Welcome to the world of Ivory Towers

"After further correspondence, Liberal Democrat MP Steven Williams - who was then a minister in the department - replied: "I have neither seen nor heard anything that would suggest that consideration of these specific potential changes is urgent and I am not willing to disrupt the work of this department by asking that these matters are brought forward."

The group replied to say they "were at a loss to understand, how you had concluded that credible and independent evidence, which had life safety implications, was NOT considered to be urgent".

"As a consequence the group wishes to point out to you that should a major fire tragedy, with loss of life, occur between now and 2017 in, for example, a residential care facility or a purpose built block of flats, where the matters which had been raised here, were found to be contributory to the outcome, then the group would be bound to bring this to others' attention.""

In a separate development, Panorama has discovered that firefighters put out the first fire at Grenfell Tower.
They were called to a fridge fire, and within minutes told residents the fire was out in the flat.
The crew was leaving the building when firefighters outside spotted flames rising up the side of the building.
The Fire Brigades Union say firefighters were left facing an unprecedented fire, and officers broke their own safety protocol to rescue people.

That a fridge fire could cause so that a whole building is on fire in only some minutes...
The Grenfell Tower residents seems like have lived in a ticking bomb...
Oh I forgot.
Accidents don't happens!
No need for fire regulations.

I remember this.
Fire drills at school. Evacuation using the fire brigade's ladders. Crawling in a dark chamber filled with smoke.
Fire drill at my workplace. Only the evacuation part.
Fire drill at the army. What to do if the tent starts to burn. Being night watch keeping my brothers in arms safe.
Real fire next door to me. How to get out from your flat.

That may be correct, but who is to say that the external cladding wasn't already smouldering & burst into flames by the time the firefighters reached the ground?

Seems very plausible.
From my understanding the fire started on the fourth floor.
It takes some minutes to leave the flat not using the elevators and bringing back their equipment.

That may be correct, but who is to say that the external cladding wasn't already smouldering & burst into flames by the time the firefighters reached the ground?

Yeah, and don't they leave one person with the engine to operate it? I suppose he just didn't look up.

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The first fire service personnel arrived about 10 minutes after the first call. During the last couple of minutes of their approach the fire lept up the last few floors - the building went up like a flaming torch. There was a rather scary phone video shot by one of the next group of fire engines, about two minutes after the first one, the fire crew couldn't believe how far the flames had spread.

Not the video, but a series of pictures showing the spread of the fire http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40301289
(The first shot is about 30 minutes after the first call.....)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

In a separate development, Panorama has discovered that firefighters put out the first fire at Grenfell Tower.
They were called to a fridge fire, and within minutes told residents the fire was out in the flat.
The crew was leaving the building when firefighters outside spotted flames rising up the side of the building.

I'm going to speculate that the firefighters in the flat did what firefighters usually do, ventilate. So they opened the window and the heat and fire got up into the cladding. They put out inside, had no clue they caught the rest of the building.

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The Grenfell Tower inferno might turn out to be the single biggest building insurance payout in European history.
The Times newspaper estimated the total bill could be as high as £1 billion (US$1.27 billion) but the eventual cost will depend on the number of deaths, the litigation involved, the cost of demolishing the building and the price of rebuilding the tower.
Ironically, Kensington and Chelsea Council, which is the freeholder of Grenfell Tower, changed its insurer in March.
Kensington, and two other boroughs — Westminster, as well as Hammersmith and Fulham Council — switched from Zurich, the giant Swiss company, to Protector Forsikring, a Norwegian company with a UK office in Manchester to save money.

Being a hot night it is quite probable that windows were already open before the fire started, thus flames could escape from the confines of the flat and onto the outside. However the fire appears to have been able to get into the space between the new outer cladding, which was composed of two layers, and the existing concrete wall panels. This should not have been possible, being "protected" by the window frames and weather-stop barriers, the windows were uPVC, and most probably the weather-stop barriers were the same material. The weather-stop barrier is intended to prevent wind from getting between the existing wall and new cladding (there have been a few instances of wind pulling decorative panels off multi-story buildings even at quite low wind speeds).
The new cladding system was composed of two major elements, an inner PU(?) foam "batt" with an outer aluminium/PE composite. There would also be an air-gap as the PU foam tends to "sweat" the foaming agent for some time after installation, and needs to be able to breathe; typically this layer is 50-100mm thick, and will burn when exposed to flame, producing voluminous toxic black smoke as it does. The outer, decorative, skin is typically 3-6mm thick, comprising 2 thin aluminium skins with between 2mm and 5mm of expanded PE between, and a decorative finish on the outer surface. Obviously the PE foam will burn, but it needs an an air supply to do so, but it is not very easy to get enough air into the gap between the aluminium skins, UNLESS the skins have been distorted by heat on their faces. An air gap is provided between the inner (insulation) and outer (decorative) layers, typically this is 50-100mm. This is a very nice chimney and flame duct, flames being fed by the burning insulation, hidden from anyone in the room, melting the PE foam, destroying the integrity of the outer skin & its attachment to the building.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Good summary. Add that there should be a flame-stop barrier across the insulation-facing gap at every floor, to eliminate the chimney effect. What happened to that? (drilled, burnt, missing, other...)

