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.

Sorry for your loss and to all who have died and the injured, the homeless and those surrounding the tower block who watched in horror unable to help. Thanks to the emergency services.
I have been watching some coverage and the images of the missing and some stories have had me in tears. I do not cry easily and this has reduced me to tears.
There is nothing else left to say that hasn`t been said or what could be said is meaningless.

Thierry, so sorry

ThierryEnnui - I'm so sorry for your loss

This won't be white washed this will be as big as that football match disaster and it won't be allowed to ever happen again

Sorry Thierry. I saw your friend's photo too and I thought she looked really happy. So sorry she didn't make it out.

pbs.twimg.com/media/DCQWZejXUAESGrd.jpg
I hope that this shows how the housing changed from the one and two bedroom flats shown in the media to this high density housing.

The reason why fire deaths have gone down

Do we have any more information on this change? The tweet says it wasn't mentioned by the government or in the press, but if that tweet is true, I'll happily start hammering my MP (for all the good it would do).

According to this chart, fire deaths have been gradually decreasing year-on-year. There doesn't seem to be a sudden drop.

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Fire_casualties_in_the_UK.png/800px-Fire_casualties_in_the_UK.png

And from the fire statistics definitions, a Fatality is thought of as:

"Fire-related fatalities are, in general, those that would not have otherwise occurred had there not been a fire. i.e. ‘no fire = no death’.
This includes any fatal casualty which is the direct or indirect result of injuries caused by a fire incident. Even if the fatal casualty dies subsequently, any fatality whose cause is attributed to a fire is included, sometimes following road traffic collisions. For the purpose of publications, published figures include the number of fatal casualties which were either recorded as ‘fire-related’ or ‘don’t know’, grouped together as fire-related deaths; thus excluding only those that were recorded as ‘not fire-related’."

helenadove do you know the tweeter?

I'm quite interested in knowing when the rules changed, what the definitions were before and what they are now.

ThierryEnnui
I have not rtft. But my heart goes out to you. If your friend was an architect then your sadness is shared amoung many of us in London. God bless all who are dead, missing or injured.

Dp who is a builder and works with the type of cladding used is horrified by this. Any new building has to have fire breaks in any of the materials he uses. Rockwool is used as standard because of the burn time. He can't comprehend that it would be legal to do that amount of cladding up a property without the firebreaks.

Also when you work out the cost of the refurd against the 120 properties it works out at just short of 72k per property. For new windows and the cheapest cladding possibly fitted incorrectly. Certainly with the cheapest possible spec.

Somebody somewhere has an awful lot od blood on their hands and has profited massively. Even working at height which costs a lot more it shouldn't cost anywhere near 72k per flat. Even if you allow for the communal areas. Dp reckons £200 tops for the cladding and maybe £70 per window at trade prices. So allowing 5 windows per property, and a very generous £500 for cladding it's still less than £1000 per property. And maybe a maximum of 10 many days per flat at £200 per day, plus maybe £500 plant hire you are looking at less than 3.5k per flat.

No where near 72k.

That is the problem with public sector building jobs. It's not 'real' money and not the person instructing the contractors so they aren't affected by shit and shoddy workmanship. All they want is for jobs to be under budget.

Those poor, poor people. I hope this is the end of austerity as we know it and there is a massive reform of both housing regulations and also how public work is tendered. It wasn't so long ago a fuckton of schools were found to be unfit for purpose. I would have hoped things had changed.

This incident is so shocking and horrific I can't stop thinking about the poor people and what their last moments must have been like. No one should have to suffer like that especially as it was avoidable
I really hope that changes are made now to protect vulnerable people instead of just ignoring the issues again one the media fanfare has quieted down

Frouby that's interesting because I had a brief chat with an older relative who used to head a housing dept in a city with lots of tower blocks. He said there was supposed to be a 'fire stop' between the cladding and the structure and he speculated that this wasn't present or there wasn't enough. Of course he's only speculating but putting that together with what your dh is saying, I wonder if there was corner cutting going on.

