Warnings of fire proofing issues

YOUR article “Fire door Fears” [Gazette, 23.1.19] reported that fire doors in tower blocks in many areas are unsafe.

Data collected through Freedom of Information requests, shared with the Gazette, shows more than 5,000 of these unsafe doors were fitted in council housing in parts of North and West London. For instance, there are over 2,000 of these dangerous doors in Islington.

Were the companies who manufactured and supplied the doors, breaking fire safety legislation or was the safety legislation itself faulty? What makes it worse is that there were many warnings.

A BBC 2 documentary on October 30, 2018 entitled “Fires that Foretold Grenfell” reported that there have been many serious fires from the 1970s onwards from virtually the same causes, such as plastic cladding – as the Grenfell disaster. In 1973 there was ‘The Summerlands Fire’ – a modern entertainment block on the Isle of Man.

The plastic cladding melted and rapidly spread the fire. 50 people died and 80 were seriously injured. In 1999 there was ‘The Garnock Fire’ in a 14-storey tower block in Irvine, Scotland. In ‘Harrow Court’ block in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, there was a serious fire in 2005. In 2009 a fire caused six deaths in ‘Lakanal House’ tower block in Camberwell, London. In these fires, residents were told to stay put and not escape, and the fires spread quickly from melting plastic cladding and many died.

The flats were supposed to be fireproof to withstand a fire for over an hour – when in reality they could withstand fire for only a few minutes.

These tragedies happened under both Labour and Conservative governments.

If governments and other authorities had learned from their past mistakes and taken action, the Grenfell disaster would never have happened. Unless safety action is taken quickly there could be loss of life in similar tower block fires.

Name and address witheld