There's significant political interest in finding a corporate scandal here. This was a building full of poor people in one of the richest areas in the world. The local government pushed the installation of the cladding for aesthetic reasons and ignored serious safety complaints from the residents. The national government voted against banning this cladding - and many of the MPs who voted against are landlords who had a financial interest.
This block was clad as part of the "warm safe and dry" initiative. This was funding provided by central government to make sure that council housing was energy efficient, resistant to both criminal and antisocial damage.
Also fixing roofs. You'd be surprised how many time roofs fail on council houses.
> The national government voted against banning this cladding
This isn't really true. They voted against a specific amendment that demanded that rented accommodation be fit for purpose. (Local councils have had the power to condemn accommodation, but they then have to re-house the tenants. its really complex.)
The scandal here is in three parts:
1) The people that inspect building regulations are paid for by the developers, and not by councils. So there is lots of "optionality" in an otherwise good set of rules
2) The fire ratings of materials appears to not be independently vetted. I'm not sure how they are vetted, but this is a massive failure in the entire system.
3) The firebrigade having shit kit, also failed to learn from larkenhall.
> ignored serious safety complaints from the residents
Local residents always complain about everything. I know because I used to be the vice chair of the Tenants and residents association. 25% of the time they are correct.
Grenfell has some interesting features:
1) it wasn't being managed by the local council. It was owned and run by a "TMO" this is quite common.
2) they appear to have added new flats, which subsidised the works, again quite common.
3) leaseholders were not billed for the repairs. This is very unusual. Normally they'd be liable for a pro-rated proportion of the total bill (ie if the building has 100 flats of the same size and 10million pounds spent, they would be liable for 100k) I was stung for 50 grand, others in my estate had bills of 70k+
This is not the first time that a block of flats has killed people because of shoddy work. What is unusual in this case is that according to the paper work, the work was done to the correct standard.
I felt this tragedy closely. As a fellow council resident, I know how easily it could have happened to me. Fortunately for us, we chose our house specifically with fire in mind (larkenhall fire having happened months before) I was lucky because I had a choice. If I had been a tenant, I'd have little choice.
Cladding is used primarily for insulation and energy conservation. I think the concept of "cladding" is more of a UK and European thing though.
> There's significant political interest in finding a corporate scandal here.
There are all sorts of unethical scandals with various forms of unethical social experimentation. It's everywhere within the corporate world, and there are also open source projects with unethical experiments going on. You just have to look and pay attention. A lot of these groups play it off like they have done proper due process, when they have not. Then they have their PR flacks take the reigns using distracting and emotive language to justify their unethical projects.
Everyone who works on projects should read this article. Pay attention to Table 3 in particular. I keep it on my desk as a reminder of what is ethical vs unethical.
This is my reading of it too. I think a lot in government - and let's no forget Grenfell was government housing - would love for the blame to placed elsewhere.
I don’t see how exposing a corporate scandal helps politicians whose job it is to pass laws to keep this kind of thing from happening. The article itself says that these companies sold their products in the UK because the regulations were lagging behind. Can’t it be both a government and a corporate scandal?
> There's significant political interest in finding a corporate scandal here ..
The scandal being safety standards being diluted by previous governments and the use of inflammable material in the tiles. The tiles being installed to beautify the tower. So as the tower would not spoil the view of the more expensive nearby towers.
It also looks like the various government agencies mentioned in the article are either compromised or really phoned it in while certifying these products.
It seems to me, an outsider, that MPs in the UK can get away with pretty much anything and they know it. The whole pedophile scandal and it's essential disappearance comes to mind.
