Grenfell Tower tragedy continued

[RhythmAndStealth]

Twelve people confirmed dead with that number expected to rise significantly.

Many others injured and distressed. People have lost relatives, friends and their homes.

250 firefighters in attendance, risking their lives in an unprecented fire and it's aftermath. Other emergency services and NHS staff working hard to help survivors.

Many questions to be answered.

to all those affected and everyone helping.

Foureyesarebetterthantwo Interesting point that. I hope it all comes out in the investigation as you say if he could have done that an hour and a half after the brigade were called it does beg many questions.

I do expect that the brigade didn't originally think this was as bad a fire as it very rapidly became but as per this vid see how quickly this cladding type fire can take hold.

Https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yQLIlIetDM

In a properly compartmentalised residential building 'you' don't need to get out, the people in the flats immediately adjacent to the fire need to get out, without risk of a crush from a huge number of people who are at very little risk all trying to evacuate at once.

Sylvia - can you not accept that the advice and practices followed caused multiple deaths? How can you insist on defending this protocol?

"very sadly it looks as though a personal friend of David Lammy's has died in the fire. He sounded very emotional on that report and I think his comments are understandable even if you don't agree with them."

I agree with this, a young lady who his wife mentors and her Mother were on the 20th floor and still unaccounted for. His words may be premature but I have no doubt they were emotionally charged rather than rationally thought through.

Forgive me if I am wrong but another poster who had a missing loved one either on this or the last thread mentioned the possibility she was in hospital with her Mother but was not found. I immediately thought of these 2 ladies and wondered if her Mother was indeed located?

Sylvia yes, I agree in that scenario, but why couldn't the evacuation be contained? With one floor at a time. Everyone on the right, with an alarm for the immobilised. The Twin Towers also shows that if you can get out, you stand a chance. Within you don't. I don't think I have ever worked in a tower block (and I have worked in one of a similar height as this block) where they just said stay put. We had to use the stairs, and file very carefully, with shouted instructions on what to do. It can be done. If they don't have marshals within which they won't in a private block, then the fire service should do it. And have sprinklers, and have cladding which is non-flammable, of course.

Theres still loads of assumptions and speculation rattling round these threads. Its not helpful at all. When one poster yesterday, shared her factual insight into an area of this 'debate' to counter some outrageous assumptions, she was basically hung drawn and quatered and accused of an agenda.

Thre are over 30,000 domestic fires every year in England. A huge number of those, are flat fires. Hundreds of fires happen in flats every week. They are contained, and thankfully the number of fatalities from these fires are small.

Every time you shout about these victims being told to stay put, please remember it was on the whole, the advice given by the emergency call handlers manning those phones. The call handlers who sat, in real time with these poor poor people on the phones.

This flat fire should abslutely have been contained, and tackled exactly as thousands have before. The call handlers advice, should have been the advice that saved these people, as it has thousands and thousands of times before. They are now living with the same hind sight you are, but they had the victims on the end of their phones.

User, yes fire does behave differently because there are different building regulations!

And people's behaviour is different depending on what organisation is available, otherwise nobody would bother to train you as a fire warden.

It is totally different to evacuate with trained fire wardens from a workplace than to evacuate families with nobody trained in charge from a residential building in the middle of the night.

Poor Theresa probably doesn't want to catch the common cold or any other lurgy

Sylvia, if the original guy could have activated a manual alarm, people would have been able to evacuate calmly in the first 5 minutes before smoke was filling everywhere. There wouldn't have been a panic. Any drill I ran, when no-one knew it was a drill, was a very calm affair.

User, because the protocol works in buildings that are properly compartmentalised. If that compartmentalisation is breached, a different protocol should be followed.

But that protocol that should be followed is that such a building should be closed down and nobody should be housed there until the dangerous building modifications have been repaired, because it is a death trap.

One of the big questions is I still have is whether there was a building-wide alarm system in place; some say yes, and it was activated, some say yes, but it failed, and some people are saying it wasn't there at all.

I cannot imagine what those call handlers have heard.

However, I have never ever in all the fire drills I've done in all the offices I've worked in including tower blocks been told to stay inside and put wet towels against the door. Also, I have been evacuated during a bomb scare and the tannoy told us what to do- 'this is not a practice, leave by going down the steps, stay on the right' during the entire thing. Perhaps an intercom system which tells you what to do and a central alarm would have worked then, when the advice needed to change, as clearly it did. Office blocks have them, they cannot be beyond costly, it was an average block.

There definitely should be a building wide alarm, to be activated after it becomes clear that staying put isn't the best advice.

Foureyes - our tannoy was similar.

Evacuating a building full of mostly physically able adults who will have been briefed on emergency protocol with trained fire wardens to monitor and direct during waking hours is entirely different to evacuating a building full of panicked and screaming children, families who may or may not be able to speak or read English, and people who have physical, hearing, or visual impairments with no accompanying carer in darkness disorientated from being woken up in a fright.

Also, it seems the guy didn't close the kitchen door or his front door as the neighbour said she could see into the kitchen to the fire and he was videoing it.

It may be a case that all residents when signing for LA housing have an obligatory half hour training course on fire prevention and evacuation.

Granted my work is all one level but our fire wardens training tells us that we should use the fire panel to find out which compartment the fire is in and evacuate from that room outwards.

In the meantime everyone else should stay put until advised to leave. I work with disabled children and this training took place 4 weeks ago so it's recent.

Melina - I understand that. But we were taught that time was of the essence. Maybe buildings should appoint fire wardens on each floor or something. This scale of loss of life has to be preventable. We all know that it's much more than 17 souls.
Believe me, I understand the hassle of even evacuating office workers. We had a lot of very arrogant traders in the middle of deals who you literally had to shout firmly at to get out.
Something needs to change though.

Well, one of the main types of fire prevention is to watch out and point out the following:

1. Power surges.
2. Vehicles blocking the emergency access for weeks on end.
3. Boilers being installed in front of exit doors.
4. Gas pipes being fitted improperly.
5. Contractors removing fire proofing from the stairway.
6. Refuse being stacked in evacuation routes.

But if the LA then threatens such reporters with legal action, fire prevention is basically fucked.

Bees, I am in a tall tower. I think it's more about the fact that the fire was very close to me - I do get that if you are on a different floor you might want to stay put, but to be questioned about why I left when the fire was clearly very close to me just seemed crazy. Also I knew the fire brigade had only just been called so couldn't be there yet.

I agree that several people storming down the staircase could be an issue but I'm stunned the building only had one staircase. I actually didn't think, no matter how old the block was, that one staircase for such a big building could be allowed.

Jesus Christ user, you're desperate to blame on the guy who thinks his fridge may have been the cause. Desperate to prove tenants weren't poor based on your obvious ignorance about house prices and desperate to prove this is not political.

I'm not arguing that, it absolutely need to change. I've said that from the start, the fault lies firstly with the shoddy building contractors and then in the fire protocol!

BUT hindsight is 20:20, we can't change the fact that these people and the fire operatives were acting on what they believed to be correct because the fire should never have been able to spread like that. It was unprecedented and hopefully lessons will be learned.

Residents and witnesses saying there was NO water in some of the apartments in the tower block during the fire.

Why would this happen?

Sylvia - agreed 100%. But all was ignored.

Sylvia then why not have trained, paid fire wardens in situ in tower blocks. Any building with more than 20 housing units. Similar to wardens in sheltered housing. People with janitorial and administrative responsibilities.