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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: 2) by compro01 on Monday June 26 2017, @11:03PM (1 child)
The foam is part of the cladding. Both the foam and the aluminum are a single integrated product called Reynobond PE [arconic.com]. It's basically a sandwich of foam and aluminum you can slap on the outside of the building to improve insulation and make it look shiny.
The problem is what was used is not an appropriate product. Polyethylene is highly flammable. They should have been using the slightly-more-expensive FR version, which is basically the same thing, but with non-flammable insulation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @11:18PM
The cladding is a sandwich of aluminum-plastic-aluminum which has a few mm total thickness. Between this outside cladding and the old exterior concrete, there are 150 mm of insulating foam. This foam is not part of the cladding, but was a large contributor to the fire. See discussion here [telegraph.co.uk] and drawing here [nytimes.com].