Fire Of London Research Articles

Lessons not learned: How did we arrive at the need for the Hackitt Review?

The term ‘unprecedented’ is often wrongly used in respect of catastrophic events, and while the Grenfell disaster has highlighted significant shortcomings in both our regulation and construction regimes, sadly history tells us that far from being unprecedented, this was a disaster not only waiting to happen, but which has been repeated at intervals throughout history. From the Great Fire of London to the Woolworths Manchester fire, the drivers behind Grenfell are well-known — cost pressures, lack of expertise and ineffective legislation all playing their part, as stated in the Hackitt Review. What is perhaps unprecedented is the extent to which Grenfell has highlighted what can only be described as endemic failings in our modern construction practises that show we have not simply forgotten the lessons history should have taught us, but have knowingly disregarded them. Before looking at the recommendations of the Hackitt enquiry and the proposed changes to the construction industry, this paper will look at the history of fire safety and the lessons that we were already taught, asking ourselves: ‘How did we end up at Grenfell?’

Facade Fire Hazards of Bench-Scale Aluminum Composite Panel with Flame-Retardant Core

Facade fires in tall buildings are currently occurring more than once a month globally that are responsible for many casualties and billions of dollars in losses. In particular, the tragic Grenfell Tower fire in London with more than 70 fatalities raised the profile of facade fire hazard. This work used well-controlled irradiation up to 60 kW/m2 to re-assess the fire hazard of typical flame-retardant aluminum composite panels (ACPs) with a dimension of 10 cm × 10 cm × 0.5 cm. We found that the vertically oriented ACPs with the “non-combustible” A2-grade and “limited-combustible” B-grade cores could still be ignited above 35 kW/m2 and 25 kW/m2, after the front aluminum layer peeled off. The peak heat release rate per unit area of these ACPs could be higher than common materials like timber and PVC. Moreover, compared to the B-core panel, the A2-core panel showed a greater fire hazard in terms of a shorter ignition delay time, a higher possibility of the core peel-off, and a longer flaming duration under current test size and fixing condition. Because the ACP is a complex system, its fire hazard is not simply controlled by the core material. The structural failure of ACP in fire, including peel-off, bending, softening and cracking, may further increase the fire hazard depending on the scale effect, boundary and fixing conditions. This research improves our understanding of the systematic fire behaviors of facade panels and helps rethink the fire risk and test methods of the building facade.

Predicting non-residential building fire risk using geospatial information and convolutional neural networks

Building fire risk prediction is crucial for allocation of building inspection resources and prevention of fire incidents. Existing research of building fire prediction makes use of data relating to local demography, crime, building use and physical building characteristics, yet few studies have analysed the relative importance of predictive features. Furthermore, image features relating to buildings, such as aerial imagery and digital surface models (DSM), have not been explored. This research presents a multi-modal hybrid neural network for the prediction of fire risk at the building level using the London Fire Brigade dataset. The inclusion of traditional and novel image features is assessed using Shapley values and an ablation study. The ablation study found that while building use is the most effective contributor of classification performance, demographic features, apart from social class, are detrimental. Moreover, while the DSM did not lead to any notable improvement in classification performance, the inclusion of the aerial imagery feature lead to a 4% increase in median validation ROC AUC. The final model presented achieved an ROC AUC of 0.8195 on the test set.

The Impact of Introducing a Low Traffic Neighbourhood on Fire Service Emergency Response Times, in Waltham Forest London

There is sometimes concern that low traffic neighbourhoods slow emergency vehicles. We test this using London Fire Brigade data (2012-2020) in Waltham Forest, where from 2015 low traffic neighbourhoods have been implemented. We find no evidence that response times were affected inside low traffic neighbourhoods, and some evidence that they improved slightly on boundary roads. However, while the proportion of delays was unchanged, the reasons given for delays initially showed some shift from ‘no specific delay cause identified’ to ‘traffic calming measures’. Our findings indicate that low traffic neighbourhoods do not adversely affect emergency response times, although while LTNs are novel this perception may exist among some crews.

