.......Is this going to be a serious 'Horizon' style of scientifically accurate documentary or a Channel 5 'Shock & Awe' type coffee table magazine type film, where the producers play the sexy and shocking blame game, rather than a serious study of the facts?
......I will be interested to hear your considered views once the documentary has been aired
Right, here goes! I stress I speak only about the Summerland incident - I'm not knowledgeable in any detail about the 4 other fires mentioned in the programme. And I'd say the programme fell somewhere between your two extremes.
The role of the 'Galbestos' steel sheet cladding at the end where the fire occurred was briefly mentioned, but they missed several important factors about this:
It was lined inside with a flammable lining rather than plasterboard.
It was used instead of reinforced concrete as originally designed to speed and cheapen construction.
This change was never referred back to the fire service for their comments.
Other major omissions:
1. The lack of any mention that of the five fires featured in the programme, Summerland was the only building fitted with a full fire alarm system which could have been used to get people out, but lack of staff training meant it wasn't used when it should have been.
2. To speed construction, as well as the use of 'Galbestos', there was a steel framework and wood floors in place of a reinforced concrete frame and concrete floors. This significantly increased the fire load at the end of the building and the lightweight applied asbestos protective spray on the underside of the floors encouraged the rapid spread of fire underneath it - the large thermal mass of a concrete floor would have slowed things down.
3. No mention that the 'Oroglass' was not being used as the American makers recommended - it was held along all four edges, whereas they recommended that it should be held along two opposing edges so that it would soften and fall out in the event of a fire......
Indeed, as I had feared, the 'Oroglass' plastic cladding was given far too much prominence. The Fire Research team came to the conclusion quite quickly after getting on site that the vast majority of the 50 deaths had been caused by the rapidly spreading fire under the floors at the 'Galbestos' clad section of the building and most of them died before the 'Oroglass' caught fire. While some appalling injuries were caused by the falling blazing drops of 'Oroglass', I don't recall any deaths being attributed directly to this. It is possible that the melting of the 'Oroglass' at high level actually vented the fire and stopped a build-up of smoke and combustion gases filling the whole building and killing even more.
Personally, I can see why my contribution was not used - it
was too technical, and delivered in a calm and considered manner which would have been, possibly, too strong a contrast to the accounts of those that had been there at the time of the fire. I think some of the photos of Summerland before the fire were ones I supplied, although they might have got them from the IoMan museum.
I was surprised to see in the credits at the end that this was a joint BBC/Open University production, although filmed and produced by a company under contract to them.
