A prelude to Dispatches - Fire Service Response
Merlyn Forrer
MEng (Hons) CEng FIFireE MSFPE. Fire engineer and ex-firefighter with GMFRS and Norfolk FRS
The fire at Grenfell was a tragedy and my heart goes out to all the victims and people who have been affected by this horrendous fire.
Without knowing the direct details of what will be said in the Dispatches program tonight, we have to understand some specific points about the fire service operations and response (https://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches)
London Fire Brigade (LFB) did not design the building
LFB did not design the fire evacuation strategy for the building - stay-put/defend in place. This is a building strategy based on compartmentation and suitable fire safety provisions.
LFB did not install the cladding system that did not comply with the Building Regulations. To try and argue that it complied with Part B (fire safety) is incorrect. When you use a combustible foam insulation it needs to be either full scale tested or a desktop study should have been conducted. No evidence is publicly available to demonstrate that either of these routes to compliance was completed.
LFB did not leave gaps in the compartmentation, install inadequate fire doors, manage the fire safety provisions during the refurbishment in the premises. This is normally the responsibility for the building owners to ensure they have a safe building.
LFB do not manage the building
LFB are also not the responsible person under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005
Was it foreseeable - realistically no, although we have seen these fires in the world, it was not anticipated to have one of these in the UK as the cladding system (PE ACM over PIR foam) does not comply with the Building Regulations and therefore it should not have been installed, let alone comply with B4 (1) but that's a much longer piece.
The way our buildings and fire safety have developed since post war building studies etc. is that a fire in a high rise block is contained to the flat or flats directly above/side of the fire. The Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) attend and extinguish the fire without the wholesale need to evacuate the premises. It is not designed for rapid fire spread over the whole of the facade, affecting every floor and every flat. The fire fighting water provisions will never be enough, the fire is just too big.
The smoke/fire and products of combustion will exit the flat, into the corridor and up the staircase, at the head of the staircase there should be a vent to exhaust these products. This contamination of the staircase occurs when the occupant leaves and also when the FRS make an attack on the fire. This then puts products of combustion in the staircase which would affect any person using the staircase from the upper levels as they would have to travel through the smoke layer to evacuate. The way our building regulations and fire safety have developed is, we have one or two compartments alight, those residents evacuate and it would be normally safe for all our residents to stay-put. This fire involved multiple fires on multiple floors forcing smoke into the common areas (corridors and staircase)
No Fire and Rescue service in the UK has ever had to deal with a fire of this magnitude in modern times and nor should they as this fire should never have occurred. The whole of this building should never have caught fire, the building should never have been designed and refurbished like this.
It is easy to lay blame at the fire service and not at the feet of those responsible, but we have to remember LFB attended the scene, writing their names on their helmets for identification, not knowing if they would come out alive in the bid to save as many people as they could, and they did that, they may say they did their job, but they went far far beyond what was capable.
Could they have changed the buildings evacuation strategy earlier? From an operational perspective, not really as we have had no relevant experience of a whole building on fire and having to search a high rise tower block and evacuate residents through heat and smoke (and nor should we as it should never have occurred). You also need to remember the FRS use the stairs for firefighting operations and it will be compromised by smoke including carbon monoxide, one of the biggest killers in a fire, so it would normally be unsuitable to evacuate a whole building in this manner. To physically search the whole building is a mammoth task in itself as when a firefighter goes into a fire they have to take water. Due to the whole building being on fire this cannot occur as we do not have the provisions to get that amount of hose on the staircase and still use it for evacuation.
When a firefighter puts on all their kit including Breathing Apparatus (BA) they weigh another 25kgs. The BA sets gives them around 30mins of air, a fully charged length of hose (25m is around the 100kg mark) to climb to the top of the tower with 25kgs of additional weight, dragging hose of 100kg/length (of which you would need multiple lengths to get to the top of the tower) search and rescue and get back to safety in 30 minutes, whilst doing this in near zero visibility and temperatures hotter than your oven. A firefighter needs the strength of super humans and the endurance of marathon runners. I am failing to see why any blame what so ever is being laid at the door of LFB.
If the program makers at Dispatches want to experience firefighting conditions in a compromised staircase with every floor on fire, in full fire fighting personnel protective equipment, BA, working in temperatures over 600C, dragging 500kg of hose up and down the staircase whilst rescuing casualties, please give me a shout and i'm sure we can arrange something. This might give them a tiny insight into what LFB had to deal with on that night but never the horror of not being able to save everyone and thinking they may not come out alive, but in they went.
Like I have already said, the fire should not have occurred, no one should have died and it is a tragedy.
LFB on the night showed the very best of the fire and rescue service, they went far beyond our strengths and values, they were truly courageous and willing to sacrifice themselves for the public of London. We should be honoring them for their actions, end of....
