‘You’re working in thick black smoke and
Reporter THE assistant chief fire officer of Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service has spoken out to reassure residents after the Grenfell Tower fire.
Alan Robson addressed a number of key points that have emerged in the wake of the tragedy.
The fire has claimed the life of at least 79 people and, at time of writing, cladding from 95 buildings in 32 local authority areas had failed fire safety tests.
He spoke about the importance of automatic sprinkler systems, the ‘stay put’ policy and reflected on how firefighters would go about tackling an inferno like Grenfell.
Mr Robson, who has spent 27 years in the service, served as a front-line firefighter for the first 11 years of his career.
Throughout his time working on stations in Northumberland and Tyne and Wear, he says he encountered several high rise flat fires. Here’s what he had to say about fire safety in the wake of the tragedy.
“We would encourage sprinklers to be fitted where they can because they save lives. They can stop the fire from developing in flats.
“We will have to wait and see if sprinklers would have been effective at Grenfell Tower but we would always advocate that they are installed in any domestic situation.
“In Tyne and Wear, we’ve seen zero deaths from accidental domestic fires in two years of the last five.
“We would like to see that happen every year and one of the ways of seeing that is sprinklers.”
“It is quite arduous. Fire fighters would be wearing breathing apparatus - we wouldn’t put them into that situation without them on.
“They would at least one length of hose with them that would be charged to extinguish fires and protect themselves.
“They would probably have other equipment too - for example, they might be carrying an oxygen pack to administer first aid to anybody they find.