Hillsborough, Orgreave and now Grenfell

Not what the government report said happened.

 

I work in the industry and can confirm this is a bigger issue than the cladding. At least the cladding can be relatively easy to sort.

Monitoring people 24/7 is not so easy.

Prop doors open, cr@p everywhere, Snap off the self-closers and sometimes remove full doors. Privately owned or council rented. No difference at all.

 

Crikey!

 

Cuts to Fire Service over the years have led to fire safety checks of buildings/ offices becoming non existent . I remember 30 years ago you had a fire safety check seemingly every month , can’t remember the last time I saw a fireman in my office

 

Im a firefighter, been to a few flat fires in high rise buildings. Can be extremely difficult and complex incidents, when actually it still is a bread and butter fire in a room, but the fact that its say 17 floors up, does make things far more logistically taxing, the main one obvioulsy is getting water up there.
The stay put policy has always been in place whilst ive been in the fire service and has never been questioned due to fires in this type of environment being dealt with quite quickly.
The majority of high rise buildings (old type) are just a series of self contained concrete boxes on top of each other so fire spread is usually minimal (without going technical and going into wind driven spread).
The stay put policy helps us when first on scence to quickly find the flat involved and get the correct equipment and media to be prepared for what is behind the door on the correct floor. Many residents running around panicking and opening windows and doors (offering oxygen to the fire) although is understandable, isnt ideal. We often deal with the fire without bothering many of the residents at all.
In this particular incident from what i can gather is that it was just a routine appliance fire in the kitchen of a flat on the 4th floor. It was summer so i reckon the windows will have been opened in the flat. The firefighters located the flat and proceeded to extinguish the fire which potentially could have been by now a kitchen fire.
At 4 floors up, you would have potentially had a wind driven effect and unfortunatley there may have been a perfect storm situation where the wind that was running through the flat and helped push the fire and really hot unburnt fire gases through the kitchen window and set alight to the flammable (yes thats right, highly flammable) cladding on the exterior of the building and spread horrifically from there.
The person in charge of the incident (OIC) will im sure, not be aware of the petrol like wrapping the building had so would have been happy to go along with the long held stay put policy.
Occupants by now will have been calling 999, and the operators will have been telling them im sure to stay put, were coming to get you. The operators were not to know the fire was spreading so incredibley and would not have any notion to stray from the long held stay put policy.
Here though the OIC had a decision to make, he would have been positioned on the ground and would have been able to ascertain to some extent, the fire spread and make a decision accordingly. With the benefit of hindsight, he may have decided in this case it would have been better to evacuate but that would mean putting your name to going against an historical policy of occupants staying put in fire situations and resulting in many deaths.
Of course this was unprecedented due to the horrific spread but its my belief that if he had made that decision, blame would still have been apportioned to him and the fire service. I guess im saying it was a truly awful situation and was kind of dammed if he did and dammed if he didnt as hindsight would prove. Potentially less lives would have been lost but thats not a given and easy to say after.
Im aware of firefighters who attended that fateful night and I hear accounts of firefighters trying to contact love ones to say goodbye whilst inside the building as they thought they were going to run out of air. Stories of physical exhaustion as Firefighters themselves had to be carried out due to refusing to give up trying to rescue occupants, even with no air left. Amazing people doing whatever they could, and I find it disgusting their bravery and decisions on a difficult night being questioned by this witch hunt trying to protect the local council and government for decisions which we all know contributed to the death of many people who just didnt matter, powerless, defenceless, meaningless, poor people.
Make no mistake, I reckon every member of the fire service will have questioned whether they could have done anything differently that night (its what we do) but i think none will be thinking they could have done more.
Im not saying the stay put policy shouldnt be changed, its definatley open to debate, especially taking into account the different design of high rise buildings nowadays and if were going to continue to coat them in flammable material.
To blame the fire service here I think is deflecting the quite obvious factor of what was to blame and who implemented it. Typical Tories, disgusting.