To just leave, despite what emergency services say!

[beckysamantha91]

Long time lurker, first time poster, however - I'm watching a documentary on Grenfell, everyone who got told to stay to basically died and everyone who ignored it and left survived. It was exactly the same for the 2nd tower in 9/11 - they were all told to stay and those who did ended up dying.

Is it just me who thinks if I am ever in a dangerous situation and told to stay, I'm better off taking my family and running?

I also understand that the emergency service s are doing the best they can, but I still think in those situations where communication (and knowledge) is limited but critical, you're better off taking your chances?

Having worked for both authorities involved in Grenfell and Lakanal fires, I now know to get out. Working in the building industry I understand the compartment theory of fire and I’m also super compliant with any type of authority, but now I know the fire brigade don’t always have the most up to date advice so nowadays I’d get out.

“What makes you think police are better informed/educated than fire fighters?“

Because “instinct” is always better than “expertise”.

This is a tricky one for me. I have a bit of an anxiety about being trapped in a burning building, and always make sure I know where the nearest fire exits are in hotels, theatres etc (always make sure I know where 2 are, in case one is impassable).

However, I also have an absolute terror of being crushed in a panicking crowd and would be a hazard to everyone if that happened.

I've long thought that high-rise buildings should be required to have 2 staircases, at opposite ends of the building. That would halve the chance of them getting blocked in the event of an emergency requiring evacuation.

I have a friend who had a stay put policy (incidentally all stay put policies have been reviewed since Grenfell, in social housing/ council owned housing at least) he lives in a 4 story low rise. His stay put advice is to close all doors and evacuate to his balcony, and the fire brigade are then to bring platforms and start rescuing immediately from the balconies (this is important- they don’t plan to enter the building or check any other exits until they have cleared the balconies)

In his case (he also has an exterior stairwell) I’ve always said, if the alarm was sounding and you opened the door and couldn’t see any immediate fire, of course you’d make a run for the stair well. There is even only 5/6 flats on each level, there wouldn’t be that many people.

But do people appreciate somewhere like grenfell? I’ve been there (pre refurb) and it look minutes, over 5, to take the lift to the top floor. Imagine how quick, healthy and lucky you would have to be to escape via the staircases from near the top. The doors opened into small communal areas. There were 120 flats. It’s hard to imagine unless you’ve been there or one of the similar buildings.

One of the reasons for the Stay Put policy is to stop stampeding/crushing in stairwells and communal areas. One of the worst tower block fires I've been called to was when the Police tried to evacuate the building before the fire service arrived. There was a fire in the bin at the bottom of the shute so it looked like the whole building was full of smoke. It wasn't.

It was ABSOLUTE MAYHEM when we arrived. People were stuck on the stairs, people had fallen down the stairs and were injured. Those who'd got out were wandering around outside with in unsuitable clothing/footwear, in shock and panicking. Just chaos.

It was ABSOLUTE MAYHEM when we arrived. People were stuck on the stairs, people had fallen down the stairs and were injured. Those who'd got out were wandering around outside with in unsuitable clothing/footwear, in shock and panicking. Just chaos

I agree orderly evacuation is better than chaotic evacuation, however, it's better to be injured or be outside with no clothing than be dead.

I think the very sad thing about Grenfell is that the advice to stay put was still being given to desperate residents one or two hours into what was clearly not a contained or 'normal' fire and their obedience in doing so probably did contribute to their deaths (beyond of course the terrible shoddy work, flammable cladding, lack of sprinklers etc).

I would get out. I've been in bomb alerts and you don't sit still then and I wouldn't sit still if there was a fire I could see raging in my building. All the better if there is a practiced drill in place, or a tannoy to issue instructions, but I'd still leave and take my children. If the fire is indeed 'contained' into one flat, then opening a door elsewhere won't make any difference, will it? And if it is not contained, I wouldn't want to sit and wait.

That's not to say I don't admire immensely the firefighters who went into Grenfell, it must have been terrifying and they must really have thought they weren't going to get out. But the advice to stay put (which they were given repeatedly on the phone, calling time after time) became wrong at some point and it must have been simply awful for those individuals waiting to die in that manner, as they must have known would be the outcome past a certain point.

The thing is though Orchiddingme is that no one needed to be evacuated and in a fire safe building people are safer in their flats. I've been called to flat fires in large buildings and the other residents weren't effected by the fire at all. Except for water damage in the flat below.

I think when staring death in the face you have to do whats best for yourself. I personally wouldn't listen to what the emergency services were saying in that situation. I'd have tried to leave.
I really hope that the people responsible for not having that building safe get their just deserts and go to prison. The tenants were saying for years it was a fire risk.

Fires don't usually come in from outside. They start within a building and are contained within the building. The Grenfell flats were all fireproof with fireproof doors. Nothing had prepared them for the idea that a fire could spread round the outside of the building like that. So I'd say that it's best to stick to firefighters' advice.

