to ask if Grenfell residents could have been evacuated

[why100000]

had the fire brigade not blindly followed the “stay put” policy.

Am watching the documentary on Channel 4 at the moment.

Unbearable .

I just looked up the title of the documentary. I don't agree with the filmmaker's choice of title because there were numerous failures and any that the fire service as a whole were responsible for were undoubtedly the least of them(though I do think that the stay put policy needs to be reviewed and that there was seemingly some cause to do so before Grenfell). The individual firefighters were failed too, their lives put at unnecessary risk, and traumatised for life with all they heard and saw as a result but I am also uncomfortable with the idea that the fire service as a whole should be immune to criticism.

The documentary is The Fires that Foretold Grenfell and it's available on YouTube if anyone wants to form their own opinion on it, though no doubt there's a lot of information that they couldn't/didn't include.

The documentary that I was referring to I mean, not the one being discussed in the OP.

I also read a book on survival recently regarding who survives and why in various disaster situations and it seems that the people who make their own decisions sometimes going against the official advice or are often the ones who make it through.

And just as often, those people die. Like people who inflate their life jackets on planes before a water landing and get trapped in a sinking plane, or people who believe the brace position is "designed to kill you instantly."

Im not sure the enquiry is about blame as such. Its simply a cold examination of the facts. No one is disputing the bravery and heroism of firefighters who went to that incident that night. Other emergency services were there too. Even members of the Gas Emergency services were there all night bravely battling to dig and shut off gas supplies to the block that was actively fuelling the fire as debris was falling all around them. This is stated in the enquiry documents.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/18/london-social-housing-block-residents-warn-of-death-trap-conditions

"London social housing block residents warn of ‘death trap’ conditions

Water-soaked electrics, severe damp and lift breakdowns in flats managed by A2Dominion

Residents of a six-year-old block of flats in south-west London are warning that they are living in a “death trap” and fear a catastrophe similar to the Grenfell Tower fire.

The block’s managers have promised to address urgent problems after photographs of water-soaked electrics, black mould and severe damp were posted on Twitter. Residents have also reported frequent and prolonged lift breakdowns, which have created particular difficulties for a number of tenants who use wheelchairs.

Clyde House is a block of social housing, with 62 flats over eight floors, built as part of a private housing development in Wandsworth, close to the River Thames. Some of the properties are reserved for people with special needs.

Residents claim Clyde House was constructed with shoddy materials, and that the surrounding blocks were better built and have been properly maintained. “The other blocks look identical to ours, but we’re treated like second-class citizens,” said Shevonne Will, who posted pictures on Twitter last week

shevonne will @ShevonneLDN
· Feb 16, 2019

I didn’t want to do this but I’m currently living in a death trap. I’m afraid that we will be the next Grenfell.

I’m a resident at Clyde house which is a social housing block under @A2DominionGroup.

We need them to take this seriously before the building goes up in flames!

shevonne will @ShevonneLDN

Due to leaks that began 3-4 years ago we are constantly hearing electrical wires crackling in the walls, the building is flooding & there is mould growing everywhere.

There are BUCKETS OF WATER in electrical cupboards. It is a disaster waiting to happen

Justine Greening, the Conservative MP for the area, who raised the issue in parliament last week, said the problems facing residents were “totally unacceptable”.
Advertisement

At an angry and at times chaotic meeting at Clyde House on Monday, many residents spoke of flooding from cracked pipes, light fittings filled with water, vermin, a pervasive smell of sewage, a lack of hot water, exposed and sparking electrical wires – and frustration that their complaints had been ignored

Talha Khepi, an independent fire risk assessor who volunteered to inspect the block after seeing social media posts, said he rated the building at moderate to high risk. He was particularly concerned about unenclosed electrical wires and their exposure to water, he said.

David Fenton, 57, who lives on the sixth floor, said the building often shook and cracks had appeared. “Piping on the top floor has cracked and water has seeped into the electrics and down all the walls. It’s infested with vermin. It’s dangerous and uninhabitable.”

A single mother of an 11-year-old disabled child said she had been signed off work with back problems after being forced to drag her daughter up the stairs in her wheelchair to their eighth-floor flat.

Sophie, who did not want to give her full name, told A2Dominion representatives at the meeting: “My back hurts, my head hurts, I wake up at night worrying about whether the lifts will work. Why haven’t you listened?”

Other residents described being made to feel like “riff-raff” compared with their owner-occupier neighbours. Flats in neighbouring blocks have been on the market for up to £800,000.

Greening, who was at Monday’s meeting, said residents’ lives had been made “a misery”.

