Why the Grenfell fire door failure came as no surprise to me

It’s no great surprise to me that a fire door that should achieve a 30-minute fire rating failed during testing in half the time.

This was the result of tests carried out on a door in Grenfell Tower that was intact following the blaze because it was on a lower floor.

In many buildings I visit I see doors that should achieve a 30- or 60-minute rating that probably will not achieve more that 10 to 15 minutes. This is due to a number of reasons including poor maintenance and fitting, damage and incorrect hardware together with no fire or smoke strips.

There are also the numerous fire doors that are wedged open or have been removed completely – which obviously means no fire resistance at all. I’d like to say that these problems are rare, but unfortunately I see them all too often.

Not the first time

Some 25 years ago I was approached by a manufacturer that wanted to supply a very large order of 30-minute fire doors to a large Victorian district general hospital. They asked me to approve the product.

I asked the manufacturer for the test evidence and was given a sheet of paper that confirmed the door had passed a 30-minute fire test. But when I examined the evidence I could see the test was for a single door and I indicated to the manufacturer that many of these doors would be double doors.

Fire doors that passed the 30-minute test for single doors later failed the test for double doors in just 11 minutes

He replied that they would give the same result in this configuration. Had I believed this statement the hospital would have been protected by 11 minute fire resisting doors.

Fortunately, I did have doubts about this statement so I asked the manufacturer to have the doors tested in the required configuration. He was reluctant to do so on the grounds it was a very expensive procedure, but I pointed out that this was a very large order and I needed to be certain that the doors would provide the 30 minute rating.

The manufacturer finally agreed to the test and to everyone’s amazement they failed in just over 11 minutes. Obviously he did not get the contract.

A great deal of misunderstanding

I was aware at that time of a great deal of misunderstanding in respect of fire doors so I approached Central Television and put a proposal forward to produce a video-based fire door educational Package. This was produced after considerable research, time and filming. It was financed by a health authority and carefully selected manufacturers that were leaders in their respective fields.

Central Television had initially indicated they could not envisage a video about fire-doors justifying 30 minutes of footage I’d anticipated. As it happens, by the end of the project we had a package that consisted of two videos running to 2.5 hours and a substantial reference manual.

The videos were produced in sections for easy reference and amendment. The first video dealt with new doors and the second with upgrading. To give you an idea of the areas covered:

1. The need for fire-doors
2. Specification
3. Testing and certification
4. Hardware
5. Intumescent fire and smoke seals
6. Glazing
7. Site installation and identification
8. Maintenance
9. Upgrade or replace?

The final product sold to most fire and building control authorities, the Fire Service College, architects and other interested parties and was described as the “third major milestone in the history of fire doors” by the late Peter Jackman. The package also received a number of other awards including from the Prime Minister’s Quality Initiative.

These were typical of the comments received from one district council:

“The seminars organised by this office successfully took place last month and your video held the attention of all those attending on the day of training. In this connection I wish to thank you and your staff for all the assistance and support given […] over the last few months.”

“Three neighbouring councils were represented at these events.

“Four representatives from [one] fire service intend distributing the information acquired by the seminar throughout the Region and will be updating and amending the guidance note issued by […]

“The booklet and video were the main reason for training on this difficult subject being made possible and other building control offices will be told about how your product has been put to use by organising full day events.”

 

I was personally pleased to have produced an educational package that dispelled many myths around the subject and put the right information into the hands of people that needed it. Interestingly, the introduction to the package contained a sequence of the 11-minute fire door failure that inspired me to produce it.

I approached the industry about updating our 1992 fire door film but there appears to be little enthusiasm

Obviously, the package is a little dated now. While I’ve approached industry to update it there appears to be little enthusiasm, which is a great pity because I believe that the education of the enforcers, trade and public is a key issue.

I did give a copy to a very high profile colleague in the fire door industry recently and these were his comments: “I was recently very fortunate to view the above titled film. It was made in 1992 featuring some very knowledgeable fire door industry professionals, some sadly no longer with us.

“Even though made 25 years ago much of its content and message is still pertinent today and it’s a great example of what can be achieved when industry professional come together.”

That last paragraph is something we need to give more consideration to and an aspect I have been a keen advocate of for many years.

Tip of the iceberg

 I think that the Grenfell fire door failure is the tip of the iceberg’. While we don’t yet know all the details, if you retested many fire doors in use today you would probably get similar results.

What you have to consider is that when doors are tested they are usually brand new doors, but when doors have been in situ for some time and get damaged, modified or warped their fire resistance can downgrade quite dramatically.

Look at the photos I’ve included for examples of poor fire-door safety. Some of these are from prestige buildings including hotels, libraries and museums.

What does this say about our enforcement, standards and approach to fire safety in the UK?

 

 

Unfortunately, these photographs are just a small sample of defects and problems I’ve observed. I did notify the respective persons about these problems and where there were serious concerns I passed these on to the respective authorities. Some acknowledged the notification and thanked me and others made no communication at all.

There is little doubt in my mind that we need stronger enforcement in this area together with better education of all people involved, including the public and responsible persons. We also need mandatory identification and record keeping because at present it’s nearly impossible to identify which doors are actually fire doors.

It was easy to identify fire doors when they were indicated on the fire plan with the fire certificate

In the past it was easy to identify fire doors because they were indicated on the fire plan with the fire certificate.

However, with today’s mainly text-based fire risk assessments (FRAs) it is virtually impossible. Yet as we have seen with the Cathedral Yard Fire, you can easily lose the FRA in a serious fire.

To illustrate part of the problem, last week I received an email from a friend of mine who was carrying out a patient assessment of a hospital area. She raised the question of why the fire doors were “propped open” and was told that “this was because otherwise “patients would think that outpatients was closed”. The fire officer (who doesn’t seem to be kept updated) said that as long as the remainder of the outer area was intact, it didn’t matter.