> Arconic realised its polyethylene-cored cladding had a horrendous reaction to fire following French tests in 2005, where it burned fiercely and obtained a basement ranking of Class E. Despite this, Arconic continued to market it as the much safer Class B
> The Irish company Kingspan’s insulation passed one of these tests, which took place on a fake wall made with non-combustible cement. This test pass permitted its use on tall buildings, but only in an exact replica of the system tested. Despite this, the firm marketed its insulation as ‘suitable for use on high-rise buildings’. [...] After the test was passed in 2005, Kingspan altered the chemical composition of the insulation so that it was no longer the same product
> Celotex, a smaller firm [...] its insulation had also passed a test, also using a non-combustible cladding panel, and it too began to market its product as safe for use on high rises. But the test was not as it seemed: fire resisting boards were used around the temperature monitors that record the pass or fail, distorting the result.
> the Local Authority Building Control [...] appears to have written its certificate simply by copy and pasting an email written by Celotex's Jon Roper, even including the same typo on the certificate.
So, among Arconic, Kingspan, Celotex, LABC (or Spectator, if they're pulling a Bloomberg) - I wonder if anyone is going to jail...
> An unforgivably naive market of architects and contractors then began merrily specifying it for a wide range of uses well beyond its original test.
Architects are architects, Contractors are contractors, and neither are fire engineers. No one can be an expert on everything. This is why we have building codes, product certification, and engineering assurance process. The problem here appeared to be dishonest players. If certified independent labs were required to test products, and licensed engineers were required to approve the assembly and submit their letters of insurance for the permit, it seems like there would be a net benefit to the public (this is how it works in Canada). If there was a stronger regulatory system, the investigators would be able to look up the letters of assurance for this permit, obtain the project documentation from the responsible engineer, investigate and possible charge him with negligence if he failed to spec a certified fire assembly. It appears that in the UK, there is no clear hierarchy of responsibility. When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.
As an aside, Fire rating generally involves more than just a single product - it requires an 'assembly'. That assembly must be recreated every time the product is used to achieve the fire rating. If the testing assembly required 1/2" non-combustible cement backing board, the installation also requires it. It sounds like the fire rated assemblies were not being followed in this case.
> It sounds like the fire rated assemblies were not being followed in this case.
The fraud by Celotex and Kingspan is more literal, in this case.
The only assemblies that managed to pass the large scale fire test cheated by using a bunch of nonstandard parts, materials that weren't available on the market, and even put kiln insulation material blocking the temperature sensors on the test rig.
They then truncated any test reports sent to customers, omitting mention of the cheats. It was literally impossible for any customer to build the assembly that had passed fire testing, as they were never told about the cheats.
They then took the reports from these cheated "third party tests" and converted them into certificates from further authorities.
And their manufacturers' marketing departments "misunderstood" the test reports and put out marketing material claiming the material was of limited combustibility - which it was not.
I would highly highly recommend this podcast. I've listened to every single episode from phase 2 (from episode 114), and a large majority of those from phase 1. I believe listening to this podcast should almost be mandatory for any engineer involved with any form of safety system.
For those interested in the engineering side of the scandal, phase 2 is amazing listening. The amount of detail the enquiry goes into is incredible. The number of failings across the construction industry with this project from architecture to fire consultants to insulation providers is shocking, but despite this you can also see why those failings occured at the time. The enquirers are knowledgeable and ask extremely probing questions, you can almost hear witnesses squirm.
Phase 1 is worth listening to part of, it's all about what happened on the night, the fire service response and failings, call center communication, broken lifts, inadequate equipment and more. However, it is very heavy and depressing listening, and quite repetitive (Phase 1 the podcast was done each day of the enquiry, phase 2 is done weekly).
I suppose the $64,000 question is this: how many other Grenfell Towers are out there, and how can they be identified? The scope would probably be pretty clear if it were just a matter of one negligent construction company, but it seems like this is a problem that spans the whole chain of approving, selecting, selling, and installing this product category.
The UK government publishes "ACM [aluminium composite material] remediation data" every month. This is "being collected to help the Building Safety Programme make buildings safe and to make people feel safe from the risk of fire, now and in the future".
I haven't been following what's happening in the UK but here in the Australian state of Victoria (we had a couple of cladding fires too) the government established an organisation called Cladding Safety Victoria. They're identifying all buildings with this sort of cladding and coordinating replacement. They just started on my apartment building this week (there's only a small section around the main entry).
