London Fire and Aftermath RIP

orangerhyme

tara73 wrote: »

as you indicate, there are other severe lacking fire safety issues in this building. you contradict yourself here in saying, you know that it couldn't have happened another fire catastrophe without the cladding. Also, I find this a presumptuous attitude.

do you know the interior design with all materials by heart? I don't think so. They implemented the stay put rule, but who knows which material was chosen, what they did during refurbishment interiorwise (in all those years this Tower stands). For example the gas pipes obviously illegally fitted into the staircase and who knows where else would also have caused havoc with a fire in the staircase, without the cladding on fire.

so just be careful to claim to have the wisdom here about this building.

If the external walls of Grenfell had stayed the original concrete, the fire would not have spread. I think most people can agree on that.
Theres nothing contradictory or presumptuous about that statement.
The fire brigade had extinguished the original fridge/kitchen fire.
Fire will not spread up a concrete facade. That is a scientific fact.
There have been numerous fires in Grenfell and other tower blocks and the "stay put" rule was sufficient and the fire contained, with the obvious exception of the Lakanal house fire which had cladding also.

None of this would have happened without the cladding.

Water John

It's a modern version of 'beauty board' used in houses in the 70s. Improve the asthetic and lethal.

tara73

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40434741

are they for real???
quote from the article: But Det Supt Fiona McCormack said the full death toll would only be known when the search and recovery operation and identification process was over.

They need to explain why the recovery process and therefore identification should take that long.They are not explaining anything. With their headline:-No final Grenfell Tower death toll this year, police say-
they actually make it indefinite when they will know all they can. Why can't they say when they expect the tower to be stabilised and search all stories?
yes, it takes f*** money to stabilise the Tower, I get the feeling they want to avoid this and playing with time here again. I always wondered the last days why we didn't hear anything in the news about the recovery process, how they start stabilising the damn thing.

This is a disgrace towards the victims and their relatives again.

mikeybrennan

According to police there's 23 flats where no bodies were found

26 emergency calls were made from these flats


Also a large number of people were known to have congregated in one flat near the top.

all the above on Newsnight last night





Is it possible bodies have been completely incinerated?

Calina

Tara73, I understand the depth of feeling. But it is not a question jidt of stabilising the building but of combing the ashes. They may not be walking into apartments to find lifeless bodies. The pictures of the top storeys should give you pause for thought as the the task ahead of them.

Fratton Fred

tara73 wrote: »

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40434741

are they for real???
quote from the article: But Det Supt Fiona McCormack said the full death toll would only be known when the search and recovery operation and identification process was over.

They need to explain why the recovery process and therefore identification should take that long.They are not explaining anything. With their headline:-No final Grenfell Tower death toll this year, police say-
they actually make it indefinite when they will know all they can. Why can't they say when they expect the tower to be stabilised and search all stories?
yes, it takes f*** money to stabilise the Tower, I get the feeling they want to avoid this and playing with time here again. I always wondered the last days why we didn't hear anything in the news about the recovery process, how they start stabilising the damn thing.

This is a disgrace towards the victims and their relatives again.

have you ever been to a crematorium?

Boom_Bap

Fratton Fred wrote: »

have you ever been to a crematorium?

No need for a comment like that.

Fratton Fred

Boom_Bap wrote: »

No need for a comment like that.

it was graphic, I know. But that is essentially what the forensic teams are being faced with.

it must be a horrible horrible job for them to do.

orangerhyme

Ive heard that after cremation some bones and teeth remain and are then ground then before given to the families.

Its difficult to know in this situation how badly incinerated the bodies are, and whether anything at all remains.

There was an interview with the forensic pathologist from 9/11 talking about the identification of the Grenfell victims.
She said one issue was that they may not have a DNA sample to match with the remains.
For example, in 9/11 they were able to access victims toothbrush or hairbrush etc for a DNA sample but in Grenfell there could be nothing as its their home.

The police seem to be doing their best and for all we know its just piles of ash on the upper floors.

mikeybrennan

- BBC News http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40446579

it looks like the public enquiry may let the government off the hook for not acting on building regulations

mikeybrennan

Peregrinus wrote: »

I'm as cynical as the next guy, but I'm sceptical of this one.

Every press officer knows the maxim that "the sooner, and in more detail, you release the bad news, the better". It's known in the trade as Kennedy's Chappaquiddick Theorem. (Younger readers may wish to Google "Chappaquiddick".)

There was absolutely no payoff or benefit to the authorities in drip-feeding news about casualties. The only result would be steadily climbing casualty figures, and a continued focus on casualties, at a time when public anger is growing and a hunt is on for someone to blame. Really, anybody who was to blame, or thought they might be, would be much better off having the casualty information release at a time when people were either still in shock, or were focussed in rallying round, expressing sympathy and practical support, and generally displaying the spirit of the blitz.

