[SystemSafety] Electrical Safety, Fire Safety

[Mike Ellims]

>From what I've seen on various media sources the chimney effect appears to
be consideration.

Interestingly these sort of fire have been seen before, one the Melbourne
Australia, I think a couple of cases in Dubai and one in France. Video of
all the cases seems very similar.

In the USA apparently panels of this type cannot be used on building higher
than 15m which is the limit of a fire hose and they appear to have been
outlawed in Dubai.

One interesting nugget I got from the radio this morning (Radio 2) was that
one woman who stayed up but was rescued (?) decided to put the plug in the
bath and deliberately flood her apartment...


-----Original Message-----
From: systemsafety
[mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of
Peter Bishop
Sent: 16 June 2017 13:36
To: systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Electrical Safety, Fire Safety

Re Grenfell Tower.

This is just speculation on my part, but I wonder if the combination of new
windows and cladding made things much worse.

The old windows were fitted into the (non-inflammable) masonry walls.
The new windows were fitted further out - fitted flush with the outside of
the cladding. There is some kind of surround between the extended window
aperture and the inside wall - but no idea how flame-proof that is.

There is an intentional air gap between cladding and masonry wall (for
drainage), so there is a potential flame path from fire *inside* the window
through a breach in the aperture surround and up into the masonry cladding
gap.

Thereafter the chimney effect of the air-gap behind the cladding could
ensure the cladding filler was set ablaze all the way up to the top of the
building.

As I said this is just speculation, but it is a common problem to make
modifications that violate the original design safety concept
- in this case the change could have the violated the design concept that
rooms are compartmentalised to restrict the spread of fire.

Peter Bishop

Adelard

On 16/06/2017 12:47, paul_e.bennett at topmail.co.uk wrote:
> On 16/06/2017 at 12:22 PM, "Peter Bernard Ladkin" <ladkin at causalis.com>
wrote:
>>
> 
> [%X]
> 
>> Six years later, are such robots available to investigate the 
>> Grenfell Tower wreckage, said to be unstable? If not, shouldn't we 
>> try to ensure some are available for the next disaster in enclosed 
>> spaces?
> 
> They are using flying drones and specialists dogs with cameras to 
> search where fire-crew are not able to go at present.
> 
>> Issues about building safety are difficult. I have my problems 
>> nowadays with large buildings and escape routes when I am staying in 
>> hotels. Newer ones mostly seem OK, but I am also aware that 
>> evacuation is still more art and luck than science, as Chris Johnson 
>> showed a decade or so ago. It's a key business in ship classification 
>> for cruise vessels, but even so it doesn't work super-well, as we 
>> learnt with the Costa Concordia. You have potentially 5,000-
>> 6,000 people on some of the newer craft.
> 
> Evacuation policy and escape routes really do need looking at for 
> buildings with significant altitude (more than two stories). With 
> Grenfell tower, they only had one escape route which became flooded 
> with thick smoke quite quickly and with the advice that many residents 
> were given about staying put, seemed to have been wrong headed in that
situation.
> 
> There has been a lot of talk, about Grenfell Tower, about the inherent 
> fire integrity of such buildings, but there is suspicion that such 
> inherent fire integrity was probably compromised by the refurbishment 
> works carried out just over a year ago.
> 
>> Besides electrical safety, the issue of fire-resistent cladding is 
>> not new. The issues of sprinklers in large buildings, and 
>> appropriately-functional evacuation routes, are perennial. Evacuation 
>> is a tricky business, as Chris Johnson and Karster Loer know. 
>> Karsten, BTW, drew up the evacuation plans for a open-air rock 
>> concert last year, at which there was a violent storm on the first 
>> day and everyone was evacuated. It's nice to have it proved that your 
>> plans work! Evacuation and crowd control came into prominence in 
>> Germany with the Love Parade disaster in Duisburg in 2010.
> 
> The retro-fitting of sprinklers systems have been recommended for such 
> buildings but for such tall buildings that becomes a major undertaking 
> in terms of design and water supply.
> 
> I have seen reports on mister systems that enable rapid cooling of 
> fires, which use much less water, so it should be incumbent on those 
> responsible for such buildings to examine the best technology to aid 
> in fire control (rather the the minimal to comply with regulations).
> 
> Regards
> 
> Paul E. Bennett IEng MIET
> Systems Engineer
> 

-- 

Peter Bishop
Chief Scientist
Adelard LLP
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