One of the "major scandals of our time".

[cactus jack]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59550680

[bill.advanced]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59550680

There must be some mistake here CJ, as far as I am aware Danny Cotton was never in government, yet to date she is the only person to have been blamed and punished over Grenfel.

[cactus jack]

There must be some mistake here CJ, as far as I am aware Danny Cotton was never in government, yet to date she is the only person to have been blamed and punished over Grenfel.

In my universe the tide is turning.
This has sleaze written all over it.
Certain areas of the press are looking for the next angle. I wonder how long it will take them to join the dots and realise:
Who was the mayor of london when the high rise attendance was cut, removing an aerial and pump from the initial attendance to every highrise call, all to save money and cut budgets?
And,
Who was the mayor of london when the report in to Lakanal House fire was released that could have prevented Grenfell ever happening......?

In my universe, the ex london major is on borrowed time.

[bill.advanced]

In my universe the tide is turning.
This has sleaze written all over it.
Certain areas of the press are looking for the next angle. I wonder how long it will take them to join the dots and realise:
Who was the mayor of london when the high rise attendance was cut, removing an aerial and pump from the initial attendance to every highrise call, all to save money and cut budgets?
And,
Who was the mayor of london when the report in to Lakanal House fire was released that could have prevented Grenfell ever happening......?

In my universe, the ex london major is on borrowed time.

It would appear that Carl Segan was right then CJ, we do live in a multiverse.
Fine post CJ.

[ABee]

Lets not deny that the evidence presented to the Inquiry is clear that although the crews on the ground that awful night worked heroically to unprecedented levels of bravery, but the LFB management let them down badly both before and on the night. This is why Ms Cotton has been held responsible.

I do not intend to replicate many hours of evidence here, but three points are worthy of mention:

The LFB knew about the risk of ACM. They had prepared and distributed a presentation to Fire Safety Officers, but the presentation was not shared with operational staff. For Dany to suggest in evidence that the LFB could not have done any more preparation for this incident was false, as sharing the info to Ops crews would have clearly provided greater competence in familiarisation visits, DRA on the night, and command decision making (especially in relation to abandoning stay put)

The Inquiry heard evidence to the one-way top down hierarchy in the LFB which pervades into the fireground. Several more junior ranks begged the senior OIC to abandon stay put, but they were either ignored or not listened to purely owing to their rank. The evidence pointed out in the aviation and petrochemical industries, all staff are mandated to speak up and must be listed to if they have H&S fears. This is not the case in the fire service and especially the LFB

And lastly the Decision Making Model (DMM). This is a process that is intended to help incident managers to make prioritise operational decisions. The Inquiry heard evidence that no other fire service in the UK uses the DMM as its widely believed to hinder and burden the IM and not assist them in any way. Indeed, the LFB is the only 999 service in London that uses this outdated tool. How could senior managers not know that the DMM is obsolete ? Instead of helping their IMs with these most critical decisions, they were effectively handcuffing them.

So the LFB did make mistakes and were found to be wanting. BUT lets not forget, IMHO, its the insulation company that fraudulently sent a fire retardant product to be tested, but marked it up as a product they knew wouldn't pass the test. then they marketed the combustible product as fire resisting. That is a bloody disgrace

If you like, they covered a conical piece of granite in a Cornetto packaging and sent it for testing, thereby scientifically proved it wouldn't melt in 100c, but then they sent out the well known ice cream to customers claiming the same qualities. Its unbelievable but that is what a junior member of their staff claimed

So the LFB did feck up, but are not the main villains here

[cactus jack]

Lets not deny that the evidence presented to the Inquiry is clear that although the crews on the ground that awful night worked heroically to unprecedented levels of bravery, but the LFB management let them down badly both before and on the night. This is why Ms Cotton has been held responsible.

I do not intend to replicate many hours of evidence here, but three points are worthy of mention:

The LFB knew about the risk of ACM. They had prepared and distributed a presentation to Fire Safety Officers, but the presentation was not shared with operational staff. For Dany to suggest in evidence that the LFB could not have done any more preparation for this incident was false, as sharing the info to Ops crews would have clearly provided greater competence in familiarisation visits, DRA on the night, and command decision making (especially in relation to abandoning stay put)

The Inquiry heard evidence to the one-way top down hierarchy in the LFB which pervades into the fireground. Several more junior ranks begged the senior OIC to abandon stay put, but they were either ignored or not listened to purely owing to their rank. The evidence pointed out in the aviation and petrochemical industries, all staff are mandated to speak up and must be listed to if they have H&S fears. This is not the case in the fire service and especially the LFB

And lastly the Decision Making Model (DMM). This is a process that is intended to help incident managers to make prioritise operational decisions. The Inquiry heard evidence that no other fire service in the UK uses the DMM as its widely believed to hinder and burden the IM and not assist them in any way. Indeed, the LFB is the only 999 service in London that uses this outdated tool. How could senior managers not know that the DMM is obsolete ? Instead of helping their IMs with these most critical decisions, they were effectively handcuffing them.

So the LFB did make mistakes and were found to be wanting. BUT lets not forget, IMHO, its the insulation company that fraudulently sent a fire retardant product to be tested, but marked it up as a product they knew wouldn't pass the test. then they marketed the combustible product as fire resisting. That is a bloody disgrace

If you like, they covered a conical piece of granite in a Cornetto packaging and sent it for testing, thereby scientifically proved it wouldn't melt in 100c, but then they sent out the well known ice cream to customers claiming the same qualities. Its unbelievable but that is what a junior member of their staff claimed

So the LFB did feck up, but are not the main villains here

So, there (above) we have the main problem.