Plus, Grenfell only had one central stairwell. It would have been impossible and dangerous for everyone to get down the stairs with firefighters coming up. New blocks have two stairwells. But the idea is that individual flats will contain a fire.

Flats are meant to be designed so that if a fire happens in a flat it is contained within that flat for a long time. That's why the advice is to stay put. Obviously that didn't happen because of the cladding. It's just awful.

Instinct and panic probably kill more people than whatever the incident is. Every situation is different and things are constantly changing given the state of things. Look at the Coconut Grove fire in USA - lots learned from that disaster and panic caused the death of hundreds.

My point is- the cladding was clearly on fire and so the premise of staying put (that the fire was contained) was clearly broken 1000 times over by this point, but desperate people, one or two hours in, were ringing continuously for advice and being told stay put long after this was the correct advice and when their window for leaving was then more severely constrained but they may still have made it out.

I'm not debating whether in an ideal world or one in which building regs are always followed, containment and stay put is better advice. This is what not what happened, and the advice did become wrong at one point, and hours in, it might have been better for those individuals to have not followed the advice. There was time to get people evacuated indeed most people did evacuate themselves, so it's not something was simply impossible or clogged up stairwells.

The policy of 'stay put' was indeed abandoned on the night by about 2.30am, but unfortunately about an hour after it was clear there was tremendous spread, and very few people got out after that time as presumably they were on the top floors/hadn't taken the critical 'hour' to get out earlier.

In the terrorist scenario, the advice is to run, if you can't run hide, and call 999 as soon as it's safe to do so. So you can leg it while following official advice.

If you decide to run in a fire situation, at least close all the doors behind you.

As part of work fire training we had to walk through a smoke filled mocked up older persons flat, littered with little hazards like Zimmer frames and random chairs. The " smoke"obviously was fake smoke, (I've no idea what), we had the advantage that we could breathe safely, but visibility was zero. We clung to each other as we tripped and tried not to fall over the obstacles and to remember the route to the door.
I think we all underestimate how difficult it would be to get out of a smoke filled building, especially in the Grenfell tower situation of just one stairway for multiple people. One of the reasons I say Don't wait, get out ASAP before the building fills with smoke.

In a bomb alert remember sometimes there is a second bomb at the exit. On the news report of one airport bombing there was a man who went the opposite way of the crowd, jumping the barrier and running into passport control. Of course this carries the risk of being gunned down by a security guard but apart from that it seemed quite a sensible response.

Interesting that some are saying run for your lives and others are more cautious. A friend works for London Underground. There have been a number of incidents not all make the papers where people have thought they were in danger. He sees the worst side of people during these times, panicking, pushing and shoving and literally every man for themselves. In one instance an elderly person was in the process of being stamped on as people fled and a child was pushed onto the tracks in the confusion.

So, I honestly don't know what I would do. Its easy with hindsight to say people should have done this and that but all incidents are different. I think the PP saying during the NI bombings to just get out of the area is right. Don't be in a rush to go back in is good advice.

Optimist

Why didn’t you crawl? Crawling in a fire isn’t just good because the air is clearer lower down. There’s also obvious practical benefits to crawling in low / no visibility - obstacles are more apparent, you can’t really fall over, etc

Batteries I'm sure I would crawl IRL.
Not sure all elderly people with reduced mobility can though which was part of the point of the exercise.

my daughter has just gone to uni. She’s on the seventh floor in a building which is currently in the process of having Grenfell style cladding removed. When she left for uni, one of the last bits of advice I gave her was to leave the building if there’s a fire and to ignore any instructions to stay put. I told her to use the staircase and get out immediately and ignore instructions to stay put.

Oh my apologies I didn’t realise / read properly!

I do worry a lot about what I would do if I had all three kids with me. I could hardly crawl out. I guess it would have to be a kind of squat walk with the older two crawling either side and the baby tucked into my clothing on the front.

Sometimes conventional wisdom is wrong. Do MNers remember the Austrian tunnel fire? Most people who died ran the way conventional wisdom dictated, but the people who survived ran the other way. I don't know if that was by luck or judgment, but it makes it difficult to know what to do.

A pp mentioned looking for your nearest exit rather than the obvious one eg the one you usually use. I was wondering how I would get out of my office - we are on the 4th floor and there are two offices, one of which is unoccupied at the moment. I couldn't see where a second exit was and thought it was via the other office, which is locked.

Anyway yesterday I noticed that a second fire exit is directly behind my desk! It takes you into the other office and onto the second fire escape.

Moral of story - make sure you read the fire evacuation notices and look all around you. And don't block fire escapes with boxes and the like.

Were supposed to go into the fire door cupboards cos were safe for 4 hours. Brilliant 4 hours then what? Fuck that shit I’d be getting the fuck out of there.

Why do so many people think they know better than trained first responders off the back of watching a couple of tv shows?

I think insisting that you would force your way out of a building even if you were in no immediate danger, potentially hindering access by the emergency services to the flat where the fire actually was, is unbelievably selfish.