Construing The Great Fire of London through online media: A case of exploring discourse semantics and register

This paper considers the exploration of genre and register of historical texts recontextualised in online media and school textbooks through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics especially by exploring their discourse semantics and register features. Particularly, this paper shows how the relation between discourse semantics resources and register variables contribute to the overall organisation of the recontextualized history genres. This paper provides a detailed qualitative analysis of discourse semantics as instantiated in the deployment of APPRAISAL, IDEATION, IDENTIFICATION, and PERIODICITY to give a clearer picture of how history genres in the media are established. A set of corpora consisting of historical texts from online media and school textbooks was used as a main source of data in this study. The historical texts collected from online media were from various platforms including online newspapers, online magazines, encyclopaedia entries, and universities websites/blogs. For the illustrative purposes, two texts from the corpora were selected for a detailed analysis using the discourse semantics toolkits to find out similarities and differences in terms how an historical event – The Great Fire of London – was established. The analysis found that there was a tendency that historical events could be reconstrued in the media through different ways. The first text informs readers about the fire and its significance in a chronological manner. The second text provides an explanation of the influence of the Great Fire to other historical events. This paper also suggests that history genres tend to be ‘evolving’ as reproduced in varied media discourses. Though still at the infancy stage, this paper offers a great insight into how genres are organised in relation to the choices in register variables and discourse semantics.

QUANTITATIVE REASONING AND COMMERCIAL LOGIC IN REBUILDING PLANS AFTER THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON, 1666

ABSTRACTRebuilding plans submitted after the Great Fire of London in 1666 have been widely treated by historians of the Great Fire and in wide-scope histories of London and modern city planning. However, few attempts have been made to assign an overarching logic to all of them, while paying attention to their texts as well as to their maps. The following article highlights certain common features in these abortive efforts to plan London, assigns a common logic to all of them, and traces the origins of this logic. Such an analysis illuminates the economic principles in plans that are usually examined for their architectural features, and places them in a different historical context. Rather than seeing them as manifestations of contemporary architectural trends, or as a continuation of ongoing attempts to regulate London's cityscape, the plans are presented here as a response to emerging ideas in mid-seventeenth-century England about the nature of value and the economic function of cities within the world of commerce. Such a view reveals the complex interplay between London's early modern growth and the emergence of new forms of knowledge in seventeenth-century England and reasserts the importance of these plans as forerunners of present-day city planning.

Torched Lives, Hazy Lies

The Great Fire of London of 1666 has often been categorized into history as a major disaster with severe consequences, but also popularly as a great showing of heroism and social recovery in regard to Londoners and their rebuilding process. This paper will analyze first-hand accounts and scholarly arguments regarding The Great Fire of London, establishing the argument for a dreaded period of economic recovery for the lower class, driven by themes of ignorance, social division and greed by the upper classes. From religious officials, to the city’s mayor and other prominent upper-class Londoners, the great disaster seemed like the opportunity to profit and at the same time keep the less privileged away from London’s thriving society.

Introduction

AbstractThe high-rise tower block is an ambiguous construction: a much-maligned architectural form yet a persistent symbol of modernity and aspiration. It is also a fulcrum for discourses about urban failure, broken communities, widening urban inequality, and insecurity. Recent tower block disasters, from the Grenfell Tower fire in London to high-rise collapses in Nairobi, have intensified such debates. In this introduction to the theme section, we explore “tower block failure” as both event and discourse. Engaging with scholarship on global urbanism, verticality, and failure as a generative force, we highlight the particular discursive, social, political, and material constellations of “failure” as it manifests in relation to tower blocks. We propose that exploring what failure sets in motion—following what failure does, rather than what it means—can help inform our understanding of urban transformation.

The timeline of information exchange: a service evaluation of London Ambulance Service NHS Trust's front line communication and emergency response to Exercise Unified Response.