Yes, mistakes were made by the LFB on the night but as shown above, they are highlighted 4 / 5 times more than the fact that the company lied about the cladding, how flammable it was, and that it has caused the death of so many people. It quite simply should not be used on a building, let alone a highrise, but it saved the council a few quid so that's ok then.
Look at the state the interior of the building was in, look and the Conservative-led council who gave a council tax rebate to the highest band home owners because of the money they had saved.
Why do you think the inquiry put the LFB in the dock first, not the cladding companies or the tory council?
Why do you think they targeted the chief first, not the cladding companies or the Tory council?

The errors the Brigade made came from the top. I don't mean the chief, above her.

Look at the cuts that the mayor made:
the shelving of the Lackanal House recommendations by the mayor,
the pre-determined attendance (reduced due to massive budget cuts by the mayor),
the outsourcing of training due to the cuts by the mayor.
the wholesale decimation of the fire safety department due to the cuts ...... yep you guessed it, by the mayor.

The press, politicians, and big business have their 'scapegoat.

[bill.advanced]

Ok, so the LFB knew about the risk of ACM, and senior management failed to pass fully what they knew to OPS. No argument there.

But let’s think carefully here, before we attribute blame to the LFB. Did any fire service in the uk carry out full briefings on this issue to their OPS, and if the crew that night had been fully briefed would it have changed how they tackled the fire. If we abandon stay put then what do we replace it with, when do we abandon it, and how do we communicate this abandonment to the residents within the building. Also what about residents who are non ambulant, unwell, inebriated etc, how are they to evacuate from upper levels. For me the abandonment of stay out means that a building designed for stay put is no longer safe to live within.
Let’s remember that prior to Grenfel no surveys were carried out in the uk to determine which buildings were at risk, including Grenfel. So are we seriously considering that prior to Grenfel any building with cladding should have been evacuated every time a fire breaks out, or a fire call is received from it, even when these buildings are not designed for mass evacuation, and this would seriously disrupt ff ops.
What happened that night was a tragedy, but the authors of this tragedy did not reside within the LFB. Governments ignored the risks until Grenfel.
Also as CJ stated why did the enquiry look first at the response of the LFB, it stinks to high hilt.

[ABee]

I wrote to the Inquiry to ask why the LFB went first in the order of witnesses called
It seemed logical to me that witnesses would be called chronologically, with Grenfell residents, the TMO, the construction project team and suppliers and the LFB at the end.

I got a reply from the Inquiry Team saying that the Chair , Sir Martin Moore-Bick and his advisors wanted to know what went on that night first. They wanted to build a picture of events in theirs minds before calling the landlords and builders

I accept that in many ways, that is not a bad strategy, but its not one that is very logical IMO

As for 'stay put' - again, this is a failing on the LFB to recognise a need to plan for when stay put fails or partly fails. That is, the whole building needs to be evacuated or several floors. As a result, it was ingrained in the minds of those in charge that stay put is irreversible - when that is not right. I must stress, I am NOT criticising anyone who attended on the night, just the training and preparation of ops crews was and perhaps is still lacking.

There are several factors that led to this tragedy. The LFB's role in it is minimal, but significant. The main blame is the lack of regulation, the confusion of the raft of existing regulations and standards , the lying insulation company that mis-sold the product, the TMO for appointing a fire risk assessor in dubious circumstances and above all the Govt for allowing this to happen

An example of Govt inaction. The insulation industry is massive. The need for environmentally green products is huge and growing exponentially. They recognised the massive holes in the regulatory system in the UK and targeted sales here. They also lobbied MPs to avoid changes and even joked in emails what a soft touch the UK was. The industry was always coming up with new innovative products that UK building regs couldn't keep up with the 100s of new products every year

Australia review their building regs annually and amend outdated rules. At the time of the Grenfell fire, UK building Regs had not been reviewed for 10 years - yes a whole decade!! They were woefully inadequate/outdated and tied the hands of planners and others to accept poor practices

[bill.advanced]

Abee in my honest opinion if stay put is not working in a building that is not designed for mass evac in the event of a fire then the building is no longer safe for human habitation. Yes stay put was ingrained because it worked, and it was the strategy applied to these building prior to and after their construction. For me any blame applied to the LFB could have been applied to any fire service in the uk. It just so happened that the fire happened within their brigade. Grenfel in my honest opinion was pre ordained through government inaction, and those in power now seek to look for scapegoats. I don’t think my brigade would have done any better, or any different, given the circumstances. But thanks for two excellent posts Abee.

[cactus jack]

Stay put is still the defacto evacuation strategy for the majority of high rises in London, and there are thousands of them.
The older ones, 60's and 70's vertical concrete boxes like Grenfell, are still stay put (Depending on cladding). They were built and designed to be stay put.
You can't add extra stair cases in without removing 1 flat per floor to allow access to an outside wall. So until every concrete tower block is demolished and rebuilt the problem of refurbishment and uprating fire safety standards will remain.

We have a new policy and training on catastrophic building failure (of fire safety). This includes a suggestion to use of social media to alert residents of a mass emergency evacuation of a building if needed.
This policy has been used once already when the internal engineered fire safety solutions failed.

The big lesson learnt is you now can't tell how a building is going to react in a fire just by looking at it.
Not only are there issues with external cladding but also internal works and hidden voids created by various refurbishments but also human action of residents now evacuating (quite unnecessarily but entirely understandable) and leaving doors open in the process.

The best solution to keep everyone safe is to follow firesafety regs and have all works inspected by independent industry experts.