Insufficiently fireproof building materials have been implicated in previous disasters, e.g. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerland_disaster

Are the building regulations more lax for residential buildings than for commercial buildings and leisure facilities?

Thierry I am so so sorry.
According to the Evening Standard, there were 2 families of 5 who all died. One family of 2 parents and 3 children didn't even live in the block but were visiting friends to break their Ramadan fast all died.
This is utterly heartbreaking:
'Zainab Dean, who lived on the 14th floor with son Jeremiah, two, is feared dead after being advised to stay in their flat. Her brother Francis Dean, 47, said a firefighter borrowed his phone during the blaze to speak to his sister.
"He told her to keep calm and that they were coming to get her.He kept saying that to her again and again. But then he handed the phone to me and said, 'Tell her you love her'. I knew then to fear the worst. The phone went dead and I could not talk to her".

Lily Allen was cut off by Jon Snow on the 7 of clock news, querying why the tenants real concerns about the true death toll are not being reported?

Yes I saw that too, I think she should have waited though, I understand she is angry but people will panic now. My thoughts are with all those affected.

I can smell the the foul stench of corruption and coverup already

Frouby Im Sorry but your dp is talking rubbish. I have very direct involvement with the exact work for London council and have been for number of years . The cost is split against all flats Inc scaffold , management cost , overheads , materials and Labour Inc smoke , fire alarms , doors exterior work so 70 k isn't that much taking into acc the amount of works , I don't know the full spec but I pay roughly 3k for upvc Windows in 2 bed flat in neighbouring borough .

Dp is adamant it should have been firestopped at each floor. They are currently building a 120 bed student accommodation unit and some of the ceilings have had to be redone as not enough mastick (which has a specific burn time) hadnt been done. Dp is a dryliner these days but was a fireproofer when it was an actual trade rather then incorperated into the dryling umbrella so he knows what he is on with.

The reason you don't tend to need fireproofers these days is because of the advance in fireproofing building materials. And the design and spec should prevent chimneys like what looks to have happened here.

Interestingly the 120 5 storey student accommodation unit has 3 staircases. 2 to be used and 1 emergency one. 1 staircase isn't enough.

I really wouldn't like to have had anything at all to do with that refurb. I suspect they will be blamed. To me it looks as if they have massively fucked up. But they aren't the only ones.

Seems to me there is some sort of a lid being kept on the real aftermath of this, lives lost I mean.

Maybe it is to keep the anger temps cool or something.

There is a good estimate of lives lost by now. But no one is saying much.

Is that a good or a bad thing? I'm torn. But it's not about me anyway is it.

the failure of consecutive governments to stop the bonkers rise in house prices, particularly in London, is shamefull. The average working family should be able to afford quality housing and it's time to stick a pin in this bubble. legislation to heavily tax 2nd home ownership, restrict landlords to a small number of properties and a ban on the purchase of residential properties for investment would help slow or reverse hoise price growth. 100% tax on capital gains if a property is bought and sold within 10 years would go a long way as well. prices needs to tumble and though some of us will lose money on paper it needs to happen for some kind of normality to return to society.

Yes, thinking about that, I work in a new-build school with 3 floors. There is a main open staircase in the foyer and 4 sets of fire exit stairs, which we never use. That is how it should be.
How could this block only have one staircase? How could 600 people ever leave safely, in any circumstances? They didn't stand a chance.

I think the refurb was wider than described - they totally revised the bottom 4 floors, creating a new gym, boxing club, nursery and I think 6 new flats? IIRC there was a new heating system too.

Still doesn't sound like £72k per flat mind...

Oh, yes, new UPVC windows too - it looks from pics like the originals were metal.

Because this block was built 50 years ago and fire regs were different. They have retro fit other stuff I.e fire alarms Tec to comply with min regs but they can't get extra staircase for example. Fire shouldn't spread like this it should be contained in one unit but for some reason it didn't. Could be many reasons for that Inc going back to the 50-60's when it was build .