This Volume at a Glance:

• Today’s Heroes & Heroines – Tomorrow’s Cuts?

                                    • To the Building;

                                    • To the Incident;

                                    • To the Operation;

• To the Nightmare Scenario;

                                    • Per Adua Ad Astra. The Critical Question?

The Bugler's Command reflections on High Rise 'block' firefighting…

The old Grenfell Tower is not unique except in one respect, its new 'pretty' thermal cladding…

This tower block of 24 floors(1974) was one of many built in the UK in the late 60’s and early 70’s to respond to the continuing need for housing long after the residual impact of the World War II.

Most were built in the sturdy monolithic style sometimes described as 'brutish style' in cast concrete which had the hidden benefit of reassuring Firefighters' safety; a construction which included non-combustible exterior facias, not pretty, but effective. None exceeded 40 floors.

Occasionally, to enhance production/construction speed they were fitted with  ‘curtain wall’ panels pinned to the exterior framework.

In one notable early flat explosion and fire during the early morning in May 1968, a top corner flat at high altitude at the 18th floor Ronan Point, Newham London(22 floors), the curtain walls detached and caused a concertina effect losing  22 floors above and below with miraculously minimal casualties only 4 dead.

At this point curtain walls became the urgent subject of inspections by all the authorities involved.

Each floor had in the region of 6 or more flats dependent on configuration all accessed by a 1.0 hour Fire Resisting(FR) front door which opened onto a small convoluted dead end unventilated lobby(usually dark-lights vandalised-and grubby) which in turn accessed a ‘core’ ingress/egress providing two or more lifts and one or more non-combustible staircase enclosures protected by a 30 minute FR enclosure usually of Georgian wired glazing with self-closing doors.

The occupants, particularly the elderly, usually used the lifts to the virtual exclusion of the staircases which became the ‘refuge’ of undesirables who used them for drug activities, or as common toilets, or other nefarious activities.

The occupants themselves usually consisted of highly respectable older people of limited means ranging to the whole gamut of those reflecting the less desirable traits to be found in a transient society in general.

In certain Fire Service(FS) areas at that time some came to be referred to by the locals as the ‘piggeries’ as the social order gradually decayed,  deteriorated, and respectability moved out.

It was not unknown for FS crews to be subjected to dropped bags of urine and faeces and the occasional fridge which tended to make the first responders approach rather speculatively interesting.

‘Normal’ firefighting would involve a set procedure which was to firstly capture, commandeer, and control with special keys a pre-nominated lift.

If a fire or rescue, at first glance, was self evident the dry riser-a vertical water main with a standard FS coupling outlet on every floor which would be regularly vandalised with the chains/straps cut and the valves left open-would be charged by an appliance from a local and usually well know hydrant, care being taken to avoid the usual hypodermic needles and syringes in the hydrant pit.

A set of equipment usually pre-boxed which would include breaking and entering gear, hose and equipment, and of course Breathing Apparatus(BA) with its attendant Control gear was all loaded into the lift and/or carried to the appropriate two floors below the ‘fire floor’.

Never to the fire floor to avoid the nightmare scenario of the FS crewed lift being opened into a conflagration.

These high rise blocks were high consumers in general of FS resources and it was not unknown for attendances of 10 or more incidents, to epidemic proportions, to occur throughout a 24 hour period.

Many were malicious calls by manually operated break glass point fire alarms, if the system was operable, with attending appliances always carrying replacement glass and the special keys for access to facilitate replacement.

 But nevertheless no call could with impunity be ignored.

And so the sorry business continued to which would be added regular failures of the lifts with a weary climb all the way to the top, encumbered with personal and essential gear.

There were never any shortcuts because such blocks had a nasty habit of regularly producing unexpected challenges which might not necessarily include fire-fighting.

Those at risk in such high rise blocks can be an appalling vista for the attending FS with, in the region(UK) of 500+ occupants or more, some of whom are not necessarily residents and all of whom are the consideration of possible rescue.

On one occasion the Bugler had to deal with the consequences of a vandalised lift in which a  mere burning wheelie refuse bin was maliciously placed in the lift and then sent to an intermediate floor resulting in heavy smoke logging on multiple floors and the mass evacuation of around 500 people under the most difficult of circumstances.

Rubbish chutes were a favourite target for fire vandalism coupled with the failure of automatic gravity closed chute access doors at various floor levels, blockages and fires in the vertical chutes, and in basement/sub-basement rubbish collection compounds etc, all leading to more fire vandalism with resultant smoke logging at multiple floor levels.

Clearly the nature of some occupants and their lack of knowledge of high rise living directly impacts on the safety of others.