Company Compliance Manager at Colton Commercials Haulage Ltd
6 年The real reason behind this program was political - the need to show the fire service in a bad light unable or unwilling to adapt in a time of austerity and front line cutbacks and so prepare the service for major changes. Privatisation, control by the Police Service (Police Commissioners), Centralisation - who knows but this is how the process starts. The arguments and evidence shown was specious but this is a classic example of throwing doubt onto and into an organisation that is there as a lifeline and is only useful in responding. When things go wrong they become an easy target. Perhaps in this case we will reap what we sow.
Health And Safety Manager.(Retired)
6 年Well said Merlyn. Despite the passion you must have felt writing this post, you did well to stick to the facts. Of all the people to accuse, why LFB ????? They are the one organisation that is there to help and not build profits like all the others mentioned. Absolutely gobsmacked !
Head of Fire Safety Ealing Council
6 年Could not agree more.
Commercial Photographer – People | Products | Property | Events
6 年Thanks for making your comments. The arm chair fire officers such as despatches hide behind hindsight, analysis after the event and dare I say publicity for their marketing teams to push how good they are. What they forget is people died because the landlord appears not to have done their job properly. So instead of going after them they go after firefighters, why? Because it’s easy, why, because they know firefighters will continue entering burning buildings and they won’t lower themselves to the level such a programme comes from. So I guess my message to the programme makers is, fighting dirty doesn’t make for better programmes it just shows the levels you stoop too for air time. Next time look at all the cuts made across the service, look at the potential of firefighters being sacked and reengaged on worst contracts or look at the authorities who think the fire service is just another public service. Then remember who entered Grenfell to save lives. Just a thought!!
Technical Designer
6 年The programme was excellent. It made a clear distinction between the way firefighters have to perform according to policy at risk to their own lives to save others and the way the executive of the Fire Service relates to government at the political level in setting the policies that their staff and the public have to deal with. For the FBU, who are welcomed and appreciated at the Grenfell United Silent Walk every month, Matt Wrack is questioning the "Stay Put" policy, but there will be other policy deficiencies that are putting lives at risk. Your posting is very precise Merlyn. You make the clear a distinction. The 2010 Building Regulation B4-(1) sets the legal PRINCIPLE, and intends that the external wall (glazed or opaque), windows, doors and balconies, should not be a route for fire to compromise the internal fire resisting compartmentation. Without that compartmentation the "Stay Put" policy makes no sense, as the programme argued from the beginning. You distinguish that from the Approved Document which was ignored by the clients, consultants and contractors in the use of combustible Polyisocyanurate (and possibly some Phenolic) Insulation on a tower in breach of Paragraph 12.7. The only alternative to that PRACTICE is a BS 8414 test and BR 135 assessment (the jury is out on whether a "Desk Top Study" was acceptable I think). That option is nowhere in evidence, and would have shown the danger if it had been paid for. But here's the issue you are careful about. There are plenty of?clients, consultants and contractors who didn't pay for?a BS 8414 SYSTEM test and BR 135 assessment because they chose a combustible Cladding PRODUCT that complies with Diagram 40 in Paragraph 12.6 of ADBv2 (2013). That does not allow them to ignore the Paragraph 12.7 requirement for the Insulation PRODUCT. That contravened B4-(1) in PRINCIPLE, defeated the compartmentation in PRACTICE, and made an operational nonsense of "Stay Put" as POLICY at Grenfell, as the programme showed. The "Stay Put" policy is about TIME. The compartmentation must hold for immediate self-escape, fire fighting and assisted-escape. Diagram 40 is a flaw, because it allows Class 0 as Paragraph 13 of Appendix A or much more combustible Cladding PRODUCT subject to height and distance between buildings. But it is not the only flaw. Section 13 allows up to 100% zero fire resistance in the walls very rapidly, which means cavity barriers have nothing to work against. Section also means the?FENESTRATION of windows and doors are ignored as "unprotected area" in any relationship to the compartment lines, and balconies are not even mentioned. BS 8414 SYSTEM testing and BR 135 assessment as an option explicitly don't test fire resistance, and have no real world FENESTRATION above the "hearth", even though it purports to be a test that has a Direct Field of Application. It cannot be extended into other details. Most buildings have FENESTRATION.? And as the Fire Grading Reports knew, the FENESTRATION matters. For "roll-over" to compartments above a fire is the measure in TIME of when "Stay Put" has failed. The Building Science to provide TIME does not exist in PRACTICE behind the PRINCIPLE of B4-(1). This Dispatches programme got a bit closer to appreciating that deficiency. One that the political executive of the Fire Brigade is either ignorant of, or worse, chooses to ignore.