FOCUS
Talking point
At the drinks reception for the Fire Sector Summit in October, Nick Ross gave a speech on the Grenfell Tower fire and his views on the future for fire safety
R
ULE ONE for a speech at a pre conference reception is to keep it short, and rule two: keep it light. I propose to break both of those golden rules. And with a vengeance. Because Grenfell has proved how badly the rulebook needs to be challenged. I know I’m speaking to the converted.
You’re here because you care and there’s nothing I’ll say you don’t already know. But I hope to galvanise you, to revive the passions you felt when the news of Grenfell was still fresh. Because this is a time to be angry, and anger is sometimes the right response. This is also a time for honest self refl ection in this industry – because so many people, including those in this sector, did not do what they should. But it’s also a time to celebrate – because out of this appalling tragedy, as with the Great Fire of London, there are lessons to be learned and good sense is at last emerging. Why should we be angry? You could
argue Grenfell was an accident. But it wasn’t. It was a consequence. A consequence of decisions made and not made in offi cialdom.
For heaven’s sake let’s acknowledge that in a civilised country, after centuries of learning how to prevent fi res and stop them in their tracks, Grenfell was a testament to bad government, to bad policy, to an abdication of responsibility. First, let’s dispose of some myths about the
Grenfell Tower fi re: • that we don’t know what happened and must await the offi cial inquiries
• that it was the council’s fault • that the cladding was only there to gentrify the area
• that the problem is only with high rise buildings
None of those is true. We know enough about what happened to act responsibly. We know the fi re started in a Hotpoint fridge freezer on the fourth fl oor. We know there were no sprinklers, so the fi re got out of control. We know it penetrated a window and set the insulation and external cladding on fire, apparently with a gap between them acting like a chimney. We know the fi re would never have caught hold if Grenfell had a sprinkler system.
32 DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018
www.frmjournal.com
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