risk before cladding is removed.
It said in a statement: "Where cladding fails the test, this will not necessarily mean moving residents from tower blocks.
"In Camden, the decision to evacuate was based on fire inspectors' concerns about a combination of other fire hazards together with the cladding."
So it looks like, far from an isolated thing, basically everyone had the bright idea to do this.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Wootery on Monday June 26 2017, @08:23AM (12 children)
So the whole country is full of unsafe tower blocks. There's a full blown epidemic of unsafe construction... and the fire inspectors didn't notice a single one before the Grenfell disaster?
What on Earth do they spend their time doing?
(Score: 5, Informative) by tonyPick on Monday June 26 2017, @09:06AM (8 children)
Getting fired in the name of cutting spending for quite a few years now, apparently:
From 2015: https://www.fbu.org.uk/policy/2015/future-fire-and-rescue-service [fbu.org.uk]
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tower-block-fire-safety-checks-10641046 [mirror.co.uk]
This being a deliberate policy for the past few years...
http://metro.co.uk/2017/06/16/government-ministers-congratulated-themselves-for-cutting-fire-regulations-6713967/ [metro.co.uk]
(For non UK readers - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_safety_inspector [wikipedia.org]
"Most fire safety inspectors are uniformed officers and are professional firefighters who have transferred from front line service into the Fire Safety Department of the Fire & Rescue Service in which they work"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @09:49AM (1 child)
It's the same issue with all preventive safety-related jobs: If they do their task well, nothing serious happens, and therefore the bean counters think they don't need those people because nothing serious happens anyway.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Monday June 26 2017, @05:57PM
If they do their task well, nothing serious happens, and therefore the bean counters think they don't need those people because nothing serious happens anyway.
Not just bean counter... It's also the voters.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Monday June 26 2017, @11:19AM (1 child)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @09:08PM
Yes because their landlords will be free to make more profits at their expense. And the great capitalist people of Rochdale love that.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by purple_cobra on Monday June 26 2017, @06:03PM (2 children)
Friend of a friend was doing some volunteer work for the local fire brigade, mainly checking/fitting smoke alarms for the elderly, so he wasn't even being paid apart from the odd hot drink. The smoke alarms were free to the elderly, as was the (volunteer) labour for fitting them, but it all fell by the wayside in the last round of funding cuts. If you hear of any cooked pensioners in the Greater Manchester area, that'll be at least in part due to your friendly Conservative government and their colossal hard-on for privatising the shit out of everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @09:12PM (1 child)
Smoke detectors cost $5 each. Multiply that by 1000s of pensioners and you easily have $5000. Everyone needs to tighten their belts so the Brits can afford a new $6B aircraft carrier and Trident nuclear missiles that will SAVE BRITISH LIVES. Unlike boring smoke detectors.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Friday June 30 2017, @12:43PM
Oh, absolutely. Smoke detectors aren't sexy unless you have some very specific definition of the word. The comical part is that a lot of pensioners - those probably more likely to be found well done rather than medium rare due to lack of a smoke alarm - generally vote for the party that is cutting funding for exactly that service.
I'm sure our current major threats - terrorists who are resident in the UK, generally based in working class areas and are radicalised by what they read - are quite brown-trousered at the thought of a Trident missile landing on their terraced house in some backwater town. While the Conservative Party would love to flatten working-class areas in the name of gerrymandering, I suspect that yelling "but terrorists!" wouldn't act as a silver bullet in this instance. ;)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @06:53PM
> downward trend in fires and fire deaths justifies making further cuts to the fire and rescue service.
I wished they'd apply the same to terrorism. "Considering that this year far fewer people died due to terrorism than fires, anti-terror laws and spending should be drastically reduced".
Makes sense, but who (especially among UK politicians) would give up on such an opportunity to "do" something...
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Monday June 26 2017, @12:46PM (1 child)
Its very unclear whether these tests are ones the buildings should have passed when they were refurbished, or whether they are new standards that with "20:20 hindsight" should have been applied...
Its equally unclear whether the cladding was "as specified" when the plans were approved, or if someone has unofficially substituted a cheaper product or fitting method.
...and its likely to remain unclear, because it is quite likely to end up as evidence in judicial inquiries, civil cases and criminal prosecutions, so the people who actually know won't be casually chatting about it to the press.
Probably soft-targetting individuals who just want to build a new domestic garage for their house and don't have lobbying powers on the local council. I remember my parents having a new pre-fab garage built in the 70s and the planning dept. insisting that half the front lawn be covered in concrete so that vehicles could turn and, hilariously, having to replace some external and internal panelling in the garage with asbestos... I assume that, by now, some later owner has had to pay an exorbitant sum to have the men in bunny suits come and take the evil death panels (tm) away...
Waiting for the winter, when all these de-cladded tower blocks get so cold and damp that all the residents start buying cheap electric fires from FleaBay...
(Score: 3, Informative) by choose another one on Monday June 26 2017, @04:06PM
Bingo.
There is also the interesting issue of whether the various panels actually pass the fire tests that they are certified to have passed, and apparently some do not. This brings the system of independent testing labs and supply chain (possible fake products) under scrutiny as well - fire retardant products could be specified by all concerned and the stuff fitted could be marked as meeting spec, but actually doesn't when tested. Not in the Grenfell case, where it appears someone knew they were fitting flammable, but in other towers being tested.
But the big issue IMO is the building regs. New buildings would have to have sprinklers, end of story. The cladding would still go up like a match but the interior of the building would be saved as would the people (see the several fires in Dubai with this type of cladding).
These old buildings were designed to contain fires in one flat/apartment, and that design works (there have been real fires, contained), but with the cladding added to the outside that design is broken. Fire will be able to travel from flat to flat even if the cladding and the insulation are fire resistant because of the air gap, which in reality could be filled with whatever crap the builders dropped when it was fitted, which could well be flammable. With a refurbishment that totally breaks original design assumptions in event of fire, the whole building should be brought up to current fire standards which means (at least) sprinklers, changing the fire protocols and advice, and (at worst) far fewer deaths and quite possibly everyone gets out.
When I was looking at converting my loft, I was told by council building control that I would need to retrofit sprinklers and self closing fire doors to the entire house, because it would then be more than 4 floors (which made it not worth doing). Where were those building control people when a council is making major changes to a tower block? This is the issue: the council commissions the work, pays the bill, grants the permission for the work, inspects the work and certifies it meets the regulations. Conflicts of interest abound, and where they do corruption will not be far behind.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kazzie on Monday June 26 2017, @02:45PM
They'd noticed in Scotland. After a tower block fire in Scotland in 1999, Scottish building regulations were changed [bbc.co.uk] by 2005, stating:
The tower blocks tested (and failed) so far are all from England, which has its own building regulations. Scottish and Welsh authorities have said they believe all the cladding fitted to tower blocks in their areas is safe (but are cheking in case).