Posted By: fostertomYes, looks Fire Service management failed to upate their thinking in the face of ... what?

The Fire Service failed to plan for the circumstances they faced, and failed to execute any plan at all on the night. They just muddled through. That absolutely indicates extremely poor leadership, irrespective of your political hobbyhorses.

+1 to what lineweight said.

Posted By: borpinHowever, leadership and management on the ground was not good enough.

Indeed, but training the management on the ground is the responsibility of the senior managers, and replacing the middle managers in the unlikely event they prove not capable of doing the job. Given when Dany Cotton took over, that's why I reckon Ron Dobson is largely to blame for the Fire Service's failings. But her saying she wouldn't change a thing, indicates the depth of her incomptence as well.

And of course, the Fire Service isn't alone to blame, but we'll have to wait to hear the details about the pre-fire responsibility.

Posted By: gyrogearI (naively...) thought that this Oban hotel affair cleared everything up:

Fire regulation is devolved to Scotland.

All fire safety legislation in England and Wales is gathered under ‘The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005’

In Scotland there is the 'FIRE (SCOTLAND) ACT 2005' and an SSI 'Fire Safety (Scotland) Regulations 2006'

https://www2.gov.scot/resource/0040/00401614.pdf is a good explanation of the legislation and the history of it.

I won't be quick to blame the fire service. They were dealing with a fire in a high rise according to the procedures of the day. Imagine the outcry if the procedures had not been followed and deaths had occurred.

The fire service could not have had any foresight as to how the fire would progress and whilst you could argue the established procedures should have been dumped sooner and evacuation ordered it would be a brave officer with the propensity for finger pointing blame after the event that follows any disaster today to go out on a limb and depart from procedures because they would be dammed if they do - and as it turns out - dammed if they don't. And yes there was a level of chaos but with so many firefighters and such an unprecedented event with no time to schedule a coordinated clockwork like action with different procedures some confusion is unavoidable. There is of course the enquiry acting as such thing do - with hindsight

Posted By: gyrogearwhatever happened to yearly inspections ?

The annual inspection would not be looking at the potential chimney effect and fire risk of the cladding nor would it be looking at the gaps in the window frame that allowed the fire to spread to the cladding. That would not be part of that inspection.

The fire safety would have been part of the planning process sign off for windows and cladding but I don't know who - if anyone - would have the responsibility to say 'the quality of this work (gaps in the window frame that allowed the fire into the cladding) is a fire risk rather than just say the gap is poor quality work. I doubt that the inspections went to the level of detail that every flat was inspected rather than 'batch inspection'

Apparently there was a complaint shortly before the fire that there were gaps around the window and some ineffective remedial work was done - but who would (should?) see this as an increased fire risk?

A comment that I heard recently from Dany Cotton was that there have been several fires in high rise since Grenfell and the stay put policy is still followed and in those fires the policy was correct.

Posted By: Peter_in_HungaryThey were dealing with a fire in a high rise according to the procedures of the day.

The point is that those procedures were both wrong and inadequate, in that they resulted in a lot of avoidable deaths and confusion on the ground. Responsibility for the procedures lies with the fire service.

The fire service could not have had any foresight as to how the fire would progress

Of course they could, and in fact did! There was a safety briefing about previous similar fires such as Lakanal House prior to Grenfell, and apparently Cotton chose not to attend it, despite being in charge of safety at the time.

I'll wait for the rest of the inquiry before commenting on issues regarding the pre-fire aspects.

Posted By: borpinLooks like another fire that has migrated into the cladding in Manchester this time. Student accommodation. Evacuating apparently...

Do you have a link?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-50445311

It appears that the fire started at the top so less disruptive than Grenfell, but the containment between flats on that floor appears to be suspect.

Some of the students need a Darwin Award.

"I heard the fire alarm going off but it kept on going off so I just thought it was a drill at first, until one of my flatmates shouted down the corridor that it was a real fire,"

So at the point you decided it must be a drill, did you not think to evacuate?

I've had experience of a refurbished building where the sounders were not good enough. Found that out on the first drill...

Contractors back that day with their sound meters.

Sprinklers would appear not to be part of the build. Really; student accommodation.

My thought after Grenfell was that some sort of water curtain on the outside of the building might provide sufficient suppression. You could retrofit that reasonably easily.

Thanks for the links. Bolton was the bit of information that I didn't have when I first searched. Here's another:

https://www.urbanstudentlife.com/accommodation/bolton/the-cube

On a slightly different aspect, some of the reports say all that was left were the framework and some students said they could see out where there had been walls. And the pictures seem to show steels and void behind. So apart from the cladding, what was the rest of the construction? What was the insulation? Fireproof compartmentation?

i.e. a cladding fire would have been spectacular but shouldn't have caused any damage inside the building. So what else was burning?

Being reported as HPL cladding with Kingspan phenolic board behind. Also described as being 'reclad in 2018' - is this an old building? Post Grenfell re-clad?

I think the building is in two blocks with a shared podium, each block facing onto a different parallel street. One of them looks like a refurb of an old building, and the other (the one that caught fire) seems to be newbuild. You can see this on google streetview if you look at photos from 2015 or so.

The planning application appears to be at https://www.planningpa.bolton.gov.uk/online-applications-17/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=DCAPR_83402 with minor changes at https://www.planningpa.bolton.gov.uk/online-applications-17/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=DCAPR_85319

Sadly planning applications don't include building regs details of course, but there are some materials listed on the sectional drawings. It seems the top of the building probably burnt because it was HPL laminate on timber frame and plywood with UPVC windows to help destroy the compartmentation. It seems they should have been caught by 18 m rules though.

I've read through Studio E (the architects) opening statement over the last couple of days. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the process.

https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/evidence/studio-e-architects-ltd-opening-statement

Of course they are only setting out their own side of the story but most of it seemed quite plausible and reasonable to me. To much of the lay audience to this enquiry, I think it's assumed that the architect has the ultimate power to approve or not approve design changes, but that's certainly not the case when it's a D&B contract.

One thing it makes obvious is the mess of contractual relationships and ill-defined responsibilities that - unfortunately - anyone who's been involved in building projects will recognise as not unusual.

Posted By: djhThe fire risk on this project must have been obvious to all who came into contact with it.

I don't think that's true.

There's a fire risk attached to almost any construction. The question is how you assess the extent of it and what extent is considered acceptable. I don't think it's fair to expect anyone who came into contact with this project to make a judgement on those two things. That's what certification and building regulations are supposed to be there for.

More emails from before the renovation...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/28/grenfell-tower-refurbishers-knew-cladding-would-fail-inquiry-told

“Metal cladding always burns and falls off,” an architect emailed a fire engineer in spring 2015. An employee of the facade installer told a colleague: “As we all know, the ACM [the combustible cladding panels] will be gone rather quickly in a fire!”