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Grenfell
The response to the Grenfell tragedy captivated the national media for weeks afterwards. In this special report, FIRE Correspondent Catherine Levin picks apart the coverage and highlights those fire figures who raised the level of the debate
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Grenfell backlash:
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When fire took over the front pages
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n a normal week, fire does not get a mention in the mainstream media. There is usually a flurry of excitement when fire features in one of the broadsheets, but usually it is short lived and it disappears quickly. Sharing interesting fire-related info, usually via Twitter, is a minority interest, but for those who care, it is important. Then something happens; something so huge that it takes over every news outlet and media channel. Fire is everywhere. Everyone is commenting about fire. The Grenfell Tower fire was so huge, so devastating that it shook everyone. It reminded everyone that fire is a terrible, destructive force and one that, thankfully, most people will never experience in their lifetime. This issue of FIRE explores the many aspects of the Grenfell fire and the implications for the future. Learning from Grenfell will take time and done the right way, changes should be put in place that will go a long way to make sure it can never happen again.
The reporting on Grenfell has not been confined to the fire. The Grenfell fire has become a proxy for many other things in the wider reaches of society. The story arc for Grenfell has ebbed and flowed along a sometimes surprising trajectory. In places it has gone far beyond the actual fire and into territory where left and right scrap for supremacy. Looking first at the response to the fire, London Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton told the world that she had never seen anything like Grenfell in her 29 years of service. Everyone in the fire world will have been wracking their brains to think if there was a worse fire in their own lifetime. It is likely that everyone came to the same conclusion: no. A 40 pump fire is rare. The officer who made that call is unlikely to have done it before or will do so again. London has 103 stations now, it shut ten not that long ago. It coped. We will not know how well until London does its own internal post incident review and publishes it for all to see.
“This issue of FIRE explores the many aspects of the Grenfell fire and the implications for the future” 14 | July/August 2017 | www.fire–magazine.com
Grenfell Tower
“The slapdash, corner-cutting approach that we have seen over the past few decades has ultimately led to this appalling, catastrophic fire” Shadow Fire Minister Chris Williamson
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Political Opinions And in the middle of all this we have a new Fire Minister. Nick Hurd MP, previously with a different portfolio in the Home Office, was two days into the job when the Grenfell fire happened. He was and remains low key on Twitter; he’s no Brandon Lewis when it comes to sharing on social media. He made his first speech about the Fire and Rescue Service at a paid for event held by Westminster Briefing. It would have been better if that had been to a free event where all fire and rescue services could have attended: Reform perhaps? “Grenfell changes everything” he said. Yes, he’s right. His opinion piece in this edition of FIRE sets out his views (see pg 17). The new shadow Fire Minister emerged on July 3. Chris Williamson MP looks to be a tough shadow for Nick Hurd and will be watched with great interest as the debate about fire evolves over the next few months. His contribution to the debate on July 13 was uncompromising: “The slapdash, corner-cutting approach that we have seen over the past few decades has ultimately led to this appalling, catastrophic fire.”
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Fire Figures Speak Out It has been interesting to see who has done media work from the world of fire in the last few weeks. Ronnie King is the Honorary Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group. He spoke many times in different media outlets in the early days after the fire, but has not been around much since. It was good to see the APPG get some air time. In Parliament on July 13, APPG Chair, Sir David Amess MP, spoke at length during the debate on the Grenfell Tower inquiry. Once the expert panel on fire safety was announced, Sir Ken Knight and Roy Wilsher appeared, but due to the nature of their role as advisors they are now responding as a collective rather than as individuals. And, more recently, Stewart Edgar, Chief of Gloucestershire and NFCC lead on prevention, has emerged as a spokesperson appearing on ITV’s Tonight programme and is interviewed elsewhere in this edition of FIRE (see pg 18). FBU General Secretary Matt Wrack has been an impressive figure throughout. He has been respectful,
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Photo: Catherine Levin
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Newsnight Misfires On Friday July 7, BBC’s Newsnight ran an exclusive report on London Fire Brigade’s response to the Grenfell fire. The reporter cites leaked mobilisation records as well as anonymous first-hand accounts provided to it by ‘an intermediary’ because “firefighters have been banned from speaking to the media”. The programme used this information to create a version of what happened on June 14 and “identify a series of failings that made a desperate task even tougher”. This then fed the news cycle for the next 24 hours or so, with newspapers all referencing the Newsnight programme. The New York Times featured it on its home page and after shared it on Twitter. Chris Blacksell, soon to be Chief of Humberside Fire and Rescue Service, replied: “Interesting article, but even the tallest aerials in the world aren’t tall enough for the tallest building. Why construction and maintenance is vital.” The other replies pick apart the article and expose its inaccuracies. Newsnight had another go at this in a later programme and produced a map of fire and rescue PDA policies from across the UK. This was in the words of one Twitter respondent, “meaningless”.