Altitudes and high places attract some unusual folk…

The time of the day or night dictates the level of risk, for example, during the ‘wee small hours’ the greater the risk to the sleeping occupants.

Their awareness is very low and reaction times are very poor(if the fire alarm works) particularly in the period midnight to 03:30hrs when sleep is at its deepest.

The speculative cause of this incident was a refrigerator the developed flat kitchen fire on the 4th floor then migrating through shattered glazing onto the 'pretty' external combustible cladding which contained a polyethylene compound instead of non-combustible mineral core.

A well developed flat fire, which is usual at this time of the morning(alcohol and chip pans do not mix well), poses an extreme hazard to all those above the fire floor and are particularly challenging to responding fire crews.

Paradoxically the higher the flat fire floor the less and fewer the numbers involved at risk and inversely the lower the floor the greater the risk and the numbers involved on the floors above.

The rest of the self-evident fire development with the cladding combustibles and its plastic by-products –the smoke–the killer, with flames convecting (curling back) into and breaching the glazing and entering flats at various floor levels would thus drive the occupants out into the unventilated floor lobbies which were usually not naturally ventilated during this era of construction, thus there is no refuge except to escape down the stairs and if that proves impossible, then up to a dead end.

All this pre attendance scenario would not be unexpected to a well qualified and experienced FS manager with a station ground which contains such a high rise accommodation tower, or more usually towers, or it ought  to be.

This cladding is a new and very unfortunate development which ought to have been ‘fire stopped’ at floor intervals, even though external, because such cladding was not part of the original specification in the 1960’s onwards when tower blocks were  conceived and built.

Indeed the exterior was usually non-combustible plain cast concrete or with occasional pebble dashing. 'Brutish' has its advantages…

Apparently this 1974 vintage block received a pretty ‘facelift’ in 2015 with the disastrous consequences we have seen both here in the UK, and elsewhere.

When these were originally designed architects had scant knowledge of, or involvement in, fire precaution standards which were in the main controlled by Local Authority planning departments who made the 'rules' up as they went along.

In 1971 following a series of UK fire related disasters and the implementation of the Fire Precautions Act 1971(the usual-the horse has bolted-legislation) a watershed occurred in the teaching of fire precautions in architectural colleges and schools.

An education which was to come into effect later in the mid to late 1970’s.

So before this development occurred in architect education a fundamentally flawed design had been produced which resulted in the acceptance  of a single ‘core’ means of ingress and egress and of course a means of escape in case of fire, which created in these blocks  a  ‘core’ staircase, or staircases, serving two or more lifts one of which could be electronically commandeered by the Fire Service who would also use the built in dry riser (a vertical water main

which could be charged by the FS) with a standard FS outlet and coupling(locked closed) at each floor in its lobby.

This did not include today’s principle of means of escape, which is to turn one’s back to the fire and escape to the designed 'in corner' staircases; a principle it might be added which remains unadopted in the US and elsewhere as we saw in the Twin Towers.

These tower core non-combustible staircases off which the actual attack on the fire would be mounted usually one floor below the fire floor and one above the logistical staging floor(2 below) .

These staircases and lobbies outside the flats were notoriously narrow and dark in earlier high risers and could have urine and faeces deposits and with the laying of 2 or more hoselines escaping occupants found it extremely difficult, picking their footing, to descend past Firefighters as they in turn worked upwards.

The safety procedure was for the occupants to remain behind their ‘1 hour’ protected front doors and to await rescue or direction from the FS.

This sound and only  option advice recognised the inadequacy of the architectural design and provided a work around which was posited on the knowledge that there was no exterior threat of fire to a compartmented individual flat.

A set of circumstances which in 2015 were undone and  did not pertain because the balance of safety had been radically altered by the addition of this 'pretty' thermal barrier combustible exterior cladding to this tower.

All this allied with the fire doors being held open by hoses, the small staircases and lobbies, becoming rapidly smoke logged  in a small confined area in which high temperatures would be contained and further generated as fire fighting operations advanced to penetrate and extinguish the flat(s) involved in fire.

A situation and atmosphere in which the fire fighting environment could and did regularly deteriorate very rapidly and the fraught command decision when to declare a general evacuation arises. One has got to have been there to really understand what a huge practical and moral dilemma this presents as the situation changes minute upon minute…

You simply hope based on your experience that you make the right call for those to be rescued and for your personnel who are not trained to quit…

Such operations inevitably always required the extensive use of BA with its strict Control Procedures for Firefighters safety never mind those to be rescued which in turn added its own a very heavy logistical layer of the requirement for fresh personnel and all their attendant reserves of full BA(air) cylinders etc, which this requires.

