Grenfell Blame Dodging

So far the Grenfell enquiry has heard lots of emotional stories from residents involved in the tragedy, who unsurprisingly were greatly affected. So what the point was, at an enquiry is beyond me. Now we have moved on to the response of the fire service. Personally, I would now be looking at the building and the work that had been done, the basic safety of the building and the responses to complaints from residents.

Then talk to the people completing the work and the materials used, who ordered what materials, who had oversight of that and who signed off on it. Only then would I move on to the emergency services role. But we are where we are, though I hope this is not to set a blame profile in people's minds, to prepare us for a full-on, several coats of whitewash final report.

We have had more emoting, which is a little poor from an emergency service but very much the fashion these days, very au courant. I'm sure it isn't part of a sympathy garnering agenda. The officer in charge and who maintained the standard response to a tall building fire of 'stay put', now much criticised, could not remember ever having any training about what to do in that specific circumstance. A sort of "I'm not to blame, how was I supposed to know" plea.

But then I hear (not from the enquiry -odd surely?) that this same officer had recently visited Grenfell for a fire safety check. In the discussion where I heard this a Fire Brigade Union rep, after giving the obligatory references to the officer being "brave" and "dedicated" which no-one had queried, said that he didn't know about the flammable cladding and the combustible window frames, amongst a list of other things he didn't know.

But the whole point is that he is there to check and to know and then to advise. A pathetic attempt at an excuse, but then, Union.

I was responsible for regulatory matters in setting up a temporary charity ice rink. It was in an old supermarket building that we adapted, so there was a lot to get right. There was a sprinkler system so we had to avoid impeding its operation.

There was netting over the top of the ice pad because hockey was going to be played and we needed to protect the lights from being hit by a puck. The fire safety guys were concerned about this, but I assured them, from my own knowledge and life experience that water would pass through a mesh with like, two inch holes in it. They were not happy though.

We had to get our rink expert to contact the manufacturer of the netting, in Canada to obtain the fire safety tests that the netting had undertaken and passed. I told them I was fairly sure that in the history of history an ice pad had never caught fire, but they just drew breath and said they needed that from an expert.

So, apparently some tiny little community charity ice rink should be held to standards so high they exceed the borders of sanity, but a multi-million pound project on peoples' homes should involve people who don't know much about fire safety, apparently.

I mean we now understand Grenfell had a faulty smoke extraction system, no smoke alarm or detectors inadequate fire doors and even some missing. Then there were the building materials and the way the work was being done. But it is beyond reason to expect an expert in fire safety to notice any of this?

Seventy two people died. When is it going to be important enough that we actually hold people to account, which would put us a good way along towards making sure it doesn't happen again. Because currently there exists a belief that senior and 'important' people (on big salaries, often paid by us) cannot be expected to be held responsible when they mess up. So it does happen again.

If we are starting with the fire service, my question would be why our senior fire officers do not respond to a situation as it presents itself, but follow 'protocols' that were thought up in an office and given to the fire service as a tick box.

You see 'stay put' requires firemen (non gender specific reference) to go into a burning building to rescue people if the fire becomes uncontained by their initial efforts. As was apparent from the outset, the fire was spreading at an unprecedented and unexpected speed. But standard operating instructions were followed as if nothing was unusual.

And by doing that, really brave indeed heroic firemen then go into a raging building to rescue those doing as they had been told. Or, God help us, they are ordered to stay put themselves and watch people die, as their failing senior officers now go on to the health and safety tick box of not putting their officers in danger. Convincing themselves, in the words of Shoesmith (Baby P), that while there had been an unhappy outcome, they could not be to blame because they had ticked all the boxes.

One thing I know: we all deserve better.