Quote:
Originally Posted by tw
Shocking are known facts. That building was not required to have sprinklers. Compare the building to firemen's water streams.
Philadelphia has a similar problem in a 30 some story building adjacent to City Hall. Due to no sprinklers, that fire simply marched up the floors. Three firemen died in that one. One watchman almost died when he took the elevator up to discover why a fire alarm (that he kept resetting) was repeatedly going off.
To fight that fire, firemen actually put hoses into windows of adjacent buildings to get water onto fire.
One difference. The Philadelphia building was built by domestics for domestics. That London building was built by domestics knowing it would also house immigrants. A comment only necessary due to blunt contempt one has for immigrants.
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It's not that they are immigrants it is that they are poor. Their concerns have been ignored. The decisions about how to renovate the buildings were not taken by wicked evil people - they were taken by unaccountable quangos who complied with the minimum required to pass regulation. So - they used the cheaper of the two available cladding materials - because the regulations have not been updated in the light of other similar tragedies in other countries and one in London.
This is social housing - owned and managed by a complicated network of interlocking organisations. This was part of the whole shift from councils owning their own social housing to councils having some over-arching responsibility for the housing waiting lists and housing strategy, but without owning the housing stock and only having a small voice on the boards of the not for profit management companies set up to deal with social housing.
The sprinklers are only required for new buildings - there is no legal requirement to install them in the older blocks that never had them.
But I think it's pretty likely, that in the mansion blocks, and in the council housing blocks that got sold off to private ownership and rocketed up in value so that they now house the Kensington elite - they'll have had sprinklers fitted. And new cladding was probably the much more fire resistant type.