It's important to realize even if there was specific malfeasance in the companies involved in this particular event the problems are systemic.
We are part of an economic system that values profits for a small number of people above safety or quality.
While it's important to punish those who behave unethically a better response would be to change the system so that ethical behavior and the pursuits of safety and quality are valued above the pursuit of wealth.
It's funny to think "obviously polyethylene is flammable, how did nobody notice" then realize my own house has expanded polystyrene and polyester fiber batts insulation under the floor. I wondered about fire risk but saw some vague claims by the manufacturers and that the local authority approved them, and just trusted that, despite these local authorities having a history of approving bad products. Decades ago, my dad was very critical of all polymer building insulation because of the fire danger. I thought he was just out of touch and obviously it wouldn't be allowed if it wasn't safe. This isn't the olden days! We're more strictly regulated now!
Your home is presumably only 2-4 stories. So in the event of a bad fire you just evacuate. Probably the fire can be extinguished, but maybe it can't, either way you aren't inside, your insurer is on the hook for any increase in costs from products that did not perform. Maybe "the invisible hand" will fix that, maybe it won't, but nobody dies.
In a high rise residential building it's a nightmare to evacuate, so until that becomes necessary (as it did at Grenfell and one of the other phases looked at whether emergency services were wrong to delay so long and why that happened) the preference is to compartmentalize as you would on a ship (can't evacuate those either). As a result of this approach to fire fighting it's critical that fire cannot spread between compartments. Flat #1 is on fire, a team comes out, they fight the fire, maybe Flat #1 is completely ruined, but the people in Flat #2 are just annoyed by the smell of smoke and the debris, they aren't actually in danger. At Grenfell this cladding meant the fire was able to spread outside the building defeating compartmentalization, in hindsight once that happened it would be impossible to contain it.
So the height of the building isn't just why this is news, it's also why it was a problem.
Highly recommend checking out "Well There's Your Problem" which is a podcast/YouTube series on engineering disasters. They have an episode on Grenfell, specifically, and give some engineering details on how the fire got so bad so quickly.
I’m dealing with my own fire safety related conflict at the moment. Maybe I am the asshole in the story but my building recently announced its annual fire inspection to all residents of the ~350 apartments, by email, the day before it was to happen. They said there was no choice. They provided no information about the pandemic response plan of the contractor or the infection control measures they would be taking.
Since both myself and my wife are quite serious immunocompromised I objected. I told them I couldn’t let them in with all this lacking and instead to call me when they reached my apartment and we could do it via phone or video call or I could separately take videos of what they need. Now I’ve seen these guys when they do this work before (having lived here for a number of years) and they just open the door step in and then slam it behind them. They don’t knock and wait. It’s absurd. I stuck a notice on my door telling them to call or video call first when arriving. They didn’t enter but didn’t call.
Fast forward a week. They’re now giving me notice they’ll come in against my objection. They won’t answer any questions about the pandemic response plan or what vetting they did of their contractor and it seems the contractor doesn’t have one (or it’s embarrassingly bad). They said for PPE they use cloth masks, which are quite inadequate for protecting us. They said they take their temperatures but as the UK’s Chochrane review showed that is next to useless in screening infected people.
I provided thorough videos of me testing every alarm in the apartment and showing every sprinkler head in detail. I captured a video of the building alarms sounding in every room on the day of the inspection. They will not view these and tell me what is inadequate about them. They simply say they must do a physical inspection but won’t tell me who says or what regulation says it must be physical.
Now by my very napkin math these inspectors - if they’re doing inspections like this day in day out - could comfortably enter up to a thousand homes in a week. In the middle of the worst peak yet in this pandemic. Without proper protection for both protecting themselves and if they are infected from protecting the occupants. And without any testing regime in place to catch them early if they are sick. No plan in place to notify buildings or residents they have visited if an employee does get sick. None of that. They don’t even ask the residents if they have any symptoms or are sick before barging in. It seems like a high risk job and a poorly controlled vector of transmission. Entirely because the corporate landlord is lazy and doesn’t care. And the fire inspection contractor company is lazy and doesn’t care. And they can all get away with being lazy and not caring.
