http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/266/618/500/
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Sadly in this case which is illustrated above, it appears the culprit was the insulation and the cladding recently fitted to the tower block.
It appears from what I can glean, that insulation was bonded to the concrete structure and then covered by a sandwich which consisted of two aluminium sheets with a flamable filling.
It probably looked very smart, but although sprinklers may have put out the small fire in the kitchen of one of the units, it was this cladding, that once ignited and as the flamable filling caught alight, used the sandwich of aluminium as a flue which was the cause of the tragedy. Also, unfortunately, as aluminium is very flamable at high temperatures, as the heat rapidly built up, the aluminium also was consumed and appears to have been a major additional contributor to the conflagration.
The bitter irony to me is that concrete buildings, (according to policies in my country), have sufficient insulative capacities in them selves and do not require extra insulation and indeed they have a beneficial property in that they store heat and then radiate it out when the ambient temperature drops. This is known as thermal mass.
Having said all this, I do agree that all multi story buildings should have sprinklers as they should also have dedicated fire exits including fire stairs, normal access stairs wide enough for evacuations and a policy to evacuate immediately a fire warning is given.
In other words sprinklers would not be enough and common sense should prevail when designing and upgrading such habitations as the Grenfill Tower Apartments.
Cheers
Roger
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I agree, that place was a disaster waiting to happen!
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