Two years after the Grenfell Tower disaster, the London Fire Commissioner ultimately responsible for how the fire was fought is advocating a serious review of ‘Stay Put’ advice to residents.
Many who live or have lived in a modern high rise understand the concept of ‘stay put’ (a.k.a. ‘shelter in place’) if there is a fire. While the details vary, the safest way of surviving the fire in a ‘stay put’ designed building is to remain within your unit.
Modern high rise architecture treats fireproofing the way that ships treat flooding. Sections of a ship can be isolated from each other into compartments separated by watertight doors, so that if one compartment is breeched by the sea, the flooding can be prevented from moving to other compartments.
The same principle is used to construct fire barriers in high rises to prevent the flames from spreading from one ‘compartment’ to another. That’s the theory. It’s been proven to work time and time and time again in practice. Tower fires are not all that uncommon, and ‘stay put’ almost always does keep people safe.
But suppose it doesn’t?
What if the fire is not contained in one, or a few ‘compartments?’ Thanks to the installation of substandard cladding on the building’s exterior, that’s what happened in the Grenfell Tower fire. 72 people, sheltering in place, died when fire was not contained. Instead, it raced up the outside cladding to consume the entire building.
Many modern high rises have a similar fire safety Plan ‘A’, which is to stay put. But if Plan ‘A’ fails to protect residents, there may or may not be a Plan ‘B’. Some jurisdictions require a ‘Plan B’ — usually stairways suitably large to evacuate the building and constructed to be fireproof.
The London Fire Brigade was criticized for its handling of the Grenfell Tower fire. But when a jurisdiction such as London does not require a plan ‘B’, alternate ways of escaping the fire may simply not be available, and fire responders are not trained to execute any other method to protect or evacuate residents, should such a method even exist.
Why is the London Fire Commissioner’s call for a review of ‘stay put’ important to affordable housing?
Grenfell Tower was a public housing high rise, built by local government and designed to shelter low-income citizens. Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic reduction in council built social housing towers. However, a revival of local government-built housing is rapidly becoming inevitable, as public private partnership construction — the approved alternative — fails to keep up with a growing low-income housing crisis.
Allowing older high rises to be ‘spruced up’ with sub-standard exterior cladding was a failure of judgement repeated an extraordinary number of times by local councils, complicit with the builders who should have known better than to use it.
It would seem that budget-conscious councils and profit-minded builders have been inclined to cut safety corners in both the construction and refurbishment of council housing. In the face of a new wave of council homebuilding, now would be the time to design future high rise towers with not only a fire survival plan ‘A’, but also a backup plan ‘B’.
Read more at ITV News: London Fire Brigade Urges Government To Review ‘Stay Put’ Advice In Wake Of Grenfell Tragedy
A couple of positive notes were sounded on October 14, 2019 in the pre-election box of promises outlined in the Queen’s Speech by a Tory Government in the shadow of Brexit, which unfortunately lacks the votes to make any wishes come true for the moment. One announced new initiative was a Grenfell Housing Bill, the other a promise to create a building safety regulator. Read more in The Guardian: Grenfell Tower Law Will Compel Owners To Keep Buildings Safe
