Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

Pyxis

There were some interviews with fire prevention people earlier, and they said that the stairwells should be the most firesafe, the most secure, but that doesn't appear to have been the case here.

There was great shock that the fire wasn't contained within the flat, or wherever, it started in. It should have been, if the right fire precautions had been installed.

LydiaJ

Pyxis wrote: »

That's criminal.

Mind you, without going into details, I have had personal experience of a builder of a block of flats taking short cuts and leaving the block sub-standard. Luckily, after a lot of wrangling, it was all put right by the insurance provisions, and the underwriters went after the builder, who was a biggish company.
It all took ages, though, about 5 years.

The rented house I lived it before I bought the house I'm in now was about 5 years old when we moved in and the build quality was shocking. For example, the cooker had an extractor fan over it, and there was a hole through the wall, but no tube to connect the two, so it was just sucking up the cooking fumes and blowing them out into the kitchen again, while the hole meant that the kitchen was open to outside and also to the cavity in the wall. I got the letting agent to fix all sorts of things of that sort. Nothing dangerous or structural, AFAIK, though.

Pyxis wrote: »

QUOTE:31 May 2011 - There are no happy endings to a fire in a high rise structure. ... 99% of the world's ladder trucks can't reach above the 7th floor whereas MOST high rises are at-least 12 floors and above.UNQUOTE

Also, apparently water jets can only reach about 100ft too.

A few years ago, there was a programme on TV about how to be a survivor. One of the things they recommended was, when booking a hotel room, try not to go higher than the 7th or 8th floor, for that very reason.

Another thing they recommended, which is something I always do, is to spend a couple of minutes checking where the nearest fire escape route is, and to actually walk to it from your room, and pace out the number of steps to reach it. The reason being that if there are no lights, a lot of smoke and a lot of mayhem, you could easily miss the door to the escape route, however close it is to your room. Your sense of perception and distance disappears in those situations.

A few minutes of bother which might save your life.

Some people say that when they are on holiday they don't want to think of gloom and doom, and why be so pessimistic?
Well, my answer to that is, do they walk straight out into the road, or do they stop and look right, left and right again?

Anyway, what this programme pointed out was that the people that do consider the worse case scenarios are the ones who survive!
We're not survival worriers, we're survival warriors!

Good advice Pyxis. For similar reasons, when travelling by train I choose if possible to be near the middle of it.

Percy1983 wrote: »

It seems I only come here with bad news these days, but this time its beyond devastating.

My nephew is dead, he took his own life.

He was only 18 there is no note or no explanation, we are in limbo waiting for the coroner to release his body.

We were close, everybody called us batman and robin.

I am mostly posting to raise awareness, please talk to somebody if your having hard time... anybody....

It Wednesday night last week, 7 days on its getting easier.

Its a blessing my son doesn't understand his happiness is dragging many of us through.

Oh Percy. There are no words. I am so sorry. Sending thoughts and hugs and prayers.

LydiaJ

Tahlullah wrote: »

The block of flats I am in, which has within the last 2 years had the insulation added to the outside, had a stay put policy. They also removed the central fire alarm and put individual ones in each flat.

Luckily, I am on the 1st floor and can jump out if necessary!

That's crazy. You need to know if there is a fire elsewhere in the block, not just if there's one in your own flat.

Pyxis wrote: »

There were some interviews with fire prevention people earlier, and they said that the stairwells should be the most firesafe, the most secure, but that doesn't appear to have been the case here.

There was great shock that the fire wasn't contained within the flat, or wherever, it started in. It should have been, if the right fire precautions had been installed.

I thought buildings were supposed to have more than one route down to the ground, so that if the fire gets to one set of stairs you can go down the other one. The diagrams of Grenfell Tower only see to have one set of stairs, in the middle.

Apparently engineers are saying that it probably isn't going to collapse, and that the reason for that is because of improvements to the building regs after Ronan Point.

Pyxis

By the way, if anyone is interested, The Big Give has organised an appeal for the people who have lost everything, so that they can have some immediate funding.
They are offering a matched fund at the moment, £1 for £1, and if you are a taxpayer, there is Gift Aid on top of that.

The Big Give Grenfell Tower Appeal

I can't imagine what it must be like to have nothing but the clothes you are stood up in, (and they might be nightclothes); no home, no money, credit or debit cards, no identity documents to get more, maybe no phone, no car, etc. You'd be completely at the mercy of well-wishers.

And that's without all the shock of having escaped with your life, let alone if some of your family have perished as well.

michaels

Tahlullah wrote: »

The block of flats I am in, which has within the last 2 years had the insulation added to the outside, had a stay put policy. They also removed the central fire alarm and put individual ones in each flat.

Luckily, I am on the 1st floor and can jump out if necessary!

A stay put policy only works if the fire is comparmentalised - which breaks down if it can spread rapidly through retrofit exterior insulation.

Apparently if you burning the toast at 3am sets off all the fire alarms in 120 flats every one very quickly disables them.

zagubov

Percy I'm sorry for your loss. Too many people don't understand what a dangerous and life-threatening disease that is.

I'm afraid I've been to more funerals of people my age cohort who died of it than died of "physical" diseases.

zagubov

Pyxis wrote: »

There were some interviews with fire prevention people earlier, and they said that the stairwells should be the most firesafe, the most secure, but that doesn't appear to have been the case here.

There was great shock that the fire wasn't contained within the flat, or wherever, it started in. It should have been, if the right fire precautions had been installed.

I know that area and used to work there. Got to say it's a very diverse area but most people come from cultures where family, friends, neighbours and community relations are valued and treasured. I'm not in the least surprised that everybody's banding together to deal with this. Facebook's buzzing with stories of how everybody's trying to help.

I've seen high-rise apartment buildings abroad with fire escapes on the outside and wondered why nobody builds them here. Not aesthetically pleasing pops up as the obvious answer. But if, instead of that, the cladding we put on buildings contributes to fires spreading, maybe we need a big rethink about how we build large-scale housing and what needs to be outside them.

Percy1983

zagubov wrote: »

Percy I'm sorry for your loss. Too many people don't understand what a dangerous and life-threatening disease that is.

I'm afraid I've been to more funerals of people my age cohort who died of it than died of "physical" diseases.

The harsh reality is its the biggest killer of men under 45.

It fills me with sadness that so many see it as there only way out.

SingleSue

So sorry Percy, it really is an awful shock when it happens. My cousin did the same when he was very early 20's, it shook me to the core because only a couple of weeks before we were laughing and joking together and I had no inclination that he was feeling so down, he never let on. I was at that time under the mental health team for my own issues but very few knew about that either....

Tahlullah

michaels wrote: »

A stay put policy only works if the fire is comparmentalised - which breaks down if it can spread rapidly through retrofit exterior insulation.

Apparently if you burning the toast at 3am sets off all the fire alarms in 120 flats every one very quickly disables them.

Yes, before the change to the fire alarms, the Fire Service was always being called out. As far as I am aware, and I am happy to be corrected, I think the owners of the flats get charged after a few call outs that are not real, so I can believe the Housing Assn would have made the change based on financial costs of the Fire Service. When you multiply that across all of the blocks of flats in the district, thats a lot of wasted money.

Until something like this happens.