Britcam: Police breaking fire doors outside flat of origin

[davidj]

Britcam is a reality TV series on Pick TV based on body worn cameras and similar, being used for evidence gathering.

Did anyone see episode 8, aired on Sunday and repeated on Monday?  There was an item, presented as "aren't our police brave?" in which they first rescued a woman, who was subsequently sectioned, from a burning flat, then tried to clear the building, destroying large number of fire doors in the process.

The block was recently built and looked purpose built and probably social housing.  It seemed to me that it would have attracted a stay put policy.  Whilst the police may or may not have taken unreasonable risks in their rescue, which people might like to comment on, I started to get concerned when the broke the wire glass to get from stairwell to a corridor, because it required a key from outside.  Moreover, from then on they proceeded to break down any door from which they didn't get an answer.

It seemed to me that they were actually creating a risk to the occupants by destroying the partitioning and were basically reinforcing the popular lack of understanding of stay put policies.  Do people have view on whether they acted reasonably, or whether they should have received re-education and the programme presenters should have pointed out that this was the wrong thing to do.

There was very little smoke in the corridors, I don't remember any fire alarms except from the original flat (I wasn't expecting them for a purpose built block), and I think I spotted sprinklers on the corridor ceiling.  The visibility in the corridor was good throughout the filming.

The programme is being repeated on Pick (Freeview 11)  at 22:05 on Friday and 23:05 on Saturday, and repeated on their +1 channel, an hour later.

[AnthonyB]

There was no smoke in the corridors at all until they demolished the FD30S with a big red key....

However the counter argument to that is that the occupant of the flat of fire origin may not have survived any further delay (they had deliberately set the fire & awaited the effects of the smoke, ignoring the flat smoke alarms).

The communal system kicked in once the door was down, however I couldn't see if there was any automatic smoke management fitted and the inadequacy of common only sounders was apparent.

Certainly any defend in place strategy went out of the window as the doors went in and breaching the stair to corridor doors could have had serious implications.

From seeing the effect of smoke on the police if more of the flats had been occupied the hospital would have filled up quite quickly.

However the police are not fire safety experts and the block featured suffered from the usual total lack of signage or notices explaining the actual procedures so they can't be viewed too harshly (although I wonder if they had to pay for all the doors they broke!)

[Messy]

So what do you think a fire crew would have done differently? A fire with a person reported as being at risk? I haven't seen the film but suggest they may take similar action?

[davidj]

I did try to separate the initial rescue from the building clearance.  It was the latter that concerned me as giving the wrong message to people in purpose built flats.  Unfortunately it is easiest to describe things in the time line order, so the rescue tends to get considered first.

The initial rescue was clearly right in hindsight, but I wondered about the risks to be people opening the door when the fire was exposed to oxygen.

As I remember it, the "red key" wasn't used on the first door, that was just shoulder and possibly foot power.

As to notices, I don't believe many people actually read these.