"This chiefly means three products: the actual cladding panels (thin aluminium sheets bonded to a core of polyethylene, a plastic with similar properties to solid petrol) and two forms of combustible foam insulation which were fitted behind it."
Cough, cough, cough.
Does anyone know the state of liability laws in Britain? Here in the states, the companies involved would be going down in a hail of lawsuits and the industry would be scrambling to distance itself.
I wonder what the software development industry would look like under that kind of investigation.
> ...the companies involved would be going down in a hail of lawsuits and the industry would be scrambling to distance itself.
I think this is essentially what will happen here. One of the problems is that the remediation work to correct the dangerous cladding runs in to billions of pounds and is a bill none of the individual companies involved can afford, so working out exactly who to sue (with everyone denying liability, of course) is kinda tricky.
I’m not a legal expert but here’s my understanding of the process: If a person or group of people take civil action, liability will be determined in the specialist construction courts, typically in construction cases many entities are held jointly liable, so the liability could be shared between the client, architect, fire testing laboratories, fire engineers, contractors and the fire brigade. The court will determine the total damages to be paid. There is a generally agreed amount for loss of life, everything thing else is determined based on the actual cost e.g things like electric wheelchairs for life, temporary accommodation costs, the rebuilding costs etc. Unlike the US, there are no punitive damages in the UK the liability is purely the cost of putting things right. The plaintiff’s lawyers have to be careful not to ask for unreasonable damages as this can negatively affect their case. The court will then apportion the liability to each party. As you can imagine, these cases go into a lot of detail and take years to resolve.
Might be reading too much into this, but I think there are a few layers going on here politically. Grenfell has been held up as an example of the failure and incompetence of successive Conservative governments. The Spectator and The Times are both publications that would be seen as centre-right and more Tory-friendly than most, and they both have stories today very pointedly (and totally correctly) blaming the Irish company Kingspan and this French company. Things are especially tense between the French, the Irish, and the British (especially the Conservatives) because of the Brexit crunch talks.
They are completely right to point at these companies, and the Irish media has totally failed on this story:
An additional scandal is the extortionate costs for buildings over a certain height in obtaining an EWS1 Form to show to mortgage lenders. Without which, your appartment is effectively valued at zero, since you'll never be able to sell it.
Does the government still recommend that people in highrises shelter in place when there is a fire in another apartment in the building? They did before, after this fire I found the cutesy animated videos they published explaining how you should shelter in place because fire is unlikely to spread in a highrise.
It seems like bullshit to me. At the first hint of fire in a building, I'll be flying down the nearest staircase that doesn't have smoke coming out of it. I'd not sit around in a burning building waiting to see if the fire gets worse, only to find out I no longer have any options for escape.
The American Society of Civil Engineers had a presentation from Dr. Angus Law, a UK lecturer in fire safety engineering. There are lots of engineering details covered about why it spread so quickly (approx. 30 minutes from a single room fire on the 3rd floor to reaching the top of the building)
I and a huge amount of other people are living in a flat which currently has a value of £0 and am currently waiting to find out how much remediation works are going to cost to make the building I live in safe. As it is deemed unsafe by retrospective government fire and safety requirements, it is impossible to get a new mortgage for and therefore impossible to sell. The remediation costs are likely to be in the 10's of thousands of pounds.
The building may have been built to meet the requirements at the time (12 years ago) and then again it may not have. The guidelines have also obviously changed since Grenfell. But as it stands right now, all costs are to be passed onto the leaseholder i.e. the person who owns and lives in the flat i.e me. I moved in one year ago, had all the survey's done, used a solicitor and followed all procedure. Other people are in even worse positions, if they can't afford a bill of £50,000 their only option maybe bankruptcy, if they are in various legal professions or an accountant this means automatically losing their license to practice. Other people who have used the governments partial ownership scheme, where you buy 25% of a property and then rent (paying 25% less rent per month) are being asked to pay 100% of the remediation costs. For a lot of people the costs are more than the 25% stake in the property they own.
