Grenfell Report

[Keith]

With the publication of the report following the first phase of the inquiry, the media have latched on to two main threads, the systematic failings of the London Fire Brigade and that the stay put policy should have been changed earlier.

Firstly do you think that LFB are being made scapegoats for the fire and secondly what real alternatives are there to stay put?

Matt Wreck from the FBU has been across numerous TV and radio programs defending firefighters and putting the focus back on Government and policy makers, who have said they will implement the recommendations in full, however we've been here before after previous high rise inquiries. He also makes a very good point that 28 months after the fire, no research or tests have been conducted into a replacement for stay put.

[Messyshaw]

Its piss poor media reporting @Keith

I have had a look through all for volumes of the report today with the emphasis on volume 4 - which contain the recommendations 

There are 12 for hi rise owners, 12 for the LFB and 8 for all fire and rescue services. But guess who got the most crap in the media 

Some of the recommendations are weak and poorly thought out. For example, owners of high rises to firefighting lifts regularly , especially the firefighters control switch - and report their findings monthly to the fire service. Really? That won't work

Other findings relate to changes as  NPAS helicopter cctv images using different encryption than the LFB, so no images could be seen -  reasonable I reckon

A summary of recommendations is as follows:

4) KNOWLEDGE OF MATERIALS IN HIGH RISE BUILDINGS

The owner & manager of every high rise premises, by law provide information to their local fire & rescue service in relation to design and materials used in external walls

Fire services ensure staff at all levels are able to understand & recognise risks with fires in external walls of such premises

5) 7(2)D VISITS

• LFB to review 72d arrangements
• LFB to train crew managers to inspect high rise buildings in respect of the 72d (was 1id)

6) PLANS

• Owner and manager of high rise presumes, by law, provide plans to the local fire & rescue service
• Owner and manager of high rise premises, by law, install premises information boxes for plans

7) LIFTS

• Owner and manager of high rise presumes, by law, carry out regular inspections of firefighting lifts and report findings to the fire service on a monthly basis.
• Owner and manager of high rise presumes, by law, carry out checks regular checks of firefighting lift switching mechanism and report findings to the fire service on a monthly basis

8)COMMS BETWEEN CONTROL ROOM AND FIREGROUND

• LFB to review policies on comms between control room and Incident Manager
• LFB to ensure all above CM receive training in communicating with control room
• LFB to ensure Control Room Officers above Ass Ops Manager rank receive training in communication with Incident Manager

9) EMERGENCY CALLS

• LFB policy be amended to separate callers into those trapped & those seeking advice
• LFB to train CROs more effectively and regularly
• All fire services draw up plans to deal with large number of simultaneous fire survival calls
• All fire services develop systems to display fire survival calls at the control room & bridgehead
• All fire services develop policies to manage a transition from ‘stay put’ to ‘get out’ (sic)
• All fire services train control room staff to communicate a change of advice to callers
• All fire services investigate measures to allow other control rooms taking calls to access appropriate information about the incident
• Met Pol, LAS and LFB to improve protocols to ensure identical advice is given to callers

10) COMMAND & CONTROL

• LFB to develop procedures to better control deployments and use of resources
• LFB to develop better procedures to debrief crews returning from deployment which enables such information to be made available to the Incident Manager.
• LFB to develop better comms between the control room and Incident Manager - and the Bridgehead and Incident Manager

11) EQUIPMENT

LFB to develop better comms between firefighters and Bridgehead in high rise incidents

12) EVACUATION

• HM Govt to produce guidelines on carrying out evacuation of high rises, including disabled persons
• All fire services to develop plans for evacuating high rise residential buildings & train their staff to do so
• Owner and manager of high rise premises, by law, draw up emergency plans and supplies those plans to fire service and in premises info boxes
• Owner and manager of high rise premises, by law, prepare PEEPs (for disable residents)
• All fire & rescue service carry smoke hoods

15) INTERNAL SIGNAGE

• Owner and manager of high rise premises, by law, clearly mark the floor number on landings on every floor
• Owner and manager of any resident building with separate dwellings (of any size), by law, provide evacuation instructions in a manner the resident can understand

16) FIRE DOORS

• Owner and manager of high rise premises containing separate dwellings (whether high rise or not) urgently inspect their fire doors to ensure their compliance
• Owner and manager of high rise premises containing separate dwellings (whether high rise or not), by law, to inspect fire doors and self closers to ensure compliance and in good condition
• Those whatever capacity who have responsibility for entrance doors to flats in buildings fitted with unsafe cladding, be required by law to ensure doors are compliant

17) COOPERATION BETWEEN 999 SERVICES

• Various recommendations for all 999 services to coordinate better
• LFB to investigate systems so that they can see the Mets and LAS’s CAD logs
• Steps be taken to ensure LFB and NPAS (National Police Air Service)  helicopters use the same encryption systems to allow LFB to view NPAS heli- link  (the Inquiry fails to allocate this action to any group)
• Met and LFB to liaise to investigate improvement on casualty clearing and collection of information about survivors

[DRMS3934]

Did the LFB fit dodgy, highly flammable cladding to the building, thereby destroying it's inherent ability to compartmentalise a fire? Did the LFB light the fire?

No.

There is no doubt there are always lessons to be learnt from a job of any significant size, so it may have been ill-advised to suggest otherwise, but the reporting thus far is deeply unpleasant and inflammatory towards the LFB and the Commissioner and unhelpful.