humble and at times clearly emotional in public. The FBU has now been able to cut through the public sector pay freeze and get some real traction in discussions about firefighter pay and conditions. He treads a fine line between being respectful in response and protective of his members and the political imperative of making capital of the opportunity he now has with fire higher on the agenda than ever before.
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There were some rumbles from the media in the initial period after the response about the equipment used and how it was not immediately mobilised and how specialist equipment came from a neighbouring service. This disappeared pretty quickly in the following days, but after a couple of weeks re-emerged as London confirmed it had changed its initial predetermined attendance (PDA) to include an aerial appliance for all high rise fires.
Sprinklers Sprinklers are having their moment. After years and years of the sprinkler lobby beating on the doors of successive governments, the debate about sprinklers has re-started post Grenfell. Nick Ross, a long time lobbyist for sprinklers, wrote in the Daily Mail arguing for sprinklers. Brent Council in London announced it would spend £10 million on fire safety improvements including sprinklers, smoke detectors and fire alarms for high-rise blocks across the borough. Cllr Muhammad Butt, Leader of the Council, echoed Nick Hurd’s sentiments when he said: “Grenfell changed everything. When it comes to fire safety, ‘good enough’ is no longer good enough”. The calls for retro fitting of sprinklers in all high rises are growing and growing. There is a new industry of articles about fire safety post Grenfell. The fire protection sector is not united in its view [Excepting the Fire Sector Federation, which is -Ed] and commercial interests colour debate as much as differences of opinion about how to manage risk in new builds as well as older housing stock. If the Brent example is replicated across the country, it could see vast pressure on it to respond to demand. Failure www.fire–magazine.com | July/August 2017 | 15
Photo: Catherine Levin
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“Learning from Grenfell will take time and done the right way changes should be put in place that will go a long way to make sure it can never happen again”
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to meet it, or even worse, work that is sub-standard where new entrants enter the market, will do the fire sector no favours. This concern is echoed by Amanda Ball who is CEO at AD Sprinkler Protection Ltd in Manchester. She wrote on LinkedIn: “The sprinkler sector will have a serious issue on our hands if all councils decide to install sprinklers to their tower blocks as there surely will not be enough competent designers and fitters to handle this surge?” This question kicked off a long stream of comments by members of the sprinkler community, primarily about the relationship between suppliers and customers, but also about approaches and technical solutions. Building Regulations And then there are building regulations. Never before has the arcane world of Approved Document B had so much attention by so many. It has been hard to work through the detail; work out what is right and what is supposition. All the talk about cladding and fire spread and all sorts of technical detail make it very hard for the lay person to really understand what happened at Grenfell. Just one look at the reams of Parliamentary Questions put to the Housing Minister, Alok Sharma, in the last couple of weeks alone, reveals the extent to which building regulations are under the spotlight.
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Now that responsibility for fire and rescue services is in the Home Office and building regulations remain in DCLG, there is a clear separation at senior ministerial level. This might seem like a minority interest for policy wonks, but the key thing here is that the Fire and Rescue Service as responder is not muddled up with the fire safety of the buildings. While fire prevention and fire protection live in the Home Office with the other two parts of the fire ‘triptych’, keeping them away from the building regulations debate can do no harm. So what is next? Well, a review of building regulations will help; a review of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 20015 may be interesting, but it is not clear what it would add to the debate – more likely the guidance needs a good look at instead. The Fire Furniture Regulations (see pg 32) may be of interest too if there is evidence to suggest that the current tests lead to increased toxicity and had an impact at Grenfell. Whatever direction government decides to take, having one review is tough, but two or three simultaneously all about fire? Well that might just be too much, particularly given the reduced size of the civil service and the focus on Brexit. Let us hope August is a restful month with just silly season stories, as from September onwards, none of this is going away and it will be a challenging autumn ahead.