She added: “It’s taken chasing phone calls, on site meetings and raising it in parliament to get any sort of response. And even then promises on sorting out problems have been broken. It’s time for an overhaul of the system to better hold these organisations to account.”

David Lingeman, A2Dominion’s director of property services, told the meeting: “We recognise that things are not right and we’re going to put them right. We haven’t performed well, and you have my personal apology.”

Resolving the faults with the building would take four months, he said

According to its website, A2Dominion is a “residential property group with a social purpose”. It has created 37,000 homes, with another 7,800 in development, and has a £300m-plus turnover.

In a statement, Andrew Evans, its executive director of operations, said: “We are aware of the ongoing issues at Clyde House. We apologise for the disruption it is causing our residents. Their safety and wellbeing is of the utmost importance to us and we are doing everything we can to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”

He said temporary heaters had been provided and residents were being offered temporary alternative accommodation. “We regret that the issues have not been resolved sooner,” Evans said."

I couldn't bear to watch. The title made me too cross. Perhaps the Dispatches team could go and be firefighters if they think they can do a better job?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/petitions_noticeboard/3378879-Petition-to-bring-housing-associations-under-the-FOI-Act

There is so much money involved in some of these contracts that companies are given for refurbs Its a money lake and many dont want that to change.

From a blog

"radical redhead says:
October 10, 2017 at 12:00 pm

Myself and a friend of mine live separately in a Home Group housing association block of flats. Over recent years our lives have been made a misery of through endless, industrial scale building repair work. Admittedly, some of it has been necessary, but the bulk of it hasn’t.

I’ve become depressed and anxious about it. Sounds of drilling and hammers make me panic. My friend who lives in a flat in the same block has sometimes been in tears. He’s seen 3 changes of windows in 15 years.

It’s been literally like living within an active building site. Pointing has been replaced (much of it was in good condition already) and masonry has been replaced for different shaped masonry. I’ve had perfectly good doors and windows replaced. The actual site manager once said that they didn’t need replacing but that they were going to replace them anyway.

I know a tenant who left because of it. There is no doubt in my mind that unnecessary jobs have been undertaken simply to make money for the contractors. I have no doubt either that Mears and Home Group are in bed together.

I’ve written to different organisations pleading for help – no one’s interested.

So now, Mears Group are ‘testing’ the electric sockets in my friend’s flat. The flats have all been completely rewired from new approximately ten years ago. Maybe this is justified – maybe not. However, this is a company that has earned a reputation for corruption and shoddy workmanship, who’ve been caught and investigated by the Police for overcharging landlords. I am not paranoid.

I worry for the future because the block of flats I live in is so large that any job, big or small will be lucrative for a contractor.

The official term is ‘Social Housing Contractor Fraud’ and Mears are one of the key players. You can find articles on Google about Mears corruption scandals and it’s happening up and down the country because social housing tenants can’t say ‘no’.

Crucially, it only works if the landlord is complicit. This must take the form of bribes and backhanders being offered to senior management.

It’s a bizarre turn around from the old days of social housing landlords dragging their heels over much needed repairs because they were strapped for cash.

Today the dynamic is different. Now, many large social housing providers have formed cosy relationships with contractors. These contractors are parasites feeding off working class tenants’ rents. Rents go up to pay for it.

I’ve lived in council housing before without any problem. Since moving from council to housing association I’ve noticed a huge difference.

The only bodies I can think of that might tackle this cancer are a proper Socialist Labour government and/or unions who care about social housing tenants. The media and the Tories don’t care. Blairite Labour MPs don’t care either.

If my fears over new ‘repairs’ being arbitrarily created in the future, year after year prove to be correct then I’ll have no choice but to move. I don’t need the stress. I need peace and quiet."

Grenfell residents stand in solidarity with firefighters

www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/channel-4-dispatches-programme-asks-15850923

Its so awful, fire is one of my worst fears.

I would have left, staying put is just a death wish imo.

There's no way people can blame this on the firefighters. They weren't to know the building wasn't up to legal safety regulations, by the time they noticed the fire wasn't normal they wouldn't have had enough time.

The responsibility lies 100% on whoever agreed on the illegal building cladding/knew it needed changing but didn't do so.

yes.....................and they are still getting contracts.

Is this on demand? What's it called?

And no, no way they could've evacuated in 7 minutes. Looked at this in great detail at work - the stair well exits were not appropriate for huge amounts of people to be evacuated, so it would've taken much, much longer than 7 minutes.

The cladding was combustible. The same kind of cladding is illegal in other European countries.