 

[LFB92]

Beginning of the year I attended a exercise at LFB control. It’s main focus was to test mass evacuations in another grenfell type situation. 

I have no idea what the outcome of it was but the brigade are definitely exploring alternatives

[Keith]

Have to agree @Messyshaw, some of the recommendations are weak and poorly thought out. Whilst some may be specific to the incident or LFB, majority could be a copy and paste from previous inquiries, that sadly haven't been acted on.

I think it safe to say that report has not gone down well within the fire service community. This excellent blog from @Steve sums it up and is well worth a read.

[Kinmel]

An unknown retired CFO's views have appeared elsewhere and is worth reading...

Grenfell...

Who’d be a fire chief?
Who’d be a firefighter ?

As a firefighter you spend decades being told to follow procedures and training. They work, fires get put out, you get to go home safely.

You are told you did a good job, you are audited and the auditors tell you that you are competent and professional. It is reaffirming and reassuring.

Step outside those procedures and you fail your assessment, you are not competent. You don’t want to be there.

All these procedures are written to tackle fire in buildings built to a regulated standard.

The building is supposed to behave in a predictable way. Arm Chair enthusiasts would imagine that fire is not predictable. Well you are wrong, it is a matter of scientific fact that fire develops and behaves predictably depending on the fuel air and environment.

That is why firefighters can have standard operating procedures (SOPs) that for the most part work and do the job. If fire was unpredictable you could not have a SOP.

For decades building regs worked and we never suffered a Grenfell even in the 80 and 90s when there were 40% more fires than we have today.

Likelihood and severity, you’ve heard these banded around. In the nineties the likelihood was massive but it seems nowadays the severity has mushroomed as whole buildings are burning down on a regular basis.

If you ever drove through Salford in the 90s a single burnt out flat was a common sight as you looked up at the high rise buildings. Like broken tooth.

A fire put out using tried and tested procedure in a building designed to contain fire to the flat of origin. Most people in the other flats wouldn’t even know that a fire had occurred until the morning after.

No common fire alarm, no mobile phones yet a successful outcome and no mass evacuation.

Why?

Because the buildings were not wrapped in flammable material allowing unchecked spread up the facade and ingress through windows.

Because the internal separation was solid and fire resistant, because mostly the fire doors unless vandalised worked.

At this time the fire brigade were the responsible authority for fire legislation. We issued fire certificates and our word was law.

Admittedly we didn’t issue certs on domestic property but such was our regulatory power in other premises the local authority building control accepted that we knew what we were about and went with our recommendation

All that changed through deregulation at the end of the 90s. I was in fire protection at the time and I remember the old hands predicting a disaster.

It was like giving the kids the keys to the sweet shop. Building owners were now responsible for the fire safety standards in the same way a manager is responsible for health and safety at work. Some do it well, some do it badly, some do what they can afford and hope it’s enough.

Well it’s not good enough and it is coming home to roost.

As a chief, you expect your firefighters to follow the policy and be competent, you have the dubious pleasure of being ultimately responsible for making sure that this is the case. It is a massive responsibility, you do your best. You audit the boys and girls to the death. They are sick of being assessed. But they are safe, competent and they go home at the end of the shift.

Grenfell.

Imagine turning up at a building where everything has gone wrong the whole fire protection system had failed and fire is spreading through what should be concrete fire resistant rooms and up the outside beyond your capability to reach it.

You now need to tell 200 firefighters to forget everything they ever learned and do things completely outside of every procedure they have trained on. Things that could get them killed. It’s a miracle none were.

Every fibre in your body is screaming to do something new and evacuate whilst every professional brain cell is saying “are you mad” if you evacuate the people in the flats with no breathing apparatus they are doomed and it will be seen to have been your call.

Evacuating a burning building means taking people from what you understand to be a place of relative safety (or at least it should be if built right) and asking them to enter smoke filled corridors and stairs knowing some won’t make it. We are taking about people of all ages and abilities here. Your mum, your grandad, your kids.

What would you do?
How brave are you now sitting in your arm chair with the daily mail sword drawn about to slay the guilty.

Making life and death decisions outside of policy because a building had been let slide as a result of a succession of systematic governmental failure, safe in the knowledge that if you lose one firefighter or members of the public are found in stairwells dead you will be squarely in the frame of “going out side of procedure”.

Not so easy is it.

It is no surprise that candidates for chief fire officers jobs total one or two per position when advertised theee days.

I stand with Dany Cotton and I stand with London Fire Brigade.

I look forward to part two of the report that looks at root cause including building regs and I sincerely hope the author does his job properly.

I hope everyone understands that firefighters turn up when everyone else’s risk assessment had gone wrong and are tasked with sorting out the mess.

We are not chefs, a missed instruction does not result in a ruined dish. We have to take what ingredients we have been given and bake a cake on the hoof whilst the kitchen is on fire and then have some arm chair baker who may have watched his mum make a jam tart once tell us how well we have done.

Don’t get me started on sprinklers. I’ve been vocal, been on the telly, been sat in front if ministers with hard evidence to prove the case and been fobbed off.

Politics is at the root of Grenfell, I doubt any politician will be vilified in the way firefighters and chiefs have this week

Who’d be a chief
Who’d be a firefighter now

[Kinmel]

I wonder if  the Grenfell Inquiry Chairman, Sir  Martin Moore-Bick has spent any time reading this.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Carl
Link corrected as per FAQ

[Messyshaw]

@Kinmel It depends how good the 4G coverage is on his golf course I reckon