Introduction:Exercise Unified Response, Europe’s largest major incident training exercise to date, provided a rich environment for the emergency services to test their multi-agency crisis response capabilities. Supported by the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust, this service evaluation examined London Ambulance Service NHS Trust front line communication and decision-making via body-worn camera footage.Methods:Twenty London Ambulance Service NHS Trust front line responders and evaluators were each equipped with a body-worn camera during Exercise Unified Response. The service evaluation aimed to: (a) produce timelines of the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust’s response in order to identify key events and actions during the ‘golden hour’ (the crucial first hour in the care of trauma patients), the proceedings of command meetings and the multi-agency response; and (b) develop recommendations for future training and evaluations.Results:The service evaluation identified that, within the golden hour, London Ambulance Service NHS Trust first responders rightly and rapidly declared the event a major incident, requested resources and assigned roles. Triage crews were tasked quickly, though it was identified that their efficiency may be further enhanced through more detailed triage briefings prior to entering the scene. The command meetings (led by the Metropolitan Police) lacked efficiency, and all agencies could make more effective use of the multi-agency shared radio network to address ongoing matters. Finally, London Fire Brigade and London Ambulance Service NHS Trust teams demonstrated clear communication and co-ordination towards casualty extraction.Conclusion:Successful multi-agency working requires clear communication, information sharing and timely command meetings. It is recommended that Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles multi-agency talk groups should be utilised more frequently and used to complete a joint METHANE report. In addition, training in areas such as communication skills and detailed briefings will enhance the front line response. Finally, body-worn cameras are shown to be an effective service evaluation tool, as a basis for promoting best practice as well as highlighting areas for future training and evaluations.

БОРЬБА ЗА БРИТАНИЮ: ЛОНДОН В КОММЕМОРАЦИЯХ ЕГО ЖИТЕЛЕЙ

The article is devoted to the Blitz commemorations of the citizens of London. Such WWII memoirs are extremely precious since they give the reader a first-person view of the witness’s actions, feelings, experiences. Reminiscences make us deeply involved in different events of the Blitz, showing both the unbelievable ruthlessness of the enemy and the endeavor of the citizens of the British capital to retain their human nature. The Blitz period has originated a lot of accounts connected with the scale of bombardment. The present papertacklesthe recollections ofrenownedwriters,war correspondents, artists, people at work – firefighters and local defense volunteers. Ordinary citizens – grown-ups and children – were also among the onlookers. Ernie Pyle, a famous journalist, presented a description of blanket night bombings, one of which resulted in the Second Great Fire of London. Virginia Woolf did not only describe her feelings during an air raid but also reflected on future peace. Eyewitnesses’ accounts convey the images of devastation, sufferings, horror. And, at the same time, people stayed heroic and defiant, they continued living among the ruins – sheltering, developing their own mini-governments in the Tube, playing cricket amidst debris, digging for victory. Moreover, as Henry Morton, another famous journalist and traveler, reported, Londoners had not lost their sense of humor even under unrelenting bombardment. The documentary sources indicate that the spirits were high: the old and the young, the rich and the poor were getting along, joined together. Those people were

Thermodynamics of Tower-Block Infernos: Effects of Water on Aluminum Fires.

We review the thermodynamics of combustion reactions involved in aluminum fires in the light of the spate of recent high-profile tower-block disasters, such as the Grenfell fire in London 2017, the Dubai fires between 2010 and 2016, and the fires and explosions that resulted in the 9/11 collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York. These fires are class B, i.e., burning metallic materials, yet water was applied in all cases as an extinguisher. Here, we highlight the scientific thermochemical reasons why water should never be used on aluminum fires, not least because a mixture of aluminum and water is a highly exothermic fuel. When the plastic materials initially catch fire and burn with limited oxygen (O2 in air) to carbon (C), which is seen as an aerosol (black smoke) and black residue, the heat of the reaction melts the aluminum (Al) and increases its fluidity and volatility. Hence, this process also increases its reactivity, whence it rapidly reacts with the carbon product of polymer combustion to form aluminum carbide (Al4C3). The heat of formation of Al4Cl3 is so great that it becomes white-hot sparks that are similar to fireworks. At very high temperatures, both molten Al and Al4C3 aerosol react violently with water to give alumina fine dust aerosol (Al2O3) + hydrogen (H2) gas and methane (CH4) gas, respectively, with white smoke and residues. These highly inflammable gases, with low spontaneous combustion temperatures, instantaneously react with the oxygen in the air, accelerating the fire out of control. Adding water to an aluminum fire is similar to adding “rocket fuel” to the existing flames. A CO2–foam/powder extinguisher, as deployed in the aircraft industry against aluminum and plastic fires by smothering, is required to contain aluminum fires at an early stage. Automatic sprinkler extinguisher systems should not be installed in tower blocks that are at risk of aluminum fires.

