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Towerblock on Fire in West London


Chaldanya

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Michael Paramaseevan, who lives on the seventh floor with his girlfriend and young daughter, said he ignored official advice to stay in your home.

Official advice to stay inside when there's a fire in an apartment complex? what? am I reading this right?

I'm hoping not many people have died. This is just awful news.I'm really shocked and outraged with the terrible rubbish fire alarm system not going off when it should've done. And what a horrific place toput families!

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There's been mention of people trapped on the top floors flashing lights to alert the emergency services to their presence. I hope they can get them out safely, but it will surely depend on the damage to the lower floors. :(

1 minute ago, Wolfgirly said:

Official advice to stay inside when there's a fire in an apartment complex? what? am I reading this right?

Under most circumstances this may be good advice. The flats should have fire doors which will protect residents for a minimum of an hour. If, for example, there's a fire that guts a flat two floors below you, but doesn't spread beyond that floor, staying inside rather than trying to get past the fire makes sense. It's only in cases like this, where the fire spread through the entire building very quickly and burned for many hours, that the advice looks bizarre.

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Just now, mormont said:

There's been mention of people trapped on the top floors flashing lights to alert the emergency services to their presence. I hope they can get them out safely, but it will surely depend on the damage to the lower floors. :(

Yes - I was listening to the news report on five live and the reporter said that she could see clear through the floor levels on the lower part of the building.  The place has been gutted and I can't imagine that's good for the structural integrity.

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There are going to be a load of fatalities here, if no alarms were going off the only consolation is people may have died through smoke inhalation in their sleep rather than being conscious through it.  24 stories means at least 100-150 flats, maybe 200. At that time of night everyone was probably home. It looks horrific, I thought the BBC coverage was awful but having been on YouTube they are sanitizing it. 

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Just now, BigFatCoward said:

There are going to be a load of fatalities here, if no alarms were going off the only consolation is people may have died through smoke inhalation in their sleep rather than being conscious through it.  24 stories means at least 100-150 flats, maybe 200. At that time of night everyone was probably home. It looks horrific, I thought the BBC coverage was awful but having been on YouTube they are sanitizing it. 

Omg this is sad news :(

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3 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

There are going to be a load of fatalities here, if no alarms were going off the only consolation is people may have died through smoke inhalation in their sleep rather than being conscious through it.  24 stories means at least 100-150 flats, maybe 200. At that time of night everyone was probably home. It looks horrific, I thought the BBC coverage was awful but having been on YouTube they are sanitizing it. 

According to the BBC, 120 flats housing up to 500 people.

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1 minute ago, Wolfgirly said:

It was cladding that went up in flames so quickly. This is recent refurbishments to those flats done and costed millions.

At this point in time that can only be speculation. We'll find out soon enough for sure: rushing to repeat rumours isn't helping.

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1 hour ago, mormont said:

There's been mention of people trapped on the top floors flashing lights to alert the emergency services to their presence. I hope they can get them out safely, but it will surely depend on the damage to the lower floors. :(

Under most circumstances this may be good advice. The flats should have fire doors which will protect residents for a minimum of an hour. If, for example, there's a fire that guts a flat two floors below you, but doesn't spread beyond that floor, staying inside rather than trying to get past the fire makes sense. It's only in cases like this, where the fire spread through the entire building very quickly and burned for many hours, that the advice looks bizarre.

That is standard advice, and usually, it's good advice.

This is horrific.  The courage of firefighters going inside, to rescue people is incredible.

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Absolutely terrible. Firefighters saying it did not behave as it should have. Usually it should be contained to one or two flats. 

On the cladding, we had a case in Victoria where an apartment fire went up the side of a building due to cladding. So it does happen. 

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This is so devastating. I read about it last night as it was happening and now more details this morning. As a person who lives in a high rise building...and an unsprinkled one at that...this is one of my greatest fears. I can't imagine what that was like for the people on the upper floors who couldn't get out. And so appalling about the stair being blocked.

It is standard procedure to only evacuate certain floors around a fire. This is because typically fires can be contained and then it keeps the stairwells free for firefighters and limits residences chances of smoke inhalation if they stay by their windows. But after 9/11 I've thought its perhaps best to ignore that and just get the hell out of the building. This fire makes you question that as well. The recent high rise fires in Dubai where no one has died are the exception.

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The cladding going up make sense for how fast it spread. Eyewitness statements on one radio station I heard said it went up the whole side within minutes, I suspect it's similar to fires on high rise buildings in Australia and Dubai where the cladding is ignited by the smaller initial fire. Once that metal catches its hard to put out before it goes up fast, it's usually some sort of composite material. 

Staying in one place also makes sense for a normal fire in one of these buildings. The idea being that each apartment is isolated so a fire should be contained. That means a fire on one side or floor should stay put long enough to control. The major problem here seems to be the fire went round the outside of the building where it's was uncontrolled, essentially bypassed all the control measures in place. 

Theres literally nothing they could do once it got hold. It set the test of the place alight from the outside in. 

I really hope people got out quick but the lack of alarms and sprinklers seems to be bad news. Those video clips show literally every window filled with fire. That looks like there's gotta be a lot of fatalities above where it started. 

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