Grenfell Tower: Fire Started In Hotpoint Fridge Freezer, Say Police

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40380584

"Insulation on the building also failed tests and the Metropolitan Police will consider manslaughter charges."

No surprise there than.

[Smowball]

Sorry if someone's asked this and I've missed it, but the guy in who's flat the fire started - did he actually call 999 at all?

[TWR]

That should have said, turn off when cleaning, not at night as I stated.

[jno]

it was after midnight, he may have been in bed and known nothing about it. Much of the building was in flames within half an hour.

[Mamyalynne]

He did Smow, but there are a lot of bewildering statements about the early part of it all - I shan't repeat them here.

Some from his next door neighbour that make no sense in light of how serious it all became.

[Bertrum]

As I understand the fire brigade arrived and extinguished the fire in the flat what they were unaware of until they were alerted by fire officers outside was that the fire was raging up the exterior wall

[naomi24]

TWR at 17:18, that sounds more like it.

[jno]

Hotpoint are telling owners to check their fridges, but I suppose it'll be a while before they can sort out exactly what went wrong.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/23/hotpoint-tells-customers-to-check-fridge-freezers-after-grenfell-tower-fire

[Ellipsis]

> they did two sort of cladding, one less flammable than the other

OK, so everything is flammable at a certain temperature, even rock, but as I said on another thread ...

People talk about "cost-cutting", "it would only have cost £5000 more to clad the building in a better material", etc. but this misses the point.

There is no way on earth that "flammable" cladding is acceptable. Price does not come into it. It is not acceptable at any price.

It's nothing to do with cutting costs. It's to do with gross incompetence. How is it possible that a tower block was wrapped in flammable material?

It reminds me of flammable clothing as in the case of Claudia Winkleman's little daughter, whose Halloween outfit went up in flames. How much did the clothing cost? WHO CARES?!! Flammability is wrong for clothing and wrong for cladding, at any cost. It should not be legal.

[jno]

wooden houses were banned after the Fire of London, but I don't know that they would or should be now. The issue with the cladding wasn't flammability as such, as I understand it, but the way it allowed flames to shoot up the building bypassing any barriers that might have originally been built in. In other words you ought to be able to clad your bungalow in it if you want, but putting it on higher buildings is risky and having it all the way up a high-rise is lethally risky.

[Smowball]

It's all very confusing. I think all houses & flats should have fire extinguishers so this guy could have at least had a good go at putting it out. Not sure how it works but I can't see how they can tell it was a faulty fridge at fault when there is probably nothing left of it to inspect after the fire

[Mamyalynne]

The fridge was the first thing to be extinguished so there may be enough for them to be sure of the model at least.