24 stories of Grenfell were engulfed in an hour - the fire bypassed the doors, walls and floors, by going up the outside.
> The building would never be on fire
The entire building was on fire. 72 people died.
> The problem with Grenfell was that building regulations had been violated, at which point, all bets about safety are off.
Mistakes get made. Hence redundancy, like two staircases. If you're going to design for 'no mistakes ever made' then don't bother with any fire systems as a fire is a mistake in the first place.
Because the exterior was flammable, which isn't the norm and is actually criminal.
So is arson. Newsflash: sometimes people do criminal things.
But we try to design to cope with it rather than just saying ‘but they aren’t allowed to start that fire so no need to guard against it.’
And it turned out it was the norm, hence the huge panic to fix it in so many buildings.
Is there? I’ve never seen people panic when a fire alarm goes off. Maybe if the fire alarm is going off as the building is filling with deadly smoke people would panic. But then that seems appropriate (or at least better than sitting and waiting to die of smoke inhalation).
Pretty sure the Grenfell situation would have ended better by having everyone evacuate. And yes, the incompetent cladding work makes that a special case. But a huge amount of our codes are for a special case. Every so often it saves 70 lives.
If the concrete and fire doors are doing their supposed job, then the fire brigade can just wait. If the concrete and fire doors are not doing their job, then getting people out is far more important than getting the fire brigade in.
Wait until the people in the apartment on fire die? (Either it starts in an apartment, or a common are which would block the escape of inhabitants living on there or higher)
I just find the “apartment on fire, but everyone is blocking the stairs so the fire brigade can’t get to the burning apartment” scenario to be far fetched. Are there documented cases of this? Because there is at least one documented case of people sheltering in place and the building burning around them.
There’s certainly scenarios in which you might need to evacuate, like a bomb threat, but we are speaking about internal fire, in which case there’s more danger in hundreds of people fleeing in panic down stairs (whether that’s 1 stair case or 2) than staying inside.