On June 14, 2017 a significant fire spread through Grenfell Tower, a 24-story residential high-rise in London. Despite the heroic efforts of the London Fire Brigade, many lives were lost in this dramatic fast-spreading fire. Officials now report 79 people presumed dead.
While the precise cause of the fire is still under investigation, early indications suggest that exterior aluminum cladding may have contributed to the fire spread.
Why the Grenfell Tower fire is significant
Though even a single life lost to fire is saddening, life loss at this scale is beyond words.
The 20th century saw the rise in the importance of fire safety codes, typically in reaction to tragic fires, like the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, with large life losses. However, as the century moved to a close, three critically important factors have combined to again increase the risk of large life loss to fire.
1. Increasing urban population
Large segments of populations are moving into already dense urban cores. This migration forces the need to build larger structures, often vertically, and always more cheaply. Dense arrangements of people are a necessary precursor for disaster.
2. Changing built environment
Concurrent changes in the built environment, including the use of non-traditional building methods and engineered materials have created new paradigms for fire development and fire spread. While construction materials and methods alone are unlikely to be the root cause of tragic fires, they likely contribute to the tragedy by subverting the sanctity of compartmentalized interior spaces.
3. Cutting funding for emergency services
Compounding the impact of the first two factors is the continued financial struggle faced by most fire service organizations. Cash-strapped local governments are forced to make difficult choices and often find themselves cutting emergency service budgets just as the risk of large scale fire disasters grows.
Unfortunately, the Grenfell Tower fire may be a harbinger of the next great series of challenges for the fire service in the 21st century.
Top takeaways
There will be much to learn from the Grenfell Tower fire investigation, including the accounts from the firefighters and fire officers who responded. Here are three early top takeaways based on the information available now.
1. Redouble prevention efforts
Fire service leaders must redouble their efforts at preventing these tragedies on the front-end, working with builders and local government officials to develop standards and codes that sufficiently address the challenges of large vertical residential structures. Building codes should place a higher emphasis on not only preventing the ignition of exterior surfaces, but in creating new methods of both active and passive fire protection.
2. Increase research of fire spread in building systems
Fire service leaders must push for scientific research into building components not as standalone items, but rather as integrated systems. How an aluminum cladding panel behaves in a furnace fire test provides little insight into how the cladding system restricts or contributes to fire spread as part of a building system.
3. Improve citizen response, action
Finally, fire service leaders and fire educators must push for additional research into the various social and psychological factors surrounding how people are best notified of fires and how they typically react. Once the fire begins, most fire departments are fighting a losing battle. The people who live or work inside the building must be empowered to save themselves.
Any fire department responding to a fire like the one at Grenfell Tower will be immediately overwhelmed. If there is any hope of preventing future deaths, then it will likely be found on the prevention side of the house, not the response side.
Learn more about high-rise building fires
A high-rise fire is complex and dangerous. Learn more about the challenges, train for the structures in your response area and find opportunities to speak with the public, elected officials and policy makers about the dangers of and response to a high-rise fire. Learn more with these articles from FireRescue1.
- 15-step tactic to deploy a high-rise attack line
- 9 factors for planning a high-rise attack
- High-rise fire: 7 must-knows about elevators
- Are wood-frame high rises a fire risk?
- High-rise study shows importance of large crew
- Rapid response: Lessons on high-rise risk factors from Iran firefighter tragedy
- Why fire prevention is a core fire service function
- City on fire: 8 infamous blazes in history
