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UK: All Building Cladding Samples Tested Failed Fire Safety!

posted by martyb on Monday June 26 2017, @07:52AM   
from the Going-With-The-Crowd dept.

BK writes:

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.

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Original Submission

• Re:firestops? (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 27 2017, @01:23AM

  by khallow (3766) on Tuesday June 27 2017, @01:23AM (#531693) Journal

  The problem is that none of the above would be questioned by any "fire safety people". If the architect designed and specified correctly, they wouldn't necessarily notice. It's a complex, certified and professional job just to know how to understand the regulations and it would be the architect's job to make sure it was compliant. If the material used was different to design, they wouldn't necessarily notice. Hell, you can't check every panel as it goes in. If it all went smoothly, but wasn't fitted properly (e.g. gaps left in some places), nobody would have any idea. Buildings inspectors might only visit once, or twice, for the building of a complete house. For a block of flats, probably more, but would you think proportionally more (e.g. hundreds of times?). No.

  Unless, of course, the "fire safety people" actually looked for these problems. Sorry, it's not that hard to find things like widespread use of flammable panels, absence of firebreaks in the cladding, insufficient escape routes, and several of the other problems present in the Grenfell building. I think there's a simple explanation for why the building didn't get properly inspected. I bet we'll find the inspectors were employed by the same government that owned the building.

  Parent