Disaster Grenfell Tower fire & fallout

EDIT: The OP is out of Date. Will get around to updating someday.

Former topic title:

Spoiler

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...ll-tower-block-white-city-latimer-road-london

A fire has broken out in a tower block in west London with reports that people are trapped in their homes.

The fire in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in Latimer Road in White City started in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The fire brigade said on Twitter they were responding to a fire on the Lancaster West Estate. Two hundred fire fighters are at the scene along with forty engines that were called at just after 1.15am.

Photographs and video from the scene showed huge flames engulfing most of the block, with lights on in many windows. The tower contains 120 homes.

Witnesses described hearing shouts for help coming from people inside the tower and walls of the building creaking.

Fabio Bebber tweeted from the scene that the fire had taken over most of the block.

The Metropolitan Police said two people were being treated at the scene for smoke inhalation and cordons were in place. Residents in neighbouring streets were being evacuated.

George Clarke, the presenter of Amazing Spaces, lives nearby. He told Radio 5 Live: “I was in bed and heard ‘beep, beep, beep’ and thought, ‘I’ll get up and run downstairs as quickly as I could’.

“I thought it might be a car alarm outside and saw the glow through the windows.

“I’m getting covered in ash, that’s how bad it is. I’m 100 metres away and I’m absolutely covered in ash.

“It’s so heartbreaking, I’ve seen someone flashing their torches at the top level and they obviously can’t get out.

“The guys are doing an incredible job to try and get people out that building, but it’s truly awful.”

The tower block was built in the 1970s as part of the Lancaster West Estate project.

 

[cans.wav]

A good thing that may lessen the final death toll at least a little is that many residents of this tower were Muslim and were up eating dinner because of the fast break.

 

[El Garbage]

According to pictures, the outer cladding has pretty much burned away completely. 1970s prefab construction is also horribly leaky, especially with pipe renovations done later on, so it's very easy for a fire to climb from one apartment to another and go through the service ducts.

Also, rents at over 2000£ per month, and the building was such a pile of shit? JESUS CHRIST.

 

[Bork Laser]

At this point doesn't matter if Kebab or not. You just showed them that British buildings are such shit you don't even need to makes bombs or shoot up a place. Just rent a house and leave the fucking stove on.

 

[Ravenor]

Also, rents at over 2000£ per month, and the building was such a pile of shit? JESUS CHRIST.

For london thats cheap, seriously the cost of living in the UK is huge but in london its 3/4 times the national average there is a reason London is called the most expensive city in the world.

 

[repentance]

For london thats cheap, seriously the cost of living in the UK is huge but in london its 3/4 times the national average there is a reason London is called the most expensive city in the world.

Strikes me as pretty similar cost to Sydney or the Bay Area in the US. That apartment block was located in one hella desirable location.

 

[Fareal]

Because I'm old:

Every kiwi reading this thread lives somewhere.

Do three things when you get home tonight.

- Check your smoke alarm. If you're thinking "don't have one lolz", this is not lolz. Get your arse on Amazon and buy one. They're not expensive. Your life is worth ten or fifteen quid. Get one and fit it. Test it AT LEAST twice a year. If you live in a place where the clocks change to summertime, test it when you change the clocks; that's an easy way to remember. If you have smoke alarms, test them tonight. Your smoke alarm is the thing that is going to save your life in the event of fire. Make bloody certain it works and its batteries are working.

- Think for five minutes about how you would get out of your house in the case of a fire. I mean, actually think. Most house fires start in the living room or kitchen. Most of them start at night. Assume you're asleep in bed, and a fire starts in your kitchen. Walk yourself mentally through how you're going to get out.

Remember smoke obscures visibility fast, and in a fire, the air at head height can be hot enough to burn your lungs irrecoverably. You will have serious difficulty orienting yourself even in somewhere as familiar as home. Assume you won't be able to stand up, and that you will be able to see very little.

Are the keys for the doors somewhere you can reach them in the event of a fire? In smoke and heat, you will need to get down on the floor and stay there as much as you can. You won't be able to find keys left 'somewhere in the kitchen' or 'on top of the fridge' or some other shit. Keep the keys where you can get them.

If there is shit - parcels, furniture, bikes - around your doorway and hallway that could potentially block your exit, move it tonight.

Have a plan and stick to it. The plan is, GET OUT NOW. You do not have time to stop for documents or grab a bag or go back for your phone or other shit. Your shit is replaceable. You are not. The fire services' advice has always been that you must be able to get everyone out in two minutes or less. Everyone. If you have kids or older people - especially kids, who are easily disoriented - living with you, they NEED to know how to get out. Most kids who die in fires are found hiding somewhere. Under a bed, in a wardrobe. They get scared and they hide and the fire service can't find them and that's how they die. They MUST know how to get out.

If your plan involves getting out via a window, buy those wee tools off Amazon that will break windows (they look like little punch tools), keep them somewhere near the window where they could be reached in the event of a fire, and make sure everyone who would need to break the window knows how to break the window and get out.