So, if casualty information came out slowly, the reason is very unlikely to have been to try to get favourable - or, at least, less unfavourable - news coverage. It was always going to have the opposite result.

The real explanation is more likely the one that has actually been offered. The scene inside the towers was absolutely horrifying. So catastrophic that actually counting the dead in a reliable way, and making even preliminary identifications, was going to be very difficult.

do you still believe this now?

also the justice secretary admitted today that they basically frame the terms of reference of the enquiry

Water John

Skyscraper on fire in Dubai, CNN. Vertical spread is rapid, not horizontal.

mikeybrennan

Water John wrote: »

Skyscraper on fire in Dubai, CNN. Vertical spread is rapid, not horizontal.

no surprise

plenty of money but no building regulations,loads of the stuff

Water John

Hope everyone is safe. Will be interesting to find out, if there are parrallels?

Doltanian

Water John wrote: »

Hope everyone is safe. Will be interesting to find out, if there are parrallels?

I was in Dubai last month and it was one thing I remarked was how practically every second building there seemed to be clad in that same sort of stuff as the burnout Grenfell tower in London. Bizarrely me and my fellow passenger who was British managed to draw it up in conversation as I was flying back to Heathrow and we both agreed it was just a matter of time before Dubai had another fire. There was construction work nearby and I wonder if that contributed to it. I hope no-one was hurt or killed there, but there fire standards would be pretty good, Dubai may have slave labour etc. but standards seem high to me.

Samaris

Standards of living within the towers are pretty high (it's primarily the rich, I believe). Standards of building the things are pretty low, and of course, many of them have to give over their passports to work, meaning they cannot leave the country. With long periods of pay being delayed or just withheld, not to mention the terrible conditions imported labour lives in...yeah, standards for the rich are great, standards for the poor are lousy. If there are any of these blocks that house mainly migrant workers, I can imagine that a similar inferno probably would have many more fatalities. There is a serious lack of giving a damn about foreign slave labour, which is about what it amounts to.

DvB

Second time that particular tower has had a fire with a similar vertical spread of flame externally. Seems lessons aren't being learnt.

JP Liz V1

Grenfell Tower report "systematic failures" in fire brigade response to blame for so many deaths, the heroes now the villains

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/grenfell-fire-inquiry-report-shortcomings-17163064

freshpopcorn

Mod NoteMoved from After Hours to Current Affairs please follow local guidelines.

tara73

that's a disgrace, blaming the firefighters with all we know in which condition this building was, what useless kind of cladding was used, the inhabitants warning about risks in the tower for a long time etc. And the 'stay put' strategy didn't come from the fire fighters, it was a stupid, yes, absolutely stupid but set rule but the fire fighter there at the spot didn't 'invent it'.

It's an absolute disgrace. What's with the people from the responsible authorities who never cared about the hazardous conditions of the building regarding means of escape although they must have known about it, the planning commissioners who obviously approved the unsuited cladding and so on. I never heard they were made responsible??

xzanti

Couldn't make this stuff up.

The firefighters had to run into a giant fire lighter with little regard for their own safety and they're being blamed on the extent of the tragedy.

Never heard such sh1te in all my life.

Whether they were under prepared or not that building and it's inhabitants didn't stand a chance. It went up like a Roman Candle.

Montage of Feck

Just watched an interesting Adam Curtis documentary from 1984 about shoddy practices in public housing, very pertenent to this topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

end of the road

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch5VorymiL4

should work now.

JustAThought

end of the road wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch5VorymiL4

should work now.

Frightening - made over 30 years before the Grenfell disaster and the BBC were already making programmes that talked about the fire risks of untested remedial works, that the dogs on the street knew the building, supervision and construction of many of these tower blocks were dysfunctional.

There was another programme also in the 80’s talkingb about remedial works to council tower blocks where there had been remedial insulation works of a similar kind to Grenfell that resulted innmajor fires but in each case they were ‘lucky’ and ‘only’ a few people died. As seems usual, everybody knew, the had inquiries and made BBC investigation programmes on it, but no-one did anything.

Bit like the Keelings Covid -19 Strawberrys - profit before public health.

Henryq.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/is-the-grenfell-tower-inferno-kingspan-s-volkswagen-moment-1.4434411?mode=amp

Henryq.

Not a good look for them

suicide_circus

It's nowhere near the VW scandal

tara73

suicide_circus wrote: »

It's nowhere near the VW scandal

true, I found that comparison weird mildly said. It'
s actually another slap in the face to the many victims and their berieved.

This VW scandal is a stupid and inscrupelous thing but it didn't kill any innocent person in horrible circumstances and what could potentially happen every day again.

Stovepipe

Have a look at the Ronan Point disaster.

Henryq.

Combustible cladding mounted on a wind tunnel

Great idea eh!