The fire this time: Grenfell, racial capitalism and the urbanisation of empire

Over the last few years, an emergent body of International Relations scholarship has taken an interest in the rise of global cities and the challenges they bring to existing geographies of power. In this article, I argue that a focus on race and empire should be central to this literature. Using the Grenfell Tower fire in London as a starting point, the article shows that global cities are part of a historical and ongoing imperial terrain. From London to New York, São Paulo to Cape Town, Singapore to Cairo, the ‘making’ of global cities has typically gone hand in hand with racialized forms of displacement, dispossession and police violence. Drawing on the literature on racial capitalism, as well as Aimé Césaire’s image of the ‘boomerang’, I show that these strategies build on practices of urban planning, slum administration and law-and-order policing long experimented with in the (post)colonies. By examining the colonial dimensions of what many assume to be a strictly national problem for the welfare state, the article thus reveals global cities as part of a much wider cartography of imperial and racial violence. This not only calls into question the presentism of scholarship that highlights the ‘newness’ of neoliberal urbanism. In demonstrating how global cities and colonial borderlands are bound together through racial capitalism, it also exposes the positionality of scholars and policymakers that seek to counter the violence of neoliberalism with a nostalgic return to the post-1945 welfare state. As the Grenfell fire revealed, the global city is less a new type of international actor or governance structure than an extension and reconfiguration of the domestic space of empire.

Environmental contamination following the Grenfell Tower fire

The Grenfell Tower fire in central London, started within a flat, engulfed the whole 24 storey building in flames, killed 72 people and spread toxic effluent via the plume and particulate deposits.Soil samples from 6 locations up to 1,2 km from the Tower, together with semi-burnt fire debris and char samples, were collected 1 and 6 months after the fire. Additionally, dust samples and condensates were collected from a flat 160 m away from the Tower after 17 months. Samples were analysed for common potentially toxic components of fire effluents and synthetic vitreous fibres.Samples collected within 140 m of the Tower showed, amongst other toxicants, polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxin concentrations 60 times greater than UK urban reference soil levels; benzene levels were 40 times greater; levels of 6 key polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were approximately 160 times greater. PAHs levels are approximately 20 times greater than those reported from nearby Hyde Park before the fire. To explain the presence of these pyrogenic contaminants char and partially burnt debris were also collected and analysed. Benzene, PAHs, isocyanates and phosphorus flame retardants were found. Hydrogen cyanide and synthetic vitreous fibres were present in both soil and debris.Particulate and pyrogenic contamination in the immediate vicinity is clearly evident, and may have leached out of fire debris, char and dust. Further analysis of the area around the Tower is necessary to understand potential health risks.

Dialogical approaches to learning: from theory to practice and back

This paper explores a common educational dilemma, namely that of how to resource meaningful teaching and learning experiences, and the research challenge of how to represent the multimodal complexity of pedagogic intentions and instantiations. We share the sociocultural view of talk as a central tool in meaning making, aligned with attention to how teaching and learning conversations are mediated by communicative cues and interactions orchestrated across modes. We present extracts to exemplify the benefits of combining sociocultural discourse analysis (SCDA) and multimodal analysis, to explore classroom data at different levels of detail and temporal range. The context for the data collection was a series of lessons on the Great Fire of London with a Year 2 class (6–7 years). Lessons were part of a project using dance and interactive technologies to support understanding. We highlight the purposeful use of different analytic foci, enabled by SCDA and multimodal analysis, and explore what this can add to researchers' understanding of the contextualised nature of meaning making, building and weaving over time, in often unexpected ways. The original contribution of this paper is in offering an innovative mixed-methods approach to explore the complex detail, development and multimodal array of educational interaction.

