[Dancingwilldoit]

Totally non football related but I really do need to ask a blatantly obvious question. My heart truly goes out to everyone affected by this disaster.
The horrors of this will scar many people for life and I can fully understand their frustrations with anybody in authority but nowhere have I seen or heard who the fu*k gave the advise/instruction that if there was a fire in that tower block people should stay in their rooms and wait for the fire brigade to come and save them? Everything else aside this has to be the one single contributable factor that caused most needless loss of life. Those who got out have genuine reason to get upset with anybody in authority but at least they are alive.
Any other fire drill for industrial premises, shopping centres, homes, is get out as quick as you can and yet here it was totally the opposite. Is it me or is it that nobody likes to point a finger at the fire service because that is undoubtedly where this will have come from. Health and safety has gone mad in this country but nobody seems to want to take responsibility when things like this go wrong, "not me guv" is everywhere. A simple risk assessment says on one hand stay in your room and die from smoke inhalation or burns or on the other risk bumping into a fireman trying to come up the fire escape whilst you are on your way down. FFS that why they call them fire escapes !!!!
Rant over.

[Devongone]

In industrial premises you get fire drills. Everyone knows where to go. Fire Officers are appointed. Is that practicable in a block of flats, where people are never going to be there at the same time for drills, where English is perhaps their third language, where tenancies are ever-changing ........... ????????

Worldwide there are hardly any deaths from fires where sprinklers have been installed.

Apparently it would have cost just £200,000 to install sprinklers at Grenfell. Apparently there are 4,000 similarly unprotected blocks in this country. So before we even think about the cladding problem or the advising tenants to run downstairs and trample everyone underfoot we need to multiply 200,000 by 4,000, realise that in terms of government expenditure that isn't huge and get the fcku on with installing sprinklers tomorrow. We can do cladding, investigating the renovation project, examining the appropriateness or otherwise of safety advice later. Sprinkler systems exist, get manufacturing, get installing. Re-building 4,000 blocks is going to take longer than even a public enquiry or inquests. Sprinklers we can make a start Monday if someone in charge of the Treasury's magic money tree plays on his abacus and notifies local authorities.

[Lord Snooty]

As I see it, and my facts may not be 110%, but following a fire in a similar block of flats a few years ago, there was a bill in Parliament to make it law for these flats to be fit for living. This would've made it compulsory for sprinklers to be put in.
There were a load of Tories, many of which were money grabbing landlords themselves, David Cameron included, voted to bring this bill down.

Another thing, with the design of these tower blocks, why only one staircase? Shouldn't buildings like this have one of those exterior fire escapes?

[St Charles Owl]

Over here in the US, the cost to install a fire sprinkler system in an existing high rise building would be expected to cost about $4/sqft (3 pounds), not sure how big this building was but if it is 100ft x 100ft square (??) then the cost would be just over 500,000 pounds, on that basis I think that 200,00 pounds figure is lower than what it would actually cost unless these is some significant differences between sprinkler cost over here and in the UK.

Even if the quoted figure is correct, the outlay to do all the potential problem towers would be 800m pounds, not a small chunk of change and a figure that would scare the crap out of most councils or private owners. Insurance companies would likely "pay" some of the cost with good reductions in premiums for buildings with sprinkler systems but unless the government legislates to make this mandatory it will still be something that building owners shy away from doing.

[Devongone]

Imagine the mayhem of exterior fire escapes in London. They'd be a gift for crime. Youngsters would be up and down them causing mayhem .......... Nutters would be up the fire escape at 2 in the morning. Quality of life for residents would be zero.

We can't install second staircases in 4,000 blocks of flats.

We CAN install sprinklers. And we do have the money. The sprinklers exist. There are planners, architects, builders and surveyors. There are sprinkler installers. If we wanted we could start now.

Obviously we don't want. A hundred poorish people, quite a lot of whom weren't even born in this country, what are they worth, a public enquiry? The last one took four years and was largely disregarded.

WE ARE PUTTING ASIDE GROWING BILLIONS TO BUILD A USELESS RAILWAY LINE AND A NUCLEAR DEFENCE SYSTEM THAT WILL BE OBSOLETE BEFORE IT IS COMMISSIONED. £800 million is governmental peanuts, civil service chocolate fckuing biscuits.

In football terms the Government is being asked for just 47 Harry Maguires to protect the residents of 4,000 blocks of flats and to provide work and thus boost the economies of those areas too. Just 47 promising young centre backs.

[Amelia Chaffinch]

Yeah, it just has to be done. There shouldn't be an argument against.

[St Charles Owl]

As I see it, and my facts may not be 110%, but following a fire in a similar block of flats a few years ago, there was a bill in Parliament to make it law for these flats to be fit for living. This would've made it compulsory for sprinklers to be put in.
There were a load of Tories, many of which were money grabbing landlords themselves, David Cameron included, voted to bring this bill down.

Another thing, with the design of these tower blocks, why only one staircase? Shouldn't buildings like this have one of those exterior fire escapes?

There is currently no law on the books that requires existing building to have sprinkler systems in the UK. New buildings over a certain height have to install them but no retrofit law. This has been a known issue for many years and successive governments have passed various laws to improve fire proofing with materials, doors, walls etc but they have always steered away from making sprinkler systems mandatory in existing buildings.

As regards the staircase, thats just the way these buildings were build in the 60s. External fire escapes are not viable in most buildings and in this case would have actually been unusable due to the fire moving up the outside of the building. One fire escape should work as long as it has the necessary one hour long fire protection measure built into it and as long as the rest of the building is up to code.

[Dancingwilldoit]

I have read somewhere that some of the flats were privately owned by the tenants and they voted against having sprinklers installed because they all had to agree to pay for their own. So many things being written god knows whats true and what isn't.
One thing I can say for fact is that the polyurethane used to line the new cladding is highly flammable. It gives off toxic fumes when it burns and melts. How the hell it could ever be approved for insulation of buildings beggars belief. The answer to that is "well it isn't against the building regs".

[St Charles Owl]

You are right - that is the answer as to why it stills gets used in the UK. It was banned over here quite a while ago from a variety of building materials!! I read something that said the tenants voted against it due to the prolonged disruption to install it, but like you say who knows what is truth and alternative facts!!!

[Devongone]

The biggest bollocks of an alternative-fact election was that "there is no magic money tree". Yes there is! Idiot economists call it Quantitative Easing. Governments can not only raise money and confiscate it, they can also make it. They could even pass a law that sea shells are legal tender!

The government could introduce an emergency bill the day after announcing it in the Queen's speech that every block of flats in the country has to be retro-fitted with a sprinkler system within one year and that the cost would be underwritten by central government.

Instead it prefers to ride out the firestorm with promises of a Public Inquiry probably under the auspices of some nice old judge, who everybody loves and is too honourable and nice to run away from the public reaction. He won't know any more about fires than he learned in the scouts, experts will be called and of course the most unpublic feature of a public inquiry is that the residents and their families will have no voice.

By the way am I the only one who thinks Mrs May is not only a diabetic, she also has Aspergers?

47 Harry Maguires - that's all.