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London Fire

That's pretty nasty. The sheer speed at which that fire took hold is incredible. Virtually the whole building was a blazing inferno.
Undoubtedly there will be a lot fatalities. Truly awful situation.
 
So what's the price of lives in this case? Well apparently it's £200,000. Because that's what it would have cost to install a life saving sprinkler system in that high rise tower block.
Current fire regulations means that any building over 30m tall, built since 2007 must have a sprinkler system. Grenfell tower was built in 1974, so the regs didn't apply, and no one was compelled to retroactively install such a system.

Crazy isn't it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-40293035
 
Oh and I might add that this building got a £8.6million refit over the last few years, which included the (apparently) flammable cladding applied to the exterior of the building. You would think that there was some money in the budget to install sprinklers wouldn't you?
 
LV426 said:
Oh and I might add that this building got a £8.6million refit over the last few years, which included the (apparently) flammable cladding applied to the exterior of the building. You would think that there was some money in the budget to install sprinklers wouldn't you?
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That's the part that baffles my mind. Here, any update to a building requires it to be brought up to current code. Any building that has more than 4 residential units or is larger than 7,500 square feet has to be sprinkled. Plus the whole shelter in place directive. I'm not in many high-rise apartments, but I would think evacuation would always be the prudent action.
 
Unforgiven said:
That's the part that baffles my mind. Here, any update to a building requires it to be brought up to current code. Any building that has more than 4 residential units or is larger than 7,500 square feet has to be sprinkled. Plus the whole shelter in place directive. I'm not in many high-rise apartments, but I would think evacuation would always be the prudent action.
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Yup, you would have thought. Particularly as with high rise buildings, fire hoses can't even reach the upper floors. It took them 2 days to put the fire out. So I would say that sprinkler systems are absolutely essential in a building of this type.
The residents had been advised to stay in their apartments in the event of fire. This undoubtedly cost a lot of lives.
 
I work in a very similar building except of course being in the USA we have sprinkler systems and anything past a simple smoke detector activation starts an automatic prerecorded evacuation order for the floor affected.

Still something like this is the worst case scenario that haunts my dreams. Damn this was terrible.
 
None of the rescued and injured people were treated for burns. They all suffered from smoke inhalation. That's because they were holed up in their homes, as they'd been told to do. The smoke was impossible to keep out.
 
Re. The cladding, do you know why it was applied? Because people who lived in flats nearby thought the building was an eye sore.

The cladding they used is banned in the US and Germany.
 
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