Some property developers followed the guidelines at the time so say it isn't their fault. The government says it followed the standards at the time so it isn't their fault. The building inspectors which failed to properly inspect properties (when there were actual issues outside of what has been changed retrospectively) seem to have immunity against legal action. The cladding companies who made unsafe cladding are trying to weasel their way out of responsibility by saying it is safe in the right circumstances. It feels like there are a few slices of blame to dish out. But one party who has had NO involvement in any of this is the people living in the flats.
The most sensible option I have heard suggested so far is that the government pays to clean up this entire scandal, and then puts a levy on property developers making flats so they get a percentage back on each new development to slowly recoup the money. But instead of that, the government is making various noises about wanting to protect leaseholders whilst simultaneously not doing anything concrete, even though as I write this people are already filing bankruptcy, giving up their flat which has all the money they have ever saved in, and on top of that, the remediation work in subject to VAT so the government brings in tax for all work done to fix up this mess. You can track huge sums (millions of pounds) being donated/pumped into the conservative party by property developers, and of course members of the conservative party also have shares or other stakes in property development companies.
”Celotex even inquired about using the [Grenfell] tower as a case study for the suitability of its product for high rises. So it has turned out, although not in the way the company hoped.” To say the least... :(
At least none of the top level comments are claiming the invisible hand would solve this if only there were fewer regulations. Better enforcement and more regulations seem from experience to be the only way.
rich wealthy country corruption: the building gets built and (if)when disaster strikes, the corruption is revealed by broken safety regulations.
3rd world country corruption: the project gets started, maybe they put the first stone in a ceremony. nothing gets built and years later there's an empty lot sitting there.
[+] [-] akadruid1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KaiserPro|5 years ago|reply
This block was clad as part of the "warm safe and dry" initiative. This was funding provided by central government to make sure that council housing was energy efficient, resistant to both criminal and antisocial damage.
Also fixing roofs. You'd be surprised how many time roofs fail on council houses.
> The national government voted against banning this cladding
This isn't really true. They voted against a specific amendment that demanded that rented accommodation be fit for purpose. (Local councils have had the power to condemn accommodation, but they then have to re-house the tenants. its really complex.)
The scandal here is in three parts:
1) The people that inspect building regulations are paid for by the developers, and not by councils. So there is lots of "optionality" in an otherwise good set of rules
2) The fire ratings of materials appears to not be independently vetted. I'm not sure how they are vetted, but this is a massive failure in the entire system.
3) The firebrigade having shit kit, also failed to learn from larkenhall.
> ignored serious safety complaints from the residents
Local residents always complain about everything. I know because I used to be the vice chair of the Tenants and residents association. 25% of the time they are correct.
Grenfell has some interesting features:
1) it wasn't being managed by the local council. It was owned and run by a "TMO" this is quite common.
2) they appear to have added new flats, which subsidised the works, again quite common.
3) leaseholders were not billed for the repairs. This is very unusual. Normally they'd be liable for a pro-rated proportion of the total bill (ie if the building has 100 flats of the same size and 10million pounds spent, they would be liable for 100k) I was stung for 50 grand, others in my estate had bills of 70k+
This is not the first time that a block of flats has killed people because of shoddy work. What is unusual in this case is that according to the paper work, the work was done to the correct standard.
I felt this tragedy closely. As a fellow council resident, I know how easily it could have happened to me. Fortunately for us, we chose our house specifically with fire in mind (larkenhall fire having happened months before) I was lucky because I had a choice. If I had been a tenant, I'd have little choice.
[+] [-] disabled|5 years ago|reply
Cladding is used primarily for insulation and energy conservation. I think the concept of "cladding" is more of a UK and European thing though.
