What the Grenfell Tower Inquiry reveals about failings in fire protection

(Image: Nigel Cox under CC BY-SA 2.0)

The most visible and significant cause of the devastation wrought on Grenfell Tower was clearly the exterior cladding.

This highly flammable surface turned an everyday kitchen fire into a towering inferno, and led to the loss of 72 lives. The scope of the fire was not just down to the cladding, however.

The recent Grenfell enquiry has revealed negligence in a number of areas, all of which combined to hinder rescue and escape attempts, and exacerbated the disaster. By learning from these mistakes and oversights, we can improve the fire safety of other facilities, preventing a similar tragedy from ever happening again.

Fire doors

Crucial to any effective fire prevention or safety strategy is the ability of occupants to escape.

Impediments to this should be minimised to the greatest possible extent, with multiple routes out of a building which should be free from smoke and fire. These paths should be well-known, clearly designated and protected at every juncture from fire spilling into the path from an exterior source.

Many fire doors did not form a tight seal when closed or did not close automatically behind people escaping

In the Grenfell fire, it’s been revealed that none of the 120 fire doors to the flats – 106 of which were replaced not long before the fire – were compliant with regulations. In addition, fire doors onto the stairwells were also broadly non-compliant, and in some instances ended up being propped open by a fire hose.

Many simply did not form a tight seal when closed, or did not close automatically behind people escaping. These flaws greatly hindered their effectiveness, allowing thick, poisonous smoke to accumulate throughout the corridors and seep into flats.

Ventilation

A proper ventilation system is imperative, both in the event of a fire and for general use. Air currents are often limited by fire doors and a lack of windows in corridors, reducing air quality and leading to humidity, condensation and mould growth.

In the event of a fire, however, a ventilation system can alleviate the impact of smoke on escape routes. The need for ventilation has been recognised for over a hundred years, and was a factor in the landmark Iroquois Theatre fire in 1903, where ‘smoke doors’ in the roof failed to open.

The ventilation system in Grenfell Tower was designed to eliminate smoke from a single floor. While there is some dispute over whether it was up to standard, the fact is that it was useless on the night, as it did not work.

The tower’s authority had contacted the manufacturer and received a quote for repairs six days before the fire, but had not responded. The system may not have been of much use anyway, as the fire spread to multiple floors, but it could potentially have been used by firefighters on a floor-by-floor basis.

Fire escapes

Despite the aim of fire safety protocols to keep escape routes safe, there are times when they become compromised. As such, it’s highly advisable to have multiple points of egress in a building.

While this is more difficult in a high rise, there should be more ways to escape than just a staircase, particularly given that some residents may have different access requirements to others.

Grenfell Tower did not have any external fire escapes, although these would have been rendered useless by the cladding fire. However, modern building regulations dictate that a high rise should have more than one stairwell, something Grenfell did not feature.

The lifts in the building also failed to function properly, hampering the transport of equipment and firefighters.

While the public are advised to avoid lifts in the event of a fire – and lifts should automatically stop working if connected to an alarm or other detection system – the fire service can override this if they feel their use is beneficial and safe. In the case of Grenfell, the conditions and height of the tower meant that avoiding fatigue was crucial, andthe lifts were not deemed to be in immediate danger from the mostly exterior fire.

Fire alarm

Much was made of the fact that fire alarms failed to sound in Grenfell Tower, leaving many residents to sleep through the period where they might have escaped the blaze. While there was not an audible alarm for residents, though, there was a functioning central alarm system.

The alarm sounded and alerted an external company charged with monitoring multiple high rises, with the onus on them to determine the severity of the fire and respond appropriately.

Given the ‘stay put’ policy and the notion that every flat was one-hour fire rated, this was not an oversight but a correctly applied policy. Audible central alarm systems are not permitted in the UK, as the rush of evacuating residents could interfere with firefighters’ ability to respond, and potentially fuel the fire with the air currents created by opening and closing doors.

It may be prudent for the law to consider an ‘emergency alarm’ system for unforeseen circumstances, but this is not something that facilities can currently take into their own hands.

Mains and sprinklers

By law, all high rises in the UK are required to have a ‘wet main’ for firefighting. This involves a series of pipes running up to the top floor with water actively circulating, to be used by firefighters on each floor.

“Grenfell only had a ‘dry main’, which first responders had to connect to another water source. This wasted time”

Grenfell Tower only had a ‘dry main’, which required first responders to connect it to another water source. This wasted time and compromised their ability to fight the fire effectively, although it may have been of limited use in dealing with the cladding fire.

It has also been mentioned that the lack of a sprinkler system was to blame for the scope of the fire. While sprinkler systems have been mandatory in all high rise builds since 2007, there is currently no retrofitting requirement.

Sprinklers may not have helped once the fire had spread, but it has been widely argued that they could have quelled the fire at source, and may have given people more time to evacuate.

Interior planning

Testimony from survivors of the Grenfell fire indicates that refurbishment in 2016 was shoddily done, and may have compromised some people’s ability to escape.

As well as the badly fitted fire doors, many corridors were apparently made narrower, with exposed gas mains and other obstructions jutting out from the walls. This would have exacerbated the issues of smoke and heat, as well as restricting the space for any evacuating residents.

An important and perhaps underrecognised factor in the disaster was the inability of firefighters to communicate from within the tower. This has been a notable hallmark of several high rise towers, most tragically in the 9/11 terror attacks, where 120 firefighters were killed in spite of an evacuation order when the second tower collapsed.

This is generally considered to be an equipment issue on the part of fire services, with more powerful radios becoming available as early as 2004. But it is also plausible that high rises could be better optimised to funnel signals from radio transmitters such as phones and walkie talkies, were this considered as both a safety and quality of life improvement at the design stage.

Training and policies

The ‘stay put’ policy employed at Grenfell has been widely criticised, with families stuck in their flats until it was too late to escape. As outlined above, though, the ‘stay put’ policy would work in the instance of a normal fire, giving the fire service the best chance to fight it.

The deciding factor was the flammable cladding, which changed the circumstances of the fire quickly, and in a way that nobody had any experience of. The same can be said of the lack of fire drills, as evacuation would never be expected to happen.

However, there was a lack of preparedness among the first responders to the fire, and an absence of scrutiny over the faults with Grenfell’s fire protection. The local fire chief admitted that an inspection in 2016 had failed to note many of the critical flaws with the structure, and that his own training on high rise fires had been inadequate, potentially due to it being delegated to a third party contractor.

Above all, this highlights the need for facility managers to ensure their own fire safety, train their own staff, and not to rely on the fire service to ‘cover for’ any faults.

The failures at Grenfell were more numerous than just the use of cheap cladding, with just about every protection against such a fire either not existing or failing to function as intended. While the inability to prevent this is an issue of regulation and funding, the ultimate abuse of the system has led to a tragic loss of life, and certain financial ruin for the companies involved.

What it also shows, however, is that factors outside of our understanding can compromise even a solid fire plan, and ruthlessly punish any oversights you might have made. Holding yourself and your facility to the highest standards, rather than relying on the government to hold you accountable, should be the first priority in any fire prevention strategy.