I would have expected that at each floor level there should be such a barrier, but looking at the pictures I can't see the remnants of one...
Loads of "cost saving exercises" on the exterior, including choice of insulating material, horizontal fire breaks.....

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Agree, a good summary. I watched Panorama London Tower Fire - Britain's Shame. Only 30 minutes but anyone that watched it... :-(

In a few scenes of the tower which showed several sides of the building, one side were not scarred by burns up to posible the 7th floor(not 100% sure & don't want to rewatch it), the cladding looked okay until it showed where it burned higher. It looks as if melted.

Loads of "cost saving exercises" on the exterior, including choice of insulating material, horizontal fire breaks.....

It was reported on LBC radio that shortly before the fire, the head of the council sent out letters to the higest payers in the borough stating that due to their cost cutting & efficiency, the council will be making a £100 refund of council tax. It was also mentioned that this year the council's funds would total £209,000,000, a surplus of £42,000,000.

It has been put on social media but so far, have found no confirmation of that.

However, if true...

It was reported on LBC radio that shortly before the fire, the head of the council sent out letters to the higest payers in the borough stating that due to their cost cutting & efficiency, the council will be making a £100 refund of council tax. It was also mentioned that this year the council's funds would total £209,000,000, a surplus of £42,000,000.

It has been put on social media but so far, have found no confirmation of that.

This letter was printed in the Guardian on Saturday 17 June.

My local tax rebate is blood money

In 2014, I received my Kensington and Chelsea council tax bill and a letter from the leader of the council, Nicholas Paget-Brown, explaining that all residents who pay council tax in full would “receive a one-off payment of £100”, to be deducted from the bill. This bonus, the letter continued, was due to the council’s careful management of its finances over the years, “consistently delivering greater efficiencies while improving services”. Austerity, K&C style: you give to the rich while taking from the poor (nobody with discounted bills or claiming council tax support was eligible to share in the bounty of the town hall blue-chips).

On a Conservative website, Paget-Brown further explained that “thanks to an overachieving efficiency drive”, the council was “well ahead of [its] savings targets for the year”. Triple AAA credit status, how nice. In deciding what to do with this surplus, he continued, “we have taken the view that it is simply wrong to discount from our calculations whose money this was in the first place. In short, we think the right place for it is back with our residents.”

In May 2014, the local election returned a huge majority of Conservative councillors. Business as usual. For years, the Royal Borough has got away with bribing the electorate with its own money. For years, the Royal Borough has been running huge underspends in its revenue budgets which it then transfers into capital reserves. The underspend in the 2016-17 adult services budget alone is £1.9m. Apparently, adult services in the area are doing so well they don’t need the money. And every other social service must be performing brilliantly, as the council’s projected reserves of £167m by the end of 2016-17 has climbed to a staggering £209m – that’s £42m surplus to requirements. How many sprinkler systems is that?

As the toxic ash of Grenfell Tower’s vanity cladding falls over the neighbouring streets, we are left with the acrid truth in our throats: regeneration in the Royal Borough is in fact a crime of greed and selfishness. I took the refund. At the time, I felt uncomfortable with this decision and the ways in which I justified it to myself. And then I forgot about it, until the smoke drifting into my flat in the early hours of Wednesday woke me up. Today, I gave it back. It wasn’t ever mine to keep. I handed it over in cash to a vicar running a refuge for the victims of the fire in a local church. I explained that it was not a donation, not a charitable act, that it was guilt money and he was doing me a kindness by taking it off my hands.

If you live in Kensington and Chelsea, please, give your rebate back. But not to the council, which seems to have trouble in identifying those – “our residents” – who might actually need it.

I've taken the wording from the website version, which is slightly longer than the version printed in the paper. The signature is name and address supplied, but I know the Guardian has a policy of checking the authors of letters before publication.

Thanks for that Richard.

Speaks volumes with no need to add anything to it.

Conservative. Confidence scheme. Con. Convict. Anyone see the pattern?

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Just reported on the Beeb. London fire: Kensington council chief quits

The chief executive of Kensington and Chelsea council has resigned amid criticism over the borough's response to the Grenfell Tower fire.

Nicholas Holgate said the communities and local government secretary had on Tuesday "required the leader of the council to seek my resignation".

He said last week's fire at the North Kensington block, in which at least 79 people died, was "heart-breaking".

The Department for Communities and Local Government would not comment.

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I just spotted this - the drawing on page 3 looks scarily like the Grenfell fire (and the document dates back to 2015)

https://www.celotex.co.uk/assets/rainscreen-compliance_specificationguide_mar15.pdf

What is really disturbing is that the insulation material recommended is the "more fire resistant" version - which was not used at Grenfell.
And the outer cladding recommended is the stone wool filled version (outer skins of thin aluminium sheet with a stone wool filler) - again not used at Grenfell.

(It is fairly "safe" to ignore the existing wall as Grenfell has a concrete slab wall which probably has better fire performance when compared to the plasterboard on studding wall used in the example in the recommendations.)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?