- Practice basic fire prevention. Most house fires are preventable. Turn shit you aren't using off at night. Don't run your tumble dryer unattended. No, really, do not run your tumble dryer unattended. If you must smoke inside, make sure to put all cigarettes out thoroughly. Don't put recently extinguished butts in a bin, especially last thing at night. Be careful about candles. Don't cover your electricals: don't put your phone on to charge and then put it under your pillow. Shut all doors at night. Your standard domestic door can withstand a fire on the other side of it for fifteen to twenty minutes - if it is closed. Close your doors.

I say, do these things tonight, because serious fires are not like an eviction. You do not get advance written warning that this is the night that you will wake up confused and frightened in a smoky house and not know how to get out, and falling over stuff whilst disoriented. Assuming your smoke alarm is working, of course. Otherwise you won't even wake up.

This could be the night. Know how to save your life, and the lives of those you are responsible for.

 

[glass_houses]

People in the surrounding area are both very lucky and very fortunate. Any sort of wind and there'd be flaming debris everywhere, and the fireys would have been fighting on a number of different fronts. And by all accounts those fireys have phenomenal skills and willpower. Can you imagine this fire breaking out in high winds, and half of London's emergency response group out chasing fallen power lines? I can't. It's so horrifically awful that my brain shuts down.

 

[heathercho]

The warnings, evidence and complaints on the Grenfell action group paint a pretty grim reality of the entire tower and council/gov people ignoring every single warning sign. The corruption on a local level has killed these people.

Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in our landlords failure to deal with a serious health and safety issue that recently developed at the entrance/exit to Grenfell Tower. This matter is of particular concern as there is only one entry and exit to Grenfell Tower during the Improvement Works and the potential for a fire to break out in the communal area on the walkway does not bear thinking about as residents would be trapped in the building with no way out!

In recent weeks TMO staff allowed a quantity of household ‘bulk’ rubbish to accumulate, including old mattresses, in the temporary entrance foyer of the tower. This accumulation constituted a potential fire risk and a danger to residents. The TMO area manager and her staff were slow to react and no-one had been bothered to organise the clearence of this rubbish.

@repentance Government acquired insulation to make the place "greener" too. We know how well that pans out.

 

[repentance]

Shamelessly stolen from Something Awful's thread on this.

This is going to be a future episode of Seconds From Disaster.

tbh, I'd hate to think what would happen if fire broke out in one of the underground stations in Sydney which have been undergoing renovations over the last couple of years. There's no quick and easy exit to the street from them at the moment.

 

[glass_houses]

So. I've just done the same thing any sensible lass does in interesting times: I rang me Dad. He's been retired for a lot of years, but back in the day he used to be very high up in NSW's emergency services fire department. Obviously his technical information is a bit out of date, but it never hurts to ask.

* This type of cladding is of a Japanese (I could be remembering wrong, but I think he did say Japanese instead of Chinese; I didn't take notes as he was talking) origin, and is fireproof right up until it reaches a particular temperature, then the fucker goes up like a bush fire in January and good luck putting it out. And that particular temperature is very, very low, say, about the temperature of a smoldering dog end from a cigarette.

* The cladding catches fire fast but burns and smolders for a long time before the fire runs out of fuel.

* According to me Dad, it looks like there were no working sprinklers in the building, and even if there were chances are good that they'd be ineffectual anyway, because the flames travelled up the outside of the building and then moved inside.

* I knew that the answer would be "No" to this one, but I asked anyway: would a water bombing helicopter dropping water on the top of the building have helped put the fire on the top floors out? The answer was indeed "No" as I expected. I had guessed that the force of the falling water would badly damage the superstructure and send debris everywhere, but according to me Dad, the water falling down the centre of the building would have turned to steam instantaneously, which would split the entire building in half almost immediately. Rather more dramatic.

* A lot of people have died, because they were effectively trapped as soon as the fire started. No way out even if the fire alarms had gone off.

* Apparently, a central fire exit is one of those counter intuitive things that exist.

I left it at that. As I said, his experience is out of date and from a different hemisphere, so there's a limited amount he could tell me.

 

[Staffy]

Watch ISIS claim responsibility in the next hours or so.

 

[captn_kettle]

View attachment 233590

Shamelessly stolen from Something Awful's thread on this.

This is going to be a future episode of Seconds From Disaster.

tbh, I'd hate to think what would happen if fire broke out in one of the underground stations in Sydney which have been undergoing renovations over the last couple of years. There's no quick and easy exit to the street from them at the moment.

People have reported that aluminium rain screen cladding was used.

This is the company who did the renovations:
http://web.archive.org/web/20170614...ies/refurbishment-case-studies/grenfell-tower

And this is the company which supplied them, which since went bust:
http://archive.is/0OvYE

I don't know if any kiwis would know why, but I'm just trying to make heads and tails of this next part.