Blaming the firefighters is a very desperate search for a scapegoat. This is disgusting. The cause was that the building was not up to standards. The residents had tried to pass their concerns on and were ignored. Fire fighters risk their lives to help, where were the people who profited from that cladding installation?

I haven’t watched the programme, probably won’t. But I did listen to the vast majority of evidence in stage 1 of the inquiry. I don’t have anything other than the upmost praise and admiration for the firefighters who risked their lives in horrific conditions on the night. They are true heroes. And it is completely clear to me that the fault for this disaster lies squarely with the TMO/council who not only eroded the fire compartmentation safety net provided by the original building design, with ill thought through and sub standard renovation, but who also signed the death warrants of residents when they chose a cheap, highly flammable material to clad the building with, and included a pointless ‘architectural crown’ which ensured fire spread to all sides of the building. They are the ones to blame.

But. There were some systemic and institutional issues within the fire service which did not help on the night and which may have made things worse. Eg, a person with no experience of managing large fires was left in charge for far too long on the night, more senior officers arrived and chose different jobs to do, leaving the watch manager who arrived first with an impossible task far above his level of training. Their communication systems and processes were inadequate. Information was not passed accurately between control centres and the fire ground. There was no equipment to help safely evacuate residents through smoke filled conditions (they have now purchased some I believe). The firefighters who performed the routine site visits to the tower had recorded inaccurate information, and failed to store plans of the building with this information. The computer systems were failing and didn’t work on the night. They couldn’t get a downlink to the police helicopter. They failed to investigate the cladding material used as a potential issue. In general the fire service have known about the risk of cladding for a number of years but haven’t updated their training programmes. And from control centres conflicting advice was given to residents in the tower, and when residents mentioned conditions in their flats they were often told the fire was below them so they were safe, when they were not.

I firmly believe the root causes of these issues are the cuts to and systematic underfunding of the fire service over the last 10 years. But I do think it’s important that these issues are recognised and corrected and not swept under the carpet. And I think it was horrifically insensitive and inappropriate for the Commissioner of the Fire Service, Dany Cotton, to say in her evidence that she would not have changed anything on the night. Clearly many things could have been changed and some of them may have influenced the outcome.

And to answer the OP, unless evacuation had begun the minute firefighters arrived on site (when it wasn’t apparent it would be needed), then no I don’t think the tower could have been evacuated. Within 20 minutes of their arrival the conditions in the stairwell were already intolerable.

There was also no central fire alarm system and no system with which to alert residents to evacuate. They had no way to tell residents to get out. The fire lift didn’t work, so firefighters couldn’t even get to the top and walk down calling at each flat.

The fire service have a policy of not calling people back who have called in for fire survival guidance, in case it encourages them to go an answer a landline in an unsafe part of the building...clearly an outdated policy but another obstacle to get round for evacuation.

There were 20+ floors, even in good conditions and perfect mobility it takes a significant time to evacuate that size of building. I used to do fire drills when I worked in a 30 storey office block...so daytime, everyone awake, no panic or fear and with no children or people with mobility issues (those people were alerted to drills and asked to remain in the building). I was in the middle of the building and we had 4 stairwells (although maybe 80 people on each floor so more than Grenfell). It took at least 15 minutes to get down the stairs from my middle floor. Upwards of 25 from the top.

In the pitch black, in a smoke filled narrow stairwell, with hoses snaking up it, bodies on the floor, water pouring down, in the middle of the night with people full of panic and fear, with children and those with mobility problems...no. I can’t see how the tower could have been evacuated safely. It just wasn’t possible.

I actually knew Grenfell Tower relatively well , it used to be part of my ground . Back in about 1995 , me and my colleagues had to run from the top floors to the bottom as the lift wasn’t working . And it took us a good five minutes , running at full pelt downstairs , in daylight , with no one else but us on the stairs , in perfect visibility , and all of us were young and fit . There is no way , no bloody way that they could have got hundreds of panicked people in various stages of age and health , down that smoke filled narrow staircase , carrying children , in the temperatures that that building was . No way . Quite apart from anything else, if you put a large group of people into a perilous situation and a confined space they panic . That’s how crowd demographics work . That’s how you end up with large numbers being crushed to death . If they had tried to evacuate everyone at the same time , you’d have had even more casualties . And even if you’d done the other option of evacuating in batches of flats , it still wouldn’t have worked, with the way that fire spread . No one could have done any better . They did the best , the very best they could in the worst situation anyone had been in , ever . They gave everything they had, and more . Going back in knowing they might not come out again ? They have nothing but my absolute respect .

Crowd reactions , not crowd demographics !, ffs .

