Lakanal House Coroners inquest procedings

[Midland Retty]

I agree with Mike in that residents have got the choice to evacuate if, for example, they find out their neighbours flat is on fire. If you have three flats per landing even if the whole floor decided to evacuate that isn't a great number of people, and unless they all start knocking every flat door on the way down alerting every last resident of the fire there won't be mass panic or evacuation.

But its fairly rare that a neighbour realises something is going on inside an adjacent flat.

This is the compartmentation is as it should be of course.

If you doubt the level of compartmentation can support a stay put policy and decide to install alarms and have a full evac policy you need to ensure your staircases will take the capacity in one hit, or look at phased evac.

[colin todd]

Phased evac in a block of flats??? Retters, have I taught you nothing over all these years.

[wee brian]

its fine, so long as you have proper training, a weekly practise drill and volunteers to act as fire wardens and marshals. 

[Midland Retty]

Thanks Sir Col, and thanks Wee B, not sure all phased evacs require the weekly drill / fire wardens you speak of....but anyway Mr T you have trained me very well.

Infact I will quote paragraph A6.21 page 158 of your flats of your guide. "...it will normally be wholly inappropriate to to adopt simultaneous evacuation of all floors in a high rise block

I totally agree.Accepted.

The same paragraph says that "....there may be unsual circumstances , in which it might be necessary to consider the installation of a communal fire alarm system..." it continues and I paraphrase "...nevertheless...this does not imply an evacuation signal need be sounded"

I take that to mean you don't need to alert the whole block but perhaps we need to alert the affected floor and the one above it!

Lets say I have a high rise tower block, compartmentation has been compromised for whatever reason,  perhaps the correct level of compartmentation was never properly incorporated into the original construction, yet because it was previously council owned a blind eye was turned.

Lets say I decide we can't have a stay put policy in the block, atleast not on the floor the fire has occurred. Lets imagine other engineered solutions are impractical.  

I will accept that a fire will take time to affect other floors, but I'm not happy the fire will be contained to the flat of origin, and that fire might be able to spread upwards or sidewards between flats or into communal areas fairly quickly as I do not have my 60 mins fire separation.

So Wee B, Sir Col over to you. What are your thoughts? how would you deal with this scenario?

 

[William 29]

Family of victims to sue in high court


http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/legal/fire-victims-family-to-sue-landlord/6526444.article?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Ocean+Media+&utm_campaign=2355340_IH+Legal+10.4.13&dm_i=1HH2,1EHE4,9LXE0V,4RF87,1

Not sure how the Council has spent £48m on fire risk assessments since the fire??

[lancsfirepro]

Not sure how the Council has spent £48m on fire risk assessments since the fire??

You put your prices up Colin?

[colin todd]

Retters, I risked life, limb and the wheels on my car by travelling to the west midlands to train you, but all to no avail!  You didnt mean phased evacuation, you meant a two stage alarm with restricted evacuation (one stage being no sounders). Our excellent, never to be beaten guide of which Silver speaks so highly (and rightly so) does not say to evacuate the whole ruddy lot in phases (which is what phased evacuation means and comes with all the stuff my good mate Wee B mentions). I know that you midlanders speak all funny, but I had always thought that if I could decipher the accent you were actually using the same words as we from the posh home counties.

[colin todd]

Gazza, the Coal, Lahndan is not like wot it is oop north, where you can buy a row of back to backs for a few hundered quid.

[Midland Retty]

You didnt mean phased evacuation, you meant a two stage alarm with restricted evacuation (one stage being no sounders).

Ok Sir Col - you got me on my terminology - I was getting my phased evac and my restricted evac mixed up, but in my defence I never said you would evacuate all floors in a phased manner Sir Col.

One stage being no sounders are you referring there to the fact that no sounders activate in communal areas but inside the flat or flats on the affected floor?

[kurnal]

Gazza, the Coal, Lahndan is not like wot it is oop north, where you can buy a row of back to backs for a few hundered quid.

I never could decipher these Scots dialects.

[SamFIRT]

I never could decipher these Scots dialects.

Aren't they the ones that fought with Dr Who 

[Mike Buckley]

One stage being no sounders are you referring there to the fact that no sounders activate in communal areas but inside the flat or flats on the affected floor?

The way I always look at it is, if you take a block of flats and the fire is on the 4th floor, the aim is to evacuate the 4th floor and possibly the two floors above and the floor below depending on the strategy. The communal alarms will sound on the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th floors to get those people to evacuate. The alarms on the other floors will remain silent. If the rest of the block needs to be evacuated, this can be controlled from the panel setting off the alarms on the rest of the floors either simultaneously or floor by floor.

This is probably a great theory but it will depend on people knowing how to operate the fire panel.

Whether the sounders are inside or outside the indivdual flats is irrelevant as long as there is an adequate sound level inside the flat.

[lancsfirepro]

Gazza, the Coal, Lahndan is not like wot it is oop north, where you can buy a row of back to backs for a few hundered quid.

We don't use Sterling ooop here; we trade using pies and whippets. 

[AnthonyB]

One stage being no sounders are you referring there to the fact that no sounders activate in communal areas but inside the flat or flats on the affected floor?

The way I always look at it is, if you take a block of flats and the fire is on the 4th floor, the aim is to evacuate the 4th floor and possibly the two floors above and the floor below depending on the strategy. The communal alarms will sound on the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th floors to get those people to evacuate. The alarms on the other floors will remain silent. If the rest of the block needs to be evacuated, this can be controlled from the panel setting off the alarms on the rest of the floors either simultaneously or floor by floor.

This is probably a great theory but it will depend on people knowing how to operate the fire panel.

Whether the sounders are inside or outside the individual flats is irrelevant as long as there is an adequate sound level inside the flat.

And therein lies the problem - to wake sleeping occupiers you are almost certainly going to need to extend the sounder circuit/loops into each flat with the consequential difficulties with maintenance & vandalism. And people will ignore it.

In my experience of some poorly thought out newer builds with both communal only sounders and one that did have sounders to each flat  , in both cases no one took any notice of the sounders when drills were carried out (another issue in itself, not our idea but they insisted) and with the latter most flat sounders were either regularly covered over or ripped off (& it wasn't social/council housing either, quite expensive apartments).

Hence why site fire alarms are a last resort - because whilst they might operate promptly you will still often have to have a fire fighter hammer on each door to get anyone to actually leave

[Golden]

AnthonyB telling it like it is!

I can't understand all this talk of sounders in communal areas and flats - we're discussing purpose built blocks here most of which (thankfully as most are properly compartmented and partially for the reasons Anthony has outlined) don't have detection or sounders so how else is the full/partial/restricted evacuation going to be implemented?