In the shadow of Grenfell Tower- thread four

[RhythmAndStealth]

Rest in Peace

Isaac Shawo, 5
Khadija Saye, 24
Mohammed Alhalaji, 23

At least thirty people confirmed to have died

Six further deceased victims provisionally identified

Many more people feared to have died. They have yet to be reunited with their names

Nineteen people still in hospital, with ten in critical care

Many people homeless and dispossessed

Many bereaved

Many traumatised

“…it is difficult to escape a very sombre national mood.” The Queen.

Three investigations launched- Fire, Police and Public Inquiry
£5m Government Emergency Fund created
£3m donated by public
Peaceful protesters demand justice and answers.

Thread three (includes links to threads one and two)

many of the flats seemed to be on corners, and I think more likely to have opened their windows.

Nobody would have expected a firestorm to run up the outside walls, I expect it would have got in through open windows even before it cracked the glass and melted the frames.

Although smoke eventually got into the firewell, nobody suggests that the stairs are what caused the catastrophe. The doors were probably rated to 30 or 60 minutes nominal.

Suggestions about open doors are being circulated by people who want to divert blame onto the residents. I'm pretty sure none of the residents were responsible for a concrete building being wrapped in flammable cladding to turn it into a giant roman candle.

Disgusting that some are trying to blame the residents. The fridge fire had been put out inside the flat. But the fire spread outside up the cladding. That is not the resident's fault.

Decent fire systems are designed on the basis of human error anyway. So a door is propped open and the fire spreads outside a flat to that floor. Still should not travel any further.
And people have their windows open. Any system should be designed to cope with people doing very normal things.

Isn't there footage of fire officers approaching by vehicle and one of them says "that's not possible"? Apologies if it is a bystander. I am only watching the footage in snippets.

Yes the fire officer does say - thats not possible. Because it should not have been.

Thought so. Even more understandable in the context of attending an incident that you thought, going off previous experience, would be contained more or less where it started.

I have absolutely no time for people making this in any way the residents' fault. It's astroturfing bollocks.
People will always make mistakes, will always do things that aren't good fire prevention. The basic structure of a building like this should mitigate against human error as much as possible.

The fire doors would have been their front doors if they were fire doors at all. The internal doors wouldn't have been because as you can see the internal walls completely burned away.

So, no, I don't think it's likely that people would have propped open their front doors while they slept. And anyway as others said, buildings need to be designed to cope with all of these things that people naturally do in the course of living their lives - opening doors and windows is a perfectly normal thing to do.

Thanks :)
Weirdly I can see it on my iPad app but not on the TV app. Will watch it on here then.

people referring to "sloppily drafted regulations"

that is intentional so no one has to take responsibility and the "mental gymnastics" referred to upthread can be undertaken by lawyers as well if need be. It's never a mistake that these things are "sloppy".

I think whether you like it or not, the inquiry will look into things like fire hazards, opened fire doors etc.
Obviously the residents didn't cause the fire, but they may have contributed to its spread.
No-one knows.
Yet.
But closing down any discussion about this and refusing to even consider this as a possibility won't be that helpful in preventing this happening again, will it?

So we still have people being told they may have to accept being rehoused in Preston or Plymouth and if they say no they are making themselves intentionally homeless? People sleeping in parks.

And in grotty b and bs with no working shower. That council really see tenants as less than nothing.

The council and that weasel Paget Brown are beneath contempt....they really are.

cathf it spread up OUTSIDE the building due to the cladding You know better than the fire experts do you.

Ppl on here should know cathf dosnt like poorer people very much.

Please may I ask someone who is way more knowledgeable on the legislative side of things a question (or two).

Are fire regulations governed by the EU?

And, if environmental regulations for building are currently governed by the EU, won't we now have a chance to change those (Brexit)?

I just went to Notting Hill Methodist Church to sign the book of condolences.

The silence in such a normally busy area is deafening.

The tributes are beautiful, the messages heartbreaking. It's unbearable to see such tragedy within a community.

The people that died, their legacy has to be that changes are made so this never happens again. We have to get behind the Justice for Grenfell campaign, because we are all residents of Grenfell and this could happen again in a lot of places. Just awful.

