Awful echo of Grenfell
Furious calls for total overhaul of f ire safety after huge blaze rips through cladding of student f lats
A GRENFELL-style blaze that tore through the cladding of a six-storey student block led fire chiefs last night to call for urgent nationwide action ‘before it’s too late’.
Students were evacuated as about 200 firefighters fought the blaze engulfing The Cube residential block in Bolton on Friday evening.
One young woman was rescued by firefighters on an aerial platform and two students were treated at the scene for minor injuries. About 200 students were evacuated and there were claims that some fire alarms failed to work.
As an investigation was launched, the leader of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) condemned the ‘complete failure of the UK’s fire safety system’. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham demanded action from Boris Johnson to give ‘peace of mind’ to residents of cladded tower blocks.
The Prime Minister abandoned electioneering to visit the scene and hailed the ‘ incredible response’ from the community after donations of clothing, food and toiletries poured in.
As investigators examined the scene, which bore shocking echoes of the Grenfell Tower disaster of 2017, FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said: ‘This terrible fire highlights the complete failure of the UK’s fire safety system. It’s deeply troubling to see fire spread rapidly up a building’s exterior again – a shocking indictment of the Government’s shameful inaction after Grenfell.
‘This is not how any building should react to a fire in the 21st Century, let alone a building in which people live. We need to end the deregulation agenda and the disastrous cuts to our fire and rescue service. It’s time for a complete overhaul of UK fire safety before it’s too late.’
It emerged last night that safety experts had repeatedly warned about the type of cladding – high-pressure laminate (HPL) used on the accommodation block. In January, an academic publicly warned that the next Grenfell-style disaster would be in a building clad with HPL after publishing a study showing it burns 115 times hotter than fire-resistant options.
HPL window panels were used on the Lakanal House tower block in South London, where six residents died in a fire in 2009.
It also emerged that Urban Student Life, which manages The Cube, was suspended for a year in 2016 from a nationwide code for building standards after one of its blocks in Leeds was found not fit for use by the fire authority. The company declined to comment last night.
George Holmes, vice-chancellor of Bolton University, said it would be working with the fire authority to check the safety of all its student accommodation. He said the block, which is not owned by the university, was a ‘properly regulated building’.
One witness to the blaze, Ace Love, 35, said the fire ‘kept getting more intense, climbing up and to the right because the wind was blowing so hard. We could see it bubbling from the outside and then being engulfed from the outside. A lot of students got out very fast, some were very distressed, the rest were on phones calling for help. The fire got worse and worse, to the point where you could see through the beams, it was just bare frame.’
Student Shannon Parker, 22, who was in her room in The Cube when the fire started, said: ‘I heard the alarm but I just thought it was a drill until one of my flatmates shouted down the corridor that it was a real fire. I ran out of the flat as quickly as I could and I saw it was one of the flats below mine.’
After the Grenfell tragedy, fire safety officers visited The Cube and reassured students it was safe.