Agree, sorry for not being more clearer. I should have emphasised all the way up the ladder. IMHO, the biggest problem since it's introduction has been "Performance Targets"

I wasn't aiming at you, just re-enforcing what you'd brought to the attention of the masses.

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

No training. No drills. Only one staircase. Banned cladding. No active fire suppression. Old blueprints. Common lobby without automatic fire doors. No smoke ejection for the stairwell.

The question isn't what went wrong, the question is did anything go right?

But this does bring up how many tower blocks will have to be razed to bring them up to modern standards? Are the planing and inspection people capable of enforcing modern standards? Do the muppets have the cajones to set a hard and fast date to retrofit or raze no exception.

I know :-) But I still should have emphasised more on the ladder. That poor guy will more than likely end up the scapegoat while the "biggies" get away with murder.

And the answer is almost certainly "none of the above", because they're all too busy playing footsie with Trump and the EU. Notice that today the full focus of their attention has been switched to London's congested airport, another of those nice simple issues which has had the ruling party (of this and every previous government) split right down the middle for the last 50 years.

No training. No drills. Only one staircase. Banned cladding. No active fire suppression. Old blueprints. Common lobby without automatic fire doors. No smoke ejection for the stairwell.

The question isn't what went wrong, the question is did anything go right?

But this does bring up how many tower blocks will have to be razed to bring them up to modern standards? Are the planing and inspection people capable of enforcing modern standards? Do the muppets have the cajones to set a hard and fast date to retrofit or raze no exception.

Plain & simple answer? NO.
When asked why not?
Their favourite get out of jail card is used - Too expensive!

Their favourite get out of jail card is used - Too expensive!

Too expensive for plebs, that is. Their own appartments will have all of those.

Notice that today the full focus of their attention has been switched to London's congested airport, another of those nice simple issues which has had the ruling party (of this and every previous government) split right down the middle for the last 50 years.

& still will be for the next 50! The best opportunity for another runway was when building Terminal 4 (opened 1 May 86) - & maybe Terminal 5 (opened 27 March 08). Both were built for the increased demand for air travel.

Just like Grenfell, clear indications that were ignored.

Grenfell, looks like the Watch manager Michael Dowden, who has been giving evidence all this week, was left in the lurch by his seniors. For a fire that size the senior officer should have been deputy assistant commander. Michael Dowden didn't have the training or experience to deal with a fire that size.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44627099

Can't help but feel sorry for him. He's been let down by the lack of "Chain of Command". That's where the real issue lies.

Can't help but feel sorry for him. He's been let down by the lack of "Chain of Command". That's where the real issue lies.

Some person at HQ didn't want to get a big boss out of bed. End of story.

Shades of Kings Cross :-(

Mr Badillo also told the inquiry that during this sort of incident "you would expect heavy radio traffic".
However he said he could hear "nothing at all" from the handheld radios he and his colleagues carried.
In earlier evidence, Mr Badillo described the communication sets and radios as "useless… like something from the dark ages".
"The higher you go up the building the less reliable it is, to the point of nothing at all," he added.
In his written statement, Mr Badillo said he felt that "radio communications failed" on the night of the fire.

Report

Shades of Kings Cross :-(

Mr Badillo also told the inquiry that during this sort of incident "you would expect heavy radio traffic".
However he said he could hear "nothing at all" from the handheld radios he and his colleagues carried.
In earlier evidence, Mr Badillo described the communication sets and radios as "useless… like something from the dark ages".
"The higher you go up the building the less reliable it is, to the point of nothing at all," he added.
In his written statement, Mr Badillo said he felt that "radio communications failed" on the night of the fire.

Report

Just thinking here. Metal clad covering on the building. Radio problems. Look up Faraday cage. LFB and others had better learn this lesson. You may need a portable repeater station that is inside the building to maintain communications, especially with new digital radios.

Thankfully this fire was brought under control fast..

You & I know that but it seems that the bean counters & bureaucrats only like spending money on their vanity projects that are aesthetically pleasing & energy efficient such as tower blocks.

Had there been better communications in place Badillo & his colleague would not have wasted time searching an empty flat & potentially saved a family of four in the flat next door. It is more than possible that the death toll could have been much lower.

Finding out that there were residents next door that died, no wonder the poor guy broke down.

Nothing to do with Faraday cages, all to do with the way the routing antennae used for the emergency services network are aligned. In simple terms, they are aimed to give good ground level coverage. Which, by the nature of these devices the coverage gets worse as you go up a building. It is possible, that if the hand-held devices used by the fire service were "open channel" rather than cell-routed there would have been more than adequate coverage within the building. Following Kings Cross a serious amount of money was invested by TfL and the London emergency services consortium in ensuring that there was adequate coverage throughout the many miles of tunnels.

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

Nothing to do with Faraday cages, all to do with the way the routing antennae used for the emergency services network are aligned. In simple terms, they are aimed to give good ground level coverage. Which, by the nature of these devices the coverage gets worse as you go up a building. It is possible, that if the hand-held devices used by the fire service were "open channel" rather than cell-routed there would have been more than adequate coverage within the building. Following Kings Cross a serious amount of money was invested by TfL and the London emergency services consortium in ensuring that there was adequate coverage throughout the many miles of tunnels.

Is the land there that flat? I doubt it.

Faraday cage actually seems very correct. I'm assuming the walkie talkie units were set to use a mobile station on the fire equipment parked on the street as a relay. As you ascend the metal on the building will act more and more as a reflector because of the acute angle. If they had switched to direct to base station and not through relay, they would have had communications.

Someone should test this stuff before they invest in it.

No, the repeater antennae are sort of directional, not omni-directional, having flat, fan shaped beams with very little in the way of vertical (upwards) spread. Thus so only cover the low rise of buildings. From memory Grenfell Tower stood well above all the surrounding buildings, probably by ten floors or more, indeed the majority of buildings in the area are below five floors.
Why didn't they put a feed and repeater pair to cover the single tower? Did someone do a risk assessment including a rapidly spreading vertical fire? The answers to these two questions should come out of the technical part of the inquiry quite readily, indeed I wouldn't be surprised if someone hadn't already looked in the files to find the answers.

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