RobW wrote:It's an unimaginably horrible thing this but some of the survivors are beginning to piss me off.
I've read one interview where a woman is saying how "they" should have taught us how to evacuate a burning building properly and another where someone is complaining that an old mattress and rubbish were left in the corridor outside her flat for weeks and nobody came to clean it up. Well, you know.
I'm with the residents on this one. An analysis of this case reads as a litany of legitimate concerns which appeared to be continually ignored.
With respect to evacuation policy, there should really be a clear plan in place which is understood by all occupants. Unfortunately the "stay put" advice which appears to have been given is based on assumptions that certain criteria have been followed such as sprinklers in place and flats have adequate "containment". However these were not in place at Grenfell Tower.
Below are a few quotes from a Guardian article which documents some of the issues quite well.
Following a fire in 2009 at Lakanal House, a tower block in Southwark, south London, which killed six people. In 2013,
Frances Kirkham, the coroner who conducted the inquest, outlined several suggestions as to how a similar tragedy could be avoided. in the future.
Kirkham said there was a need to resolve conflicting guidance for those in high-rise blocks as to whether they should “stay put” or “get out, stay out”. Fire safety notices told Grenfell Tower residents to stay put. Several believe they are alive only because they ignored this advice.
Kirkham also recommended that the government encourage councils to retrofit sprinklers in tower blocks. But the government saw this as an unnecessary burden and suggested instead that it be left to the fire industry to “encourage their wider installation”.
This was a tragic missed opportunity, according to Sibert. “If the building had been provided with sprinklers then that fire, if it started in the kitchen, would never have got out of the kitchen and nobody except the firefighters who would have gone there to mop up would have known about it.”
Sprinklers were retrofitted in a similar tower at Callow Mount in Sheffield two years ago at a cost of £1,100 per flat.
The Fire Brigades Union claims there has never been a multiple death in a building fitted with sprinklers.
With respect to rubbish etc.
More recently the Grenfell Action Group (GAG), which represents the interests of the largely immigrant tenants who lived in the tower, warned about the fire threat posed by discarded rubbish,
In an email sent in 2014 to the chief fire officer at Kensington fire station, a member of GAG said that
residents feared the improvement works had turned the building into a “fire trap”. He wrote: “There is only one entry and exit to the tower block itself and, in the event of a fire, the London fire brigade could only gain access to the entrance to the building by climbing four flights of narrow stairs.
On top of this, the fire escape exit on the walkway level has now been sealed.
In a horribly prescient blog post, written last November, they said that t
hey had “reached the conclusion that only an incident that results in serious loss of life of KCTMO residents will allow the external scrutiny to occur that will shine a light on the practices that characterise the malign governance of this non-functioning organisation”.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... ire-safety