VILLAMARV Posted June 14, 2019 Share Posted June 14, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted June 25, 2019 Share Posted June 25, 2019 £2.4 Million renovation and conversion funded by the tax payer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted June 25, 2019 Moderator Share Posted June 25, 2019 5 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: £2.4 Million renovation and conversion funded by the tax payer This large dysfuntional family cost the taxpayer £61m last year and 41% rise on the previous year 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xela Posted September 9, 2019 Share Posted September 9, 2019 Fairly modern block of flats. Fire seems to have spread quickly. Luckily no fatalities reported so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
choffer Posted September 9, 2019 VT Supporter Share Posted September 9, 2019 53 minutes ago, Xela said: Fairly modern block of flats. Fire seems to have spread quickly. Luckily no fatalities reported so far. Worryingly, it looks very similar to the place I live in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted September 9, 2019 Share Posted September 9, 2019 without knowing too much about the time frame or details etc of that fire - buildings burn, its incredibly hard to stop it, what they have to be designed to do is burn in a way that provides people with means of escape, usually within 30 minutes sometimes 60, that's done through compartmentalisation which is a wide range of things, and then access routes of maximum distances, number of escapes etc if that photo is 90 minutes after the fire started then the design has done everything it can the shittest thing about grenfall from what I can remember is they told people to wait inside (even the external cladding burning in the way it did wouldn't have impacted the escape routes) that's never what buildings are designed to do, you cant have a fire proof block of flats Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted September 11, 2019 Share Posted September 11, 2019 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 Can’t help but feel London Fire Brigade are getting a tough deal today on this. A building with no coherent fire plan, no sprinklers, no proper fire alarm, no PA or intercom system. A single narrow stair where either firefighters can go up OR people can go down. Equipment and radios that don’t work on higher floors. A plan designed to cope with all of the above, mistakenly in hindsight they stuck to the plan for too long. But to release a report criticising LFB before they’ve considered the Landlord, the politicians, the contractors just doesn’t sit right. Johnson has said it’s right people know the truth, let’s see if that holds true when we get in to the people vs profit decisions made by a Mayor and a Council. Meanwhile, years later, what’s actually changed? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 Without reading in to it in too much detail I'm guessing it's because of the stay put policy? It is a crazy policy that has no future, you cannot design a building based on that policy It ignores several things though, the cladding as an accelerator, the fact that they didn't put a suitable fire plan in place that offered a realistic alternative etc As soon as you put a disabled person or person of limited mobility on the 1st floor then by standard shut the lifts off and offer them no viable means of escape then what do you expect? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 Yes, it’s the stay put policy. A policy that makes sense in a building with a single narrow stairwell. If, the building is fire compartmentalised as it should have been. Having kids and pensioners trying to get down a stair whilst the firefighters are trying to get up the stair doesn’t make sense as a plan. Reacting to change of circumstances has not been handled at all well and there are serious lessons to learn. But allowing old buildings of such fatally flawed design, to be in this shoddy, cost cutting, poorly managed state, really should be literally criminal. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted October 30, 2019 VT Supporter Share Posted October 30, 2019 But think of the profits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 45 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: Yes, it’s the stay put policy. A policy that makes sense in a building with a single narrow stairwell. If, the building is fire compartmentalised as it should have been. Having kids and pensioners trying to get down a stair whilst the firefighters are trying to get up the stair doesn’t make sense as a plan. Reacting to change of circumstances has not been handled at all well and there are serious lessons to learn. But allowing old buildings of such fatally flawed design, to be in this shoddy, cost cutting, poorly managed state, really should be literally criminal. It doesn’t make sense in any building! even compartmentalisation, it’s above and beyond building regs, the max you will get is an hour, the majority of buildings only have an hour in the main fire routes, 30 mins everywhere else, there’s no such thing as a four hour fire door, 30 minutes to get everyone out? That’s simply not possible, it is imo bad advice, stay put is fundamentally flawed But, and it’s a monumental but, by attacking that you’re attacking the last