> There's significant political interest in finding a corporate scandal here.
There are all sorts of unethical scandals with various forms of unethical social experimentation. It's everywhere within the corporate world, and there are also open source projects with unethical experiments going on. You just have to look and pay attention. A lot of these groups play it off like they have done proper due process, when they have not. Then they have their PR flacks take the reigns using distracting and emotive language to justify their unethical projects.
Everyone who works on projects should read this article. Pay attention to Table 3 in particular. I keep it on my desk as a reminder of what is ethical vs unethical.
An Ethical Framework for Evaluating Experimental Technology: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4912576/
[+] [-] tarkin2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noja|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teucris|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] et2o|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|5 years ago|reply
It doesn't make much material difference, but I think it was more to do with insulation and saving energy, rather than aesthetics.
[+] [-] Stierlitz|5 years ago|reply
The scandal being safety standards being diluted by previous governments and the use of inflammable material in the tiles. The tiles being installed to beautify the tower. So as the tower would not spoil the view of the more expensive nearby towers.
[+] [-] sleepydog|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saos|5 years ago|reply
Unfortunately the same MPs who were trying to force us back to the office even though coronavirus was still spreading
[+] [-] csours|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] LatteLazy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] easytiger|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcinzm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomp|5 years ago|reply
> Arconic realised its polyethylene-cored cladding had a horrendous reaction to fire following French tests in 2005, where it burned fiercely and obtained a basement ranking of Class E. Despite this, Arconic continued to market it as the much safer Class B
> The Irish company Kingspan’s insulation passed one of these tests, which took place on a fake wall made with non-combustible cement. This test pass permitted its use on tall buildings, but only in an exact replica of the system tested. Despite this, the firm marketed its insulation as ‘suitable for use on high-rise buildings’. [...] After the test was passed in 2005, Kingspan altered the chemical composition of the insulation so that it was no longer the same product
> Celotex, a smaller firm [...] its insulation had also passed a test, also using a non-combustible cladding panel, and it too began to market its product as safe for use on high rises. But the test was not as it seemed: fire resisting boards were used around the temperature monitors that record the pass or fail, distorting the result.
> the Local Authority Building Control [...] appears to have written its certificate simply by copy and pasting an email written by Celotex's Jon Roper, even including the same typo on the certificate.
So, among Arconic, Kingspan, Celotex, LABC (or Spectator, if they're pulling a Bloomberg) - I wonder if anyone is going to jail...
[+] [-] mellosouls|5 years ago|reply
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54792111
[+] [-] ggcdn|5 years ago|reply
Architects are architects, Contractors are contractors, and neither are fire engineers. No one can be an expert on everything. This is why we have building codes, product certification, and engineering assurance process. The problem here appeared to be dishonest players. If certified independent labs were required to test products, and licensed engineers were required to approve the assembly and submit their letters of insurance for the permit, it seems like there would be a net benefit to the public (this is how it works in Canada). If there was a stronger regulatory system, the investigators would be able to look up the letters of assurance for this permit, obtain the project documentation from the responsible engineer, investigate and possible charge him with negligence if he failed to spec a certified fire assembly. It appears that in the UK, there is no clear hierarchy of responsibility. When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.
As an aside, Fire rating generally involves more than just a single product - it requires an 'assembly'. That assembly must be recreated every time the product is used to achieve the fire rating. If the testing assembly required 1/2" non-combustible cement backing board, the installation also requires it. It sounds like the fire rated assemblies were not being followed in this case.
[+] [-] michaelt|5 years ago|reply
The fraud by Celotex and Kingspan is more literal, in this case.
The only assemblies that managed to pass the large scale fire test cheated by using a bunch of nonstandard parts, materials that weren't available on the market, and even put kiln insulation material blocking the temperature sensors on the test rig.
They then truncated any test reports sent to customers, omitting mention of the cheats. It was literally impossible for any customer to build the assembly that had passed fire testing, as they were never told about the cheats.
