The Blame Begins

Grenfell was in the news again and it would appear that the blame game is beginning and the fire service are the first candidate on the list of people to blame, but is this the real issue or is it merely more deflection to let it implode in on itself anf hold many people/organisations accountable to the point where no liability can realistically be laid against one party, or is this more sinister?

I would suggest the latter and this incident began years earlier earlier when the building was constructed, this begins with a planning application and the council become involved at the earliest stages and could have insisted various safety systems were installed from the outset, but didn't, they would also have had a Schedule of Materials and this would list every material used within the building and its structure, and they would scrutinise it for any materials which has issues and remove them and inform the developers to replace them with appropriate materials.

When high rise buildings were being constructed many councils insisted upon some form of water safety system and the most popular were the misting systems on all stair wells, in lift shafts, and around the vicinity of every emergency exit from the building, and I am going back to the 1950's so they were known about then and their effectiveness in preventing the spread of fire even though they were primitive by modern standards, but effective in buying time for people to evacuate the building, even today.
How did they work? actually many were based upon deep mining knowledge and their experiences in dealing with fire in confined spaces where it had a defined route to travel; basically they installed sprinkler systems with fusible plugs and if the heat became excessive then the fusible plug melted and allowed a fine mist of water to envelop the area, in lift shafts they would be located at strategic points slightly offset at opposite sides of the lift shaft so you had a spray either side of the shaft and this filled the area with a fine misting of water right across the shaft to prevent any flames travelling through them. Much the same applies to footwells and stairwells.
By setting such misters every two floors and the misting thickness at 12" (300mm) you would have a very effective system of preventing rising fire through a lift shaft and at every floor in foot and stairwells you would get the same, and a wet but readily safe and available means of egress for all residents, some people moaned about getting wet, but I would have asked a simple question; wet or dead?

During the building boom of the 1960's/70's many councils set their own standards well in excess of national standards and locally I remember lots of high rise buildings going up and our standards were high and they all had fire supppression systems fitted, even if they wee primitive, and even though there were lots of fires within these buildings, everyone escaped without injury, if a little wet, and as fire technology advanced, so did the systems contained within buildings of multiple occupation. At that time we had organisations such as British Standards Institute (BSI) who thoroughly tested everything from concrete to handrail materials and they were a Government body and cost didn't matter, and these were tested in actual conditions with all permeatations of what would realistically happen, and they knew all the tricks and replicated them, perfect!!! no as nothing is; effective, very.
Councils had supreme power and they come at various stages through the build process, especially in summer as inspectors are often related to flies to a turd by the trade and I have known as many as three inspectors on sites similtaneously with their usual excuse of "ad hoc inspection" or "we were passing and thought" and through summer this is not unusual as they are claiming their mileage expenses and getting a sun tan while being paid for it, and they can stop any job for the most minor infractions and do.

Grenfell suffered from many basic failures from the outset and it was refurbished which gave the opportunity to rectify many of these very basic errors and omissions and also to incorporate many new safety systems, but again the council passed everything and failed to undertake the very basic due diligence and relied heavily on manufacturers test data which can be seriously flawed as their main purpose is to sell a product which they can produce as cheaply as possible, and sell for the most profit.

Why haven't the council been held to account when it is their responsibility.

Bl00dy spot on yet again.