I won't watch the programme as I will find it too upsetting.

But, is the agenda of the programme really to blame the fire service, or is that a knee-jerk reaction?

Isn't the question simply being asked: was stay put the best advice in that scenario.

There was a fire in a block of flats in Camberwell, South London in 2009 and the stay put policy was questioned and part of the enquiry after the deaths of several people there.

Questions need to be asked. It seems impossible to legislate against rogue landlords taking short cuts and having no regard for fire safety. So the fire service needs to be prepared as much as they possibly can be in those circumstances?

The thing is though the stay put is a building regs policy not the fire brigades. So although it may have been reviewed I’m not sure it was the brigades decision in 2009.
If you read/listened to some of the call handlers and survivors evidence even once they changed the advice people were refusing to leave as they were too scared. I think there was a very narrow window in which it was safe to leave those higher floors. A lot that got out were just lucky.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-met-police-funding-royal-wedding-security-trump-visit-madeleine-mccann-a8786456.html

The government refused to fully meet a special request for funding towards the Grenfell Tower police investigation despite approving all others made last year – including those to cover security for the royal wedding and Donald Trump’s visit.

While the request for additional funding for the probe into the 2017 disaster was considerably higher than others lodged by the Metropolitan Police – at £11m last year and £13.5m in 2018-19 – politicians said the decision was causing further delays and accused the Home Office of “denying justice”.

Among the funding requests that were met in full were the Commonwealth Summit – which received £5.2m last year – security for both the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (£237,000) and the US president's 2018 visit (£1.3m), and the Madeleine McCann investigation (£608,500).

It comes amid growing anger over the lack of progress into the investigation of the Grenfell tragedy, which killed 72 people. More than a year and a half on from the tragedy, no arrests have been made and only three interviews have so far been carried out

Emma Dent Coad, Labour MP for Kensington, said: “Justice delayed is justice denied. The government must urgently explain their decision to withhold special grant funding for the Grenfell Tower investigation

“The police have hundreds of thousands of documents to examine and lack of funds for processing them will slow down their investigation

If the government can find the special grant funding to fully cover the costs of security for a visit from Donald Trump and a Royal Wedding, then they can find the money needed for justice for Grenfell.”

The Home Office and the Metropolitan Police have been contacted for comment.

I think we need to adopt Dubai's text system for tower block fires thats proved successful. First sign of fire a text goes to all residents to get out if they can. Also, the tower block fire 2years before Grenfell, also in London also showed that staying put led to more lives lost, with what was described as a fire that "didn't spread upwards as is usual, but spread along" . I am assuming wind direction & building design caused it as cladding wasn't mentioned.

10yrs back my workplace office block had a fire on floor 18. I was on 19th. We had a tannoy message to stay put. 5mins later my boss saw the flames shooting past his window, ignored the 2nd tannoy stay put & said "it's time to leave everyone". The whole building did the same & was outside after 5 or 6 minutes. I assume they'd all seen what we saw & fight or flight kicked in. The fire exit staircases were full, but calm: & eerily quiet. I think people were shocked into silence tbh.

I would add, we had fire drills every 3weeks or so, so people were probably automatically conditioned to leave fast or misheard the tannoy warning & thought oh just another drill.

Problem is though this building wasn’t designed to be evacuated. There was no fire exit staircase just the very narrow central staircase. Due to the fire lift not working this was busy with firefighters and equipment. It was also very very smoky with poor visibility.

I think also that individuals should assess their own situation and do what they think is the best thing for them and not necessarily what someone tells then to do. It was the same with the twin towers where people were told to stay and others who had left were told its ok to go back in ?? Bottom line, if your up a tower block and there is a fire and you are at such a height that a ladder cannot reach, the best thing to do is to get out. If you stay the situation may deteriorate to the point where escape will be impossible.

Clearly individual tenants did not have an outside view of the whole situation.

The FB did have an outside view and they could clearly see that the fire was spreading,that there was no immediate means of suppressing it and that eventually it would envelope the building.

Could it be that individual FB commanders on the scene should have updated their control centre to tell people to escape as quickly as possible and that on the ground they should have sought to evacuate as soon as possible and secure the stairways in order to assist this.

Having read the transcipts, it appears to me to be lunacy to have live gas supplies to tower blocks. They should have been all electric or fed from a central boiler house. Ruptured gas supplies were apparently fuelling the fire. Gas Emergency Engineers arrived on scene quickly ut the FB command repeatedly told them to "stand by" despite their urgency to cut the gas mains off and this didnt happen until many hours later when the Gas company started to do the work of their own volition as the FB had continually told them to stand by.