So Harley curtain walls went into liquidation:
http://archive.is/mIpdd

And you can see an archive of their website here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20141221094025/http://www.harleycurtainwall.com:80/

But in 2015, any archives started redirecting to "Harley facades". A website that looks identical to the old one:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150801181610/Harleycurtainwall.com

Companies house says it's still active although they seem to be having similar issues, and is owned by the same people:
http://archive.is/Nd9mx

Is it just that Harley curtain wall was a sub-division of Harley facades and under financial issues, just let that sub-division liquidate?

Edit: never mind, it explain on their website.

Harley curtain walls was the original business. Harley facades deals with specialist refurbishment including high rise tower blocks.

 

[repentance]

* A lot of people have died, because they were effectively trapped as soon as the fire started. No way out even if the fire alarms had gone off.

* Apparently, a central fire exit is one of those counter intuitive things that exist.

It's a bit unclear but it sounds like it might ordinarily have had more than one fire exit, but that the others have been inaccessible throughout the renovations.

Either way, high rises are death traps in a fire. You need to put your money into fire prevention and fire suppression because once one spreads there is little firefighters can do except stop it spreading to other buildings.

Just read elsewhere that 170 buildings in Melbourne are clad with the same material.

 

[heathercho]

Just read elsewhere that 170 buildings in Melbourne are clad with the same material.

I was wondering that. They've been building an awful lot of hideous towers in Melbourne and Sydney (specifically Western Sydney) for the influx of African refugees they've stupidly taken in. I noticed at a lot of the construction sites they had either Africans or Indians working on them, the construction is shoddy and cheap looking, so I was wondering if they were using gov green insulation - which I found out they have in a few towers there and a shitty looking village thing out that way. Both towers and villages are covered in this cladding too. Why am I not surprised....

Another possible reason to go kaboom :

An end may finally be in sight to the mysterious and distressing power surges that have bedevilled Grenfell Tower residents throughout the past month. However, decisive action was only taken yesterday after highly distressed residents descended en masse on the estate office to demand action. They had woken to find smoke issuing from various electrical appliances in their homes, including the light fixtures, and descended in panic to the estate office to demand help and assistance. Emergency electricians who attended later in the day were finally, it seems, able to identify the source of the problem. An emergency temporary electrical by-pass supply has been provided and the necessary follow–up works will be carried out in the near future.

It is very clear at this stage that the electrical supply to Grenfell Tower has been in a very dangerous condition for several weeks. It is equally clear that the authorities had been repeatedly warned of this but had failed to react with sufficient urgency and had failed to take adequate remedial measures.

This is also incredibly sad and frustrating :

STOP PRESS – BREAKING NEWS
Thursday 30th May 9.13am

Many residents in Grenfell Tower are extremely shocked and angry about what has happened and many of the people descending on the Estate Office yesterday morning were distressed and close to tears. It is a fact that many households in Grenfell Tower have now lost the majority of their electrical appliances (washing machines, computers, televisions, etc) and very few (if any) of these residents have any household insurance.

We want to know why the problem of the power surge was not taken seriously when it was first reported and why, as a result of this dangerous and negligent behaviour, many residents have had their health and safety placed at extreme risk, in addition to losing electrical appliances in their properties?

 

[repentance]

There were no sprinklers (not that they would have helped in this case).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/14/everything-know-grenfell-tower-blaze/

 

[Dysnomia]

According to pictures, the outer cladding has pretty much burned away completely. 1970s prefab construction is also horribly leaky, especially with pipe renovations done later on, so it's very easy for a fire to climb from one apartment to another and go through the service ducts.

Also, rents at over 2000£ per month, and the building was such a pile of shit? JESUS CHRIST.

I guess no one cares about fire safety as long as they are collecting the rent. This is like a real life Towering Inferno.

 

[Caddchef]

According to pictures, the outer cladding has pretty much burned away completely. 1970s prefab construction is also horribly leaky, especially with pipe renovations done later on, so it's very easy for a fire to climb from one apartment to another and go through the service ducts.

Also, rents at over 2000£ per month, and the building was such a pile of shit? JESUS CHRIST.

Welcome to London, mate.

I've no idea why these people don't just move up north where £2k a month will buy you a fucking mansion.

 

[repentance]

I guess no one cares about fire safety as long as they are collecting the rent. This is like a real life Towering Inferno.

Much newer buildings with the same cladding have suffered similar fates in other parts of the world. The problem is that the cladding is nominally safe, but only as long as a fire doesn't start at or reach the exterior of the building - meaning that under real world conditions it's not safe at all for the type of buildings on which it's being used.

 

[Fareal]

Did someone add this link yet about the cladding? Interesting read

http://www.probyn-miers.com/perspec...rnal-cladding-panels-perspective-from-the-uk/

 

[CervixHammer]

After 11 hours, it was reported that there were still residents alive in the building signalling for help, but the building was in imminent danger of collapse and was beginning to lean to one side.

in b4 Alex Jones screaming about Building 7.