For example, given the challenging conditions, the rapidly escalating temperatures, coupled with working in the vertical a normal 30 minute BA duration set would have its working duration reduced to 10 minutes with its operator all rather shot at in the end as well.

Thus such an incident, as we are reminded. requires very heavy logistical support.

It should also be a  matter for comment that conventional external fire fighting equipment and operations would cease to be used above the 100ft(30/40mtrs) mark counting on the basis of 14ft to the first floor 12ft to the second and 10ft thereafter…

In this operation commendably the fire crews apparently made it to the 12^th floor which can modestly be described as a tribute to their well led determination.Well done!

Firefighting logistical operations could be challenging based on a personal rule of thumb which was for every Firefighter staging out of the floors below the fire floor it would require 7 or 8 Firefighters in the operational pyramid to get and maintain the logistical support to those required up at the sharp end.

Personnel would exhaust rapidly and require replacement and/or supplementing regularly when effectively operating in the ‘flue’ like conditions of the staircase experienced in even the most modest of fires.

Hence the huge logistical challenge which also usually involved a general failure of communications due to the radio shielding nature of the building’s steel infrastructure.

A complicating factor which all could have well done without.

This latter issue was addressed by the use of an experimental ‘leaky feeder’ which was an aerial dropped down a staircase well into which hand held sets could in theory transmit and receive but it was not a success.

It is doubted that this aspect has improved markedly.The old 'screening' buildings remains the same…

This was simply another additional burden which also posed a direct threat to crews safety if a general evacuation was transmitted to their leaders.The Twin Towers reminded us…

Smoke logging with its attendant hot gases are not unexpected but the behaviour of exterior smoke on a high rise building is rather curious and something which Firefighters or their ‘managers’ ought to be aware of, which in spite of wind conditions, seem to create a self generated vortex which makes the external smoke and hot gases ‘cling’ to, and given the opportunity, re-enter the building with all those consequences as residents leave the windows open for air.

No wind is frankly even worse because it precludes helicopter evacuation from the roof.

All this was attributable to an architectural design failure which the FS had no other option but to accept and work around if possible and thus all occupants were advised to remain behind their 1 hour Fire Resisting flat front door and await snatch rescue which was not all that uncommon either.

Each rescued person being provided with a ‘piggy back’ BA mask coupled to a Firefighter's BA cylinder and then led to safety down the stairs.

Self closing ½ hour FR Staircase doors with Georgian wired glazing were a considerable weak point because the self closer may not work properly; maintenance was not carried out after complaints from the residents; and as a consequence occasionally the self closers were ‘vandalised’ by the removal of hinge pins because they were constantly banging and annoying the floor residents, or simply wedged open with illegal rubber wedges.

In this incident the exterior burning cladding flames presented a unique hazard to firefighting operations because the external fire products could and did enter the floors below the lead Firefighters a recipe for pure disaster but in spite of this they reached the half way point of the 12^th floor until conditions so deteriorated that they were clearly prevailed upon to be recalled or driven out by self survival.

This sound command decision undoubtedly saved Firefighters lives whilst addressing the perennial moral dilemma on a ‘calculated risk against return’ scenario because above that point there would have been little chance of survival for the occupants who, at that point and elapsed time remained unreached and simply beyond salvation.

Perhaps the 'bulls eye' of a vocation remains burning in the UK Fire Service in spite of the desecrating pogrom the UK Fire Service has suffered over these last 2 decades under its so called Chief Fire Officers and their ever attendant Scrooge politicians?

Efficient and effective fire fighting in high rise buildings is not for the faint hearted, the ill prepared, or those lacking in stoutness of sinew and should be well practiced.

Yet the fatal race to the clouds to their credit continues unabated…

Though it is no comfort whatever to the grieving, it is truly miraculous, at this stage, that more fatalities did not occur, though this infamous tower may yet hold its fatal secrets on the higher floors.

None of this is either strange or startling in Fire Service terms in spite of the hyperbole by those in service who ought to know better but what was not recognised was the fire and consequential potential of the addition of a combustible exterior and at whose door this fatal failure is to be laid, remains to be seen…

A not untypical scene was to see drenched Firefighters in BA the super heated steam rising off their tunics in the heat and thin smoke struggling and stumbling over hose, working their way up the narrow stairwell under a cataract of water, unable to see properly, resolutely dragging up more gear as residents with children jostled and screamed their way down to escape their holocaust…but then that was what you pulled your pay for… or you ought not to have joined…

Still the climb to the architectural skies goes on… but who will pay the actual price?

One Critical Question remains unanswered.

How did the attending crews allow a small kitchen fire to spread from the kitchen to the exterior of the building cladding, unnoticed, without checking for firespread, an automatic reaction in good firefighting?

The rest we know…