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Originally Posted by Pierre
This man is a disgrace
http://www.lbc.co.uk/news/london/wes...local-funding/
Trying to make a political point when the dead haven't even been counted.
There has been no investigation yet, nobody knows why it started, why it spread the way it did.
The cost of refurbing that building was £8.7 million.
He's vile.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gavin78
I think the Looney left supporters need to give it a rest with every little thing they can find to out the Tories.
The building had 8.7m spent on it so what the need to do is look at the company doing it and add up the costs as to where the 8.7m actually went and look to the company contracted to do the buildings.
Unlike Labour who seems to think money is endless you can't just keep giving money away which is more realistic I would have considered the money to do the flat up was a huge amount. So Lessons do need to be learned from this.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul M
Not one that needs making while they are still counting the dead.
Trying to score points off this is exactly why this man should never be in charge.
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Did any of you listen to the recording? The reason I ask is that he was responding to a question about the recommendations of the report into the fire at Lakanal House in 2009, and why the government has not implemented the recommendations (note: The interviewer said they had not, Jeremy made it clear he did not know if they had). Jeremy suggested that one possible reason is the local authority cuts.
That is not what the headline says, but that is what the recording says. I am no fan of Jeremy Corbyn (look at my previous posts on here and facebook for evidence of this).
In this instance, I don't believe he was using the fire for political capital. He was answering a question asked by the interviewer.
I agree that implementing the recommendations would cost money, and that money is not infinite. Those are facts of life. I also agree that Labour have been a bit too ready in the past to borrow money (however they dress it up).
However, the interviewer bought up the report into the Lakanal fire, and said that one of the main recommendations had not been implemented. Jeremy did say he didn't know if this was the case. However, another fact of life is that the Government HAS cut a lot of funds from local authorities. This MAY be one reason that the recommendations were not implemented (assuming they were not).
On a related note, I find it odd that the government is asking local authorities to make cuts because they cannot afford to finance them, yet they can find billions of pounds to finance their own needs, and seem able to ignore the billions in taxes that large companies escape by channeling their income out of the country. That's not something I've started feeling recently, that's something I've felt for a long time.
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Originally Posted by nomadking
There are different practicalities between a building with a handful of flats and 120.That will be the reason for the advice for them to stay put. Each flat is meant to be fire-resistant in it's own right. That should limit the rate of spread of any fire to other flats. It would seem the rate of spreading of the fire was the problem. If you were to assume a rate as short as 30 minutes to reach an adjoining flat, then only a few flats should be affected before the fire brigade got there.It should have taken several hours to reach the top floor.
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The problem is that most people think that the way to deal with fire is to buy something to help prevent it, and if a fire happens, get out and let the fire brigade deal with it.
That is good advice, as far as it goes, and what we, as people, should generally do.
When designing, building and refitting buildings, dealing with fire is nowhere near as simple as that. There is a lot of science and modelling that goes into the prevention. I've seen this first hand, as one of the groups I do technical support for is a research group dedicated to fire safety and evacuation, and they frequently get called in to advise on designing and refitting buildings.
With regard to evacuation, they apparently do two things. One is advising on design of escape systems/routes to enable the most people to escape. These routes would contain systems or features designed to keep the route protected in the event of fire.
The other is to advise on the implementation of "refuge areas". These are areas within building that include features designed to protect the occupants for as long as possible, so that hopefully the fire brigade can get to them.
Most reasonably large buildings use both now, with the refuge areas used to protect those who cannot make the fire escapes (such as wheelchair users). The average refuge area will have enhanced fire protection, should be kept clear of any obstructions and will have fire doors offering enhanced protection. In this case, as the residents were apparently advised to stay indoors, I would expect that the exterior walls, doors and windows to each flat would all have good fire protection. I would also expect good fire doors in the corridors leading to the flats.
The problem is, you can have the best fire protection in the world, but all it will do is give the occupants a few extra minutes. It sounds like, in this case, the fire spread too quickly (possibly due to the exterior cladding), and it would probably have overwhelmed whatever systems were in place in the building, even assuming the refit did not compromise them.
I can see the point about criticising Theresa May's assertions that we need to learn lessons. While I actually agree that we do need to, they do say this at every major disaster, and yet it frequently seems lessons are not learned. This fire should not have been so bad. It's impact should have been limited by the systems put in place after the recommendations of the previous report. It's incidents like this that make it feel like stating we need to learn lessons are just template responses from some politician's guide on how to deal with major incidents.