A fire destroyed a residential tower of London - Thoughts for the Londoners who cross currently a bad times
General / Off-Topic London Flats Fire
- Thread starter Patrick_68000
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It seems that there are several deaths and many injured. Compassion for the victims
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Fire seems to have been mainly the plastic cladding on the outside of the building, fitted long after the block was built. It seems that the residents have been complaining about the danger for years, and the landlords & local authorities did nothing. Other safety issues too.
Very sad, and may have a lot of consequences.
EDIT: Have just seen that maybe >500 people live there, only around 100 have sought medical help. Could be a large number of fatalities.
Very sad, and may have a lot of consequences.
EDIT: Have just seen that maybe >500 people live there, only around 100 have sought medical help. Could be a large number of fatalities.
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The cladding used on the outside of tower blocks is supposed to be non-flammable, usually a twin layer of aluminium (or similar) with an insulating material filling I believe. It certainly is not supposed to be plastic (in the sense of a polymer-type material).
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Yaffle
Volunteer Moderator
a little bad taste in the title there mate.
What a horrific thing, just so so awful
I changed it to something more suitable. I don't think any offence was intended.
I was surprised to read this in the Guardian though:
Arnold Tarling, a chartered surveyor at Hindwoods and a fire safety expert, says the elephant in the room is the flammability of insulation panels that are being used to clad postwar buildings to bring them up to date with today’s thermal standards. A recent £8.7m refurbishment of Grenfell Tower saw the building clad with “ACM cassette rainscreen” panels, an aluminium composite material covering insulation panels, which could have caused the fire to spread more quickly up the facade of the tower.
“The issue is that, under building regulations, only the surface of the cladding has to be fire proofed to class 0, which is about surface spread,” says Tarling. “The stuff behind it doesn’t, and it’s this which has burned.” He says he recently inspected a new-build eight storey block in south-east London where there was no fire protection in the external cavity walls. “The insulation behind the external cladding is flammable polyurethane. I know because I took a chunk out and burned it.”
( https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...g-to-happen-fire-expert-slams-uk-tower-blocks )
... Makes you wonder.
Sorry, when I wrote the title in connection with the movie create in 1974 by John Guillermin and Irwin Allen, I did not think of the evil and I found that there was a similarity in the scale of the disaster. Moreover, this morning in the French press, they did not yet speak of the deaths but only some wounded. I sincerely thought that everyone had been evacuated. Sorry if I have shocked (unintentionally)
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12 Dead so far with the number expected to rise, the block is still on fire.
The nightmare, a tragedy
Boris is facing some questions, and he's not taking it very gracefully. I think the pressure is starting to get to him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN3e-aYUusc
Published on 12 Sep 2013.
Boris, an elephant in a china store....
BBC reports showed large smoldering black chunks of insulating material landing blocks away from the burning building. It sure looks like that's the material to blame.
Don't know what gases it might release from combustion, but they are probably polycyclc arenes. Also probably carcinogenic.
The secondary disaster of the surrounding area contamination is often overlooked, but maybe not this time. Cancers spiked in NYC after the 9/11 event. If anybody is near that site, they should consider relocating.
Don't know what gases it might release from combustion, but they are probably polycyclc arenes. Also probably carcinogenic.
The secondary disaster of the surrounding area contamination is often overlooked, but maybe not this time. Cancers spiked in NYC after the 9/11 event. If anybody is near that site, they should consider relocating.
At this time there are 12 confirmed dead. It appears that the fire started in a flat on the fourth floor when a refrigerator exploded. The cladding appears to have bypassed the 'safe box' design (this was implemented in 1971 regulations, after the Ronan Point tower block collapse when a there was a gas explosion in a kitchen on the 18th floor) that meant, should there be a fire in a room, you could close the door (ALL doors throughout the building, as far as I know, are required to be fire doors, but I am NOT certain of this) and the fire should remain contained within for an hour. In theory it should have taken over twenty hours for the fire to have gone from floor four to floor twenty four, and the fire escape route would have been clear (for the whole route) for at least one hour.
[video=youtube;febNnAt0O1c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=febNnAt0O1c[/video]
[video=youtube;febNnAt0O1c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=febNnAt0O1c[/video]
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There has been a report that has been around since 2013 that was compiled in the wake of a similar, but smaller, fire. It goes into the insulation, the cladding and the fire safety requirements an standards in tower blocks; with regard to fire. One of the things it stated, was the need to change the regulation that meant the insulation under the cladding; did not have to be fire proof. It has been suppressed and ignored by the government since 2013, a number of ministers responsible for such things, have promised a 'review', time and time again. Up until last week, the local M.P. was a Tory and has been for decades and so any concerns from the local council tenants, have always fallen on deaf ears.
It appears that the cladding was fire resistant to SURFACE flames. However, if a refrigerator DID explode it could have damaged the cladding, exposing the underlying layers. If these layers were NOT fire resistant they would have caught fire, and allowed for it to spread throughout the insulation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronan_Point
I have just seen that Grenfell Tower still has fires going on within it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronan_Point
I have just seen that Grenfell Tower still has fires going on within it.
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Oops.