They then took the reports from these cheated "third party tests" and converted them into certificates from further authorities.
And their manufacturers' marketing departments "misunderstood" the test reports and put out marketing material claiming the material was of limited combustibility - which it was not.
[+] [-] chaz6|5 years ago|reply
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p066rd9t
[+] [-] edh649|5 years ago|reply
For those interested in the engineering side of the scandal, phase 2 is amazing listening. The amount of detail the enquiry goes into is incredible. The number of failings across the construction industry with this project from architecture to fire consultants to insulation providers is shocking, but despite this you can also see why those failings occured at the time. The enquirers are knowledgeable and ask extremely probing questions, you can almost hear witnesses squirm.
Phase 1 is worth listening to part of, it's all about what happened on the night, the fire service response and failings, call center communication, broken lifts, inadequate equipment and more. However, it is very heavy and depressing listening, and quite repetitive (Phase 1 the podcast was done each day of the enquiry, phase 2 is done weekly).
[+] [-] 0xcde4c3db|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samizdis|5 years ago|reply
https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/12/2000-buildings-still-have-gre...
Edited to add:
The UK government publishes "ACM [aluminium composite material] remediation data" every month. This is "being collected to help the Building Safety Programme make buildings safe and to make people feel safe from the risk of fire, now and in the future".
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/aluminium-composite-material-cla...
[+] [-] DanBC|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] postingawayonhn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walshemj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xxpor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dopylitty|5 years ago|reply
We are part of an economic system that values profits for a small number of people above safety or quality.
While it's important to punish those who behave unethically a better response would be to change the system so that ethical behavior and the pursuits of safety and quality are valued above the pursuit of wealth.
[+] [-] Camas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dm319|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ReactiveJelly|5 years ago|reply
How do you propose we do that, if all currently known systems of government are insufficient?
[+] [-] lopmotr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tialaramex|5 years ago|reply
In a high rise residential building it's a nightmare to evacuate, so until that becomes necessary (as it did at Grenfell and one of the other phases looked at whether emergency services were wrong to delay so long and why that happened) the preference is to compartmentalize as you would on a ship (can't evacuate those either). As a result of this approach to fire fighting it's critical that fire cannot spread between compartments. Flat #1 is on fire, a team comes out, they fight the fire, maybe Flat #1 is completely ruined, but the people in Flat #2 are just annoyed by the smell of smoke and the debris, they aren't actually in danger. At Grenfell this cladding meant the fire was able to spread outside the building defeating compartmentalization, in hindsight once that happened it would be impossible to contain it.
So the height of the building isn't just why this is news, it's also why it was a problem.
[+] [-] Pfhreak|5 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epkCrB8aKXA
[+] [-] erentz|5 years ago|reply
Since both myself and my wife are quite serious immunocompromised I objected. I told them I couldn’t let them in with all this lacking and instead to call me when they reached my apartment and we could do it via phone or video call or I could separately take videos of what they need. Now I’ve seen these guys when they do this work before (having lived here for a number of years) and they just open the door step in and then slam it behind them. They don’t knock and wait. It’s absurd. I stuck a notice on my door telling them to call or video call first when arriving. They didn’t enter but didn’t call.
Fast forward a week. They’re now giving me notice they’ll come in against my objection. They won’t answer any questions about the pandemic response plan or what vetting they did of their contractor and it seems the contractor doesn’t have one (or it’s embarrassingly bad). They said for PPE they use cloth masks, which are quite inadequate for protecting us. They said they take their temperatures but as the UK’s Chochrane review showed that is next to useless in screening infected people.
I provided thorough videos of me testing every alarm in the apartment and showing every sprinkler head in detail. I captured a video of the building alarms sounding in every room on the day of the inspection. They will not view these and tell me what is inadequate about them. They simply say they must do a physical inspection but won’t tell me who says or what regulation says it must be physical.