The Great Fire of London as a Memory Site (Lieu de Mémoire)

The author approaches the Great Fire of London of 1666 as a memory site, using Pierre Nora’s concept to analyse various forms and acts of remembrance of this historic event. Special attention is paid to John Dryden’s poem Annus Mirabilis, fragments of Samuel Pepys’s Diary, the architectural Monument of the Great Fire in the City of London, and the celebrations of the 350th anniversary with its spectacular London’s Burning festival. Nora’s idea of lieu de mémoire, when used as a conceptual tool, makes it possible to link collective memory and identity, not through a linear historic narration of a society’s past but through specific individual events and their symbolic impact. As a social construct, collective memory is an important constitutive element of national identity. The memory of the Great Fire – in its material, symbolic and functional aspects – fosters cultural identity of the British and the feeling of belonging.

A Tale of Three Strategies: How the Government, London Fire Brigade and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Sought to Communicate With the Public and Protect Their Reputations in the Wake of the Grenfell Tower Fire.

A Tale of Three Strategies: How the Government, London Fire Brigade and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Sought to Communicate With the Public and Protect Their Reputations in the Wake of the Grenfell Tower Fire.

"Chatterton" by Peter Acroyd: The origins of idea

Peter Ackroyd´s celebrated fourth novel, first published in 1987 and entitled Chatterton, continues the line already opened and established by his previous novels The Great Fire of London (1982), The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983) and especially Hawksmoor (1985). They all pose questions for readers of fiction as well as for readers of history concerning the meaning and the scope of these two termsof fake and fiction. They also deal with the issue of the recapture of the past from the present and the echoes of that past that pervade the present. The significance of Thomas Chatterton as the chosen subject of representation in Ackroyd's Chatterton is double. On the one hand, he is a historical figure whose traces have reached our time. On the other hand, he is, above all, a literary figure and quite a peculiar one.

Living the moment

Sal McKeown discovers how a new resource is helping pre-schoolers to develop a passion for the past with an audio experience that transports them to momentous events such as the Great Fire of London.

Impact of Grenfell Tower fire disaster on polyisocyanurate industry

The paper summarizes commonly available information on the fire of the Grenfell Tower, which took place in Central London on 14 June 2017. The fire was very similar in its nature to several other spectacular fires at tall buildings, which have happened around the world since 1999 but unlike the previous one, the London fire claimed an enormous number of victims – 71. The tragic outcome of the fire was blamed on a combination of several human and natural factors: faulty evacuation procedures, unsuitable fire extinguishing equipment, mistakes by the housing association managing the building, lacking fire safety provisions in the tower, weather, confusing building regulations, etc. However it was established that the main reason for so tragic an outcome of this fire was the speed of fire spread via decorative aluminum composite materials (ACM) containing polyethylene (PE), installed on the outer of a building as a part of a rain-screen cladding system. The other part of the system was polyisocyanurate (PIR) thermal insulation. The paper focuses on the role of PIR in this fire and a couple of practices in the PIR industry highlighted by the tragedy. It reflects on the origin of PIR and evolution of PIR technologies as well as PIR definition. Finally it reports on a bottom-up initiative started at the Polyurethanes 2017 Conference aiming at changing current attitude of the European thermal insulation industry to Open Access to reports on fire testing of thermal insulation products. This small but concerted effort of scientific and industrial thermal insulation communities has a good chance of helping to drive further improvement of fire resistance of thermal insulation and to restore public confidence in these important materials.

Out of the Darkness: A Community led Art Psychotherapy Response to the Grenfell Tower Fire

This short report is an attempt to bring into light the art therapy response following the Grenfell Tower fire on the 14th June 2017. This terrible tragedy was the worst fire in London’s history with a reported 72 deaths (one of whom died 6 months after the fire having never left hospital), 18 of the victims were children. The fire began on the 4th floor of the tower and spread ferociously through the building, aided by the exterior cladding that has now been identified as well below the necessary fire safety standards. There remains an on-going, complex inquiry into the causes and events that led to the fire, with major failings being uncovered in the building as well as the fire access to the block. While this stream of seemingly new evidence emerges to the outrage of the public, the community have known about these failings for years. The Grenfell Action Group[1] actively complaining about the shoddy workmanship and the unsafe refurbishment since 2012. They were not only ignored but also bullied and threatened with eviction by authorities. Ten months after the tragedy this disregard continues as many families remain in hotels and temporary accommodation as the painful fight for Justice continues.