Grenfell Tower: some writings

These are a set of sensibly written and essentially non-partisan pieces on the Grenfell disaster. I feel it's necessary to do this so we get away from wanting everybody's head on a stick before we've got to grips with what actually happened. This matters to me because I'm on the board of a housing association with 30 or so high rise blocks.

Airlines show safety and profit go hand in hand. Let's not learn the wrong lessons from Grenfell.

"The aviation industry may be highly competitive but it is also tightly regulated and permeated by a culture that views safety as paramount. Such is the sector’s success that a report last year found that the number of annual fatalities almost halved over two decades while the number of global flight hours more than doubled"

Grenfell Tower fire: Should this cladding be allowed?

From the technical editor of Building Magazine - so may be better informed than some commentary.

The terrible and sudden spread of the fire at the west London tower this week has raised questions about whether ACM cladding should be permitted on high-rise residential towers

Is Grenfell Tower a monument to the death of the ethos of public service?

Tessa Shepperson at Landlord Law Blog knows here stuff - this is a little polemical but raises some interesting points such as one that is a warning for Tenant Management Organisations:

There seems to be a general tenancy nowadays, in all fields, for people to disrespect knowledge and experience and assume that people with no knowledge and no experience can – with advice – do as good a job as the experts.

Tenants are just tenants, they aren't buildings management experts.

To blame “Evil Tories” is to miss the point spectacularly…

In which we learn that regulation of privately rented properties is quite a bit stricter than that of state housing:

A programme of inspections takes place to tackle high-risk HMOs to ensure that means of escape and adequate fire safety measures are in place and to identify unlicensed HMOs.

There is an overlapping fire safety responsibility between the Council and the London Fire Brigade (LFB). Owners are required to carry out a fire risk assessment and make an emergency plan. The fire risk assessment is a systematic examination of the premises to identify the hazards from fire which must be recorded.

The Grenfell High-Rise Fire: A Litany of Failures?

From Wendell Cox in New Geography - so a US perspective:

Worse, in a larger sense, the Grenfell fire may turn out to be one of the world's great planning disasters.

And from blogger Tim Newman:

I have no idea what the philosophy was in the Grenfell Tower, but it should have been to get everyone out ASAP in the event of a fire: you hear the alarm, everyone evacuates, the firemen turn up to see what’s what. From what I’m hearing, people believed they should stay in their apartments because the flats were designed to contain fires, or something like that. Even if they were designed to contain fires, you should still evacuate. Yes, it’s a pain in the arse standing in the carpark in your pyjamas at 1am, but it’s better than burning to death.

Suggests there's a need to review fire safety advice (staying put is pretty standard advice)

Or another well-informed blogger, Raedwald:

Around 6am, 5am UK time, last Wednesday morning I started watching Grenfell Tower burning. It was clear from the footage that the fire progressed on the outside of the building. "Cladding" I said to my plumber. A bit of digging about found the portfolio pics on the website of Studio E architects, of Tooley Street; they confirmed that an aluminium sandwich panel was specified.

There's still a way to go on this disaster. One thing that needs some urgent attention is the lack of preparedness from the Council. This echoes for us in Bradford since the Council completely failed in its response to serious flooding on Boxing Day 2015 - less serious for sure but a failure nonetheless. Is this pretty standard for Councils? Are we not ready for disaster - whether its a big fire, a flood, an outbreak of disease or a hurricane?

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Ban barbecues!

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There's a campaign afoot to do something about barbecues. Apparently they are dangerous:

The warning follows several recent tragedies in which campers have lost their lives after taking lit barbecues into tents or caravans for warmth.

It seems to me that only a complete idiot would take a burning barbecue into an enclosed space like a caravan, let alone a tent! And not just because of the carbon monoxide but more because of the high probability of burning the place down. However we need more "awareness" of the risks associated with lighting barbecues in flammable enclosed spaces - at least according to Alex Cunningham MP:

Nobody should ever take a barbecue in doors. To do so is courting disaster, but unfortunately the public do not seem to be aware of this and sadly around the country there have been a number of tragedies and several near misses in the past year. I am determined that such incidents should not be allowed to happen again, and that is why I am calling on barbecue grill manufacturers to do their bit and educate the public so that these terrible, yet totally avoidable, incidents can be prevented.

And when that doesn't work we'll ban fire?

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Friday Fungus: a few magic mushrooms (and some others) at Ogden Water

Ogden Water is just on the Halifax side of the hill down from Denholme (from where it is always downhill) and is a great place for a wander. Especially if you like mushrooms - ones like the rather chewed fly agaric in the picture above. We'd wandered up to the top of the woods - right on the edge of where the moor fires of this spring had caught into the trees:

It was really striking to see just how quickly nature recovers from fire - and to ponder about how it must have been during the burning. And to remember the discussion I had with Bradford's top fire officer about the moor fires and the difficulties in responding to them, the work with farmers and gamekeepers, and the problems with getting water to the fire (Yorkshire Water have a helicopter that drops those big water bombs). Looking closely you can see how deeply the fire cuts into the peat and leaf mould:

With the recent rains, it was a great day to see some mushrooms - and there were plenty to see including this rather attractive fellow - which I'm not sure about but think might be a rufus milk cap;

An excellent walk - a lovely wood. Worth a visit if you're over that way.

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It's either incompetence or else they're lying...

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There's a chicken factory - run by an Irish-owned firm called HCF (Poultry) Ltd - in Cullingworth and today it stinks. I mean really stinks - the smell is actively unpleasant, you wouldn't want to spend any time outside near the factory.

In trying to resolve this situation - to provide some relief for the factory's neighbours and in anticipation of the Village Gala tomorrow on the nearby recreation ground - I discovered that not one public authority holds keyholder or management out-of-hours contact details for this plant. Not the Council's environmental health department, not the fire service and not the police.

Not only am I angry about this - what would happen in the case of a fire or a serious break in? What would happen in frustrated and annoyed neighbours decided to take the law into their own hands?

This is either incompetence or they're lying. It's really not good enough.

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