Now by my very napkin math these inspectors - if they’re doing inspections like this day in day out - could comfortably enter up to a thousand homes in a week. In the middle of the worst peak yet in this pandemic. Without proper protection for both protecting themselves and if they are infected from protecting the occupants. And without any testing regime in place to catch them early if they are sick. No plan in place to notify buildings or residents they have visited if an employee does get sick. None of that. They don’t even ask the residents if they have any symptoms or are sick before barging in. It seems like a high risk job and a poorly controlled vector of transmission. Entirely because the corporate landlord is lazy and doesn’t care. And the fire inspection contractor company is lazy and doesn’t care. And they can all get away with being lazy and not caring.
[+] [-] mcguire|5 years ago|reply
Cough, cough, cough.
Does anyone know the state of liability laws in Britain? Here in the states, the companies involved would be going down in a hail of lawsuits and the industry would be scrambling to distance itself.
I wonder what the software development industry would look like under that kind of investigation.
[+] [-] remus|5 years ago|reply
I think this is essentially what will happen here. One of the problems is that the remediation work to correct the dangerous cladding runs in to billions of pounds and is a bill none of the individual companies involved can afford, so working out exactly who to sue (with everyone denying liability, of course) is kinda tricky.
[+] [-] willyt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] james1071|5 years ago|reply
If not, then it will be a case of bad rules allowing a bad product to have been used.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joefife|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ppod|5 years ago|reply
They are completely right to point at these companies, and the Irish media has totally failed on this story:
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/construction/the-irish-t...
But I think there is an underlying reason why the national adjectives are sprinkled all through these articles.
[+] [-] ourcat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigbubba|5 years ago|reply
It seems like bullshit to me. At the first hint of fire in a building, I'll be flying down the nearest staircase that doesn't have smoke coming out of it. I'd not sit around in a burning building waiting to see if the fire gets worse, only to find out I no longer have any options for escape.
[+] [-] chiph|5 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N6eeNjbVws
[+] [-] scraft|5 years ago|reply
The building may have been built to meet the requirements at the time (12 years ago) and then again it may not have. The guidelines have also obviously changed since Grenfell. But as it stands right now, all costs are to be passed onto the leaseholder i.e. the person who owns and lives in the flat i.e me. I moved in one year ago, had all the survey's done, used a solicitor and followed all procedure. Other people are in even worse positions, if they can't afford a bill of £50,000 their only option maybe bankruptcy, if they are in various legal professions or an accountant this means automatically losing their license to practice. Other people who have used the governments partial ownership scheme, where you buy 25% of a property and then rent (paying 25% less rent per month) are being asked to pay 100% of the remediation costs. For a lot of people the costs are more than the 25% stake in the property they own.
Some property developers followed the guidelines at the time so say it isn't their fault. The government says it followed the standards at the time so it isn't their fault. The building inspectors which failed to properly inspect properties (when there were actual issues outside of what has been changed retrospectively) seem to have immunity against legal action. The cladding companies who made unsafe cladding are trying to weasel their way out of responsibility by saying it is safe in the right circumstances. It feels like there are a few slices of blame to dish out. But one party who has had NO involvement in any of this is the people living in the flats.
The most sensible option I have heard suggested so far is that the government pays to clean up this entire scandal, and then puts a levy on property developers making flats so they get a percentage back on each new development to slowly recoup the money. But instead of that, the government is making various noises about wanting to protect leaseholders whilst simultaneously not doing anything concrete, even though as I write this people are already filing bankruptcy, giving up their flat which has all the money they have ever saved in, and on top of that, the remediation work in subject to VAT so the government brings in tax for all work done to fix up this mess. You can track huge sums (millions of pounds) being donated/pumped into the conservative party by property developers, and of course members of the conservative party also have shares or other stakes in property development companies.
It is a scandal of the highest order.
[+] [-] bjornsing|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexMoffat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naringas|5 years ago|reply
3rd world country corruption: the project gets started, maybe they put the first stone in a ceremony. nothing gets built and years later there's an empty lot sitting there.
[+] [-] maxehmookau|5 years ago|reply