On Thu, 31 Oct 2019 10:33:20 +0000, Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Wed, 30 Oct 2019 20:38:03 -0000, NY wrote:

For Grenfell, as designed and built, that was the correct advice.
Each flat had a 60 minute fire resistance. The original fire was
extinguished within the single flat well within 60 minutes.

The problem was that some **** had wrapped the building in highly
flammable plastic, aluminium and insulation that the small flat
fire
ignited.

And so the advice was *not* correct for the building as it existed at
the time. Either the fire brigade survey of large residential buildings
was not kept up to date when the cladding was applied, ...

Inspections that I believe are/were no longer under the local Fire and
Rescue services.

... or else the first crews to arrive didn't recognise that burning
debris was falling off the surface of the walls ...

The first crews put the fire out in the flat, they also noticed that it
had got into the cladding/insulation. But how do you fight a fire in a
cavity behind waterproof cladding at fourth floor level? A cavity acting
as a bloody great chimney with missing/badly fitted fire stops?

... and/or weren't able to get authority to alter the existing "stay
put" instructions to residents.

The fire brigade (especially senior managers) have come in for a lot of
flak at the recent enquiry...

The delay, visible with hind sight, in changing the instruction from
stay to get out is the only thing that the LFB got, for want of a better
word, wrong. The fire breached the kitchen window at 0108 and reached
the roof, 20 stories higher, within 20 minutes. 20 minutes is the blink
of an eye in rapidly changing, live, situation.

It'll be very interesting to see whose heads roll, if any, with the 2nd
enquiry. Those that signed off the use of the cladding, outside of it's
specified use constrains, those that didn't correctly assess *all* the
implications of the changes to the building on the fire risk, those
tasked with ensuring the work was actually done to spec. etc etc.

They are the ones to "blame" not the LFB sent in to pickup the
consequences of others incompetence or spreadsheet gazing.

To that, add those who delayed getting the smoke extraction fixed. It had
broken eight days before and they were not hurrying to fix it.

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