The new on the BBC today:

More than £200,000 of a £5m emergency fund has so far been given to families affected by last Tuesday's fire at Grenfell Tower in Kensington.
As of Monday, 180 families directly affected by the blaze had received money, the Grenfell Response Team said.

So are they saying 180 families got out and are safe? If they know this, then they know the exact number of survivors?

Plus, not a lot of money after a week, £1000 per family. They were due to get £5500 per household immediately.

Or is that number also families living in nearby buildings who are unable to live there currently?

The GRT, which is organising the relief effort, said 78 families were on course to be rehomed locally by Monday night.

It's highly unlikely the difference between more survivors and less was someone propping open a door. Finding ways to muddy the situation by speculating on what some residents may have done when so many have died is inappropriate.

I don't know if I can watch the panorama.

Who can I donate to? I know Red Cross but I'd like to donate specifically to the residents but to a fund that might actually get to them

cathf: It may well be that human behaviour was A factor in the fire getting so out of hand. The fact is that disasters like this things are always caused by a number of factors, and it is right that the investigation looks at every angle.

That said, as others have pointed out, fire protections should be designed with the expectation that individuals WILL prop open fire doors, fail to put batteries in smoke alarms etc. Because they will.

The problem I have with this line of thinking (not saying that you are doing this) is that it treats groups of people like a homogenous mass; even if the behaviour of an individual resident contributed towards a disaster (and there is no evidence that they did), how is that the fault of the other victims? Sharing a building with hundreds of strangers, should never mean that you are putting your life in each of their hands; one minor, careless mistake of a single individual within a huge building should never, ever, result in an incident like this.
Because the protections should be better.

Helena, why do you have to attack every single post I make?
I know it looks to have spread up the cladding - that's why I said the residents did not cause the fire.
You are son keen to attack me you don't bother reading anything I say.

Monkey: The EU never set maximum standards! They set minimum standards, which we were free to exceed with our own regulations (and often did).

Squishy, I absolutely agree with you that people are not one mass, and especially your point that fire precautions should always be based on a worst-case scenario.
This fire was horrendous, but my point was that trying to close down any discussion about possible reasons why maybe the fire took such a hold so quickly is not helping anything in the long-term.
Humans behave like humans and don't always do the right thing - I don't know why the victims of this disaster should be any different.

I think cathf, that people are understandably very wary of the discussion being taken too much into the direction of "what did the victims do wrong". This is because there is a historical precedent of those who are actually responsible being let off the hook at the expense of victims.

"the inquiry will look into things like fire hazards, opened fire doors etc.
Obviously the residents didn't cause the fire, but they may have contributed to its spread."

Bearing in mind that we hear the fire service extinguished the original small fridge fire in one flat prior to the conflagration; and bearing in mind that we've all see the firestorm running up the outside of the building with the flaming cladding falling off, I think it is not helpful to try to divert attention to the question of now-dead residents remembering to close internal doors behind them.

Short of climbing onto the cladding with a box of matches, I don't believe there is anything the residents could have done to start or spread the cladding fire.

Cathf there have been previous fires in tower blocks caused by cladding. there are many links in this thread about it.

There were warnings which were ignored. It wasnt the residents who were taking risks. they themselves were warning about the fire risks in the grenfell action group blog. They were ignored and belittled and threatened with malicious legal action for doing so.

Agree squishy... it's the swiss cheese model of disaster events. You have a block of slices of holey cheese. It takes a very unlikely set of circumstances for all the holes to line up, but that tragic night they did. Now some of those holes could've been contributed to by the tenants... but overall they are (or should be) insignificant. Chip pans, leaving rubbish in hallways etc. Governance, safety laws and regulations should take into account minor human poor decisions, by at least a triple layer of safety protections for ppl who live/work in high density environments. So sprinklers, non combustible building materials, non compromised fire containment systems etc. That's where the finger of criminal law or negligence needs to point. A tower block fire should only take out one flat, and possibly the adjacent/above flat. The absence or flouting of regulations and the complex relationship of HA/councils/contractors caused this tragedy, not the fridge owner or manufacturer.

there was a fire on our estate back in 2004 in a block of flats of 3 storeys (these flats are directly opposite mine which are 2 storey)

it was contained in the flat . The windows exploded outwards but the only flats damaged were the one where the fire was and the flat below due to water damage.