man in, blame the design, blame the cladding, blame the landlords and local authorities for the way they positioned people, blame another 10 things...don’t **** try and blame those that came up with a solution that failed to a problem that should never have been there! ive worked on 7 blocks of flats, all of them had 2 means of escape, it’s standard in more or less every building I’ve ever built, even things like scaffolding have to have 2 means of escape, I think I’ve said this before, in the 40 odd major construction projects I’ve worked on I’ve seen sprinklers twice, they are not standard, the infrastructure to put sprinklers in an existing tower block I think would be nuts, near impossible nuts either dependent on the risers or the ability to fit an external system and that’s before you get in to storage tanks and pressure, they’re really uncommon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 I’ve taken part in a measured, planned, full building evacuation. It wasn’t 1:00am, we all knew it was going to take place, we were all able bodied, there were no small children, there was no smoke and the lights worked. It took an hour to get down 30 or so floors. With nobody trying to get up in the other direction. Grenfell was 24 stories with a single dark smoke filled stair, an unknown number of occupants in an unknown physical state that couldn’t be easily communicated with. Bloody hell all I know is I’m glad it wasn’t me having to work out what to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted October 31, 2019 VT Supporter Share Posted October 31, 2019 I've worked for donkeys in various office buildings of various sizes. One of them I was on the 8th floor when a fire drill began. I knew where the staircase for fire escape was, and ended up stood on said staircase in a huge queue for half an hour. I did wonder what would have happened on a real fire. After that I eventually worked in a larger office building. It has a very different fire escape drill. An automated message would come over a tannoy to tell you that there was an incident being investigated and not to evacuate until instructed. They then evacuated floors in groups. Which meant in theory you could be sat in a building on fire waiting to be told to get out because the building is so large with some many people in it trying to get everyone out at once would probably end in even greater disaster. Which was a sobering thought every week when they did the fire drill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 (edited) Edit: After having read his witness statement, the thread isn't quite accurate. It gives the impression that the gas was turned off after he went in to the building but this wasn't the case as he wasn't able to do anything other than check it out before they were ordered to evacuate. The flow of gas was eventually stopped at about 11:40pm after work was doone on the 15" main. As per the last tweet in that thread, he and his team deserve the praise - they decided to continue with their excavation work to locate the mains even after the LFB warned that the building was unsafe and they ought to withdraw from the excavation sites. Witness statement can be read here. Quote Witness statements of Jason Allday Edited October 31, 2019 by snowychap Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted November 16, 2019 Share Posted November 16, 2019 (edited) Edited November 16, 2019 by snowychap Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted November 16, 2019 Share Posted November 16, 2019 The estimate is 17,000 people living in similar buildings. I for one am glad the government are working at such incredible speed to address this. Absolute scandal, they basically couldn’t give a shit if more people burn to death. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted November 16, 2019 Share Posted November 16, 2019 That Bolton ones a weird one, different to grenfell because the fire was at the top rather than the bottom so the problem on funneling up inside the cladding didn't happen The cladding panel has burnt out and melted away but the structural steel has held in place, the photos don't tell you how long that cladding burnt for, like I said before it's not meant to be there burning away for hours it's designed for holding until you get out, if that buildings been on fire for 6 hours then yeah most of the buildings products have gone I've built 3 tower blocks using high pressure laminate on the top floor (I'm guessing they mean like a formica product) I'm sure it was used at Lancaster House which you can see off the m5 in black heath, it's been used to clad parts of 2 schools that I've built Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted November 16, 2019 Share Posted November 16, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted November 16, 2019 Share Posted November 16, 2019 It’s a tricky one. On the one hand, these materials kill people in fires, on the other hand, actually testing products is soooo boring and time consuming and they are a bit cheaper than the stuff that doesn’t ignite and go up like a bonfire. So pro’s and con’s. 2005 - 3 deaths 2009 - 6 deaths 2010 - 2 deaths 2017 - 72 deaths No point in rushing these things. The inquiry resumes again next year. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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