What Australia Should Learn From Grenfell
It’s a scary time to be living in Australia, some would have you believe.
The next time you are outside your house or work, take a look at the building. Do you see sleek panels, which look very consistent and smooth and perfect? They could be flat, curved, and they also come in an array of pleasing colours. If this is sounding familiar, then it is likely that you are living or working in a building with a facade made of metal panels, and if you believe what the news and the government have been broadcasting, they’re bound to burst into flames at any minute, and you should be afraid.
‘I would be very concerned, not only for myself but for a high majority of other residents as well’, some have said about where they live. Others are saying that the situation is simply ‘terrifying.’
There’s now a government task force on the case. Building materials have been banned, a large number of buildings have been deemed dangerous, and builders have been instructed to start fixing the problem before someone gets hurt.
The trouble is, while the scattered government is making all this effort to address building fires on one hand, all the hype and fear have started a different fire under metal panels that has gotten out of control.
And it’s totally unnecessary.
1974 was a big year for fires. The 1974 film The Towering Inferno told the story of a fire in the tallest skyscraper in the world, a 135-storey fictitious high rise in San Francisco. Faulty electrical wiring, the work of some dodgy contractors who cut corners at the direction of the developer, leads to a massive fire in the building, which just so happened to be occupied by local glitterati and dignitaries who were attending the grand opening of the building on the upper levels. It’s a classic 70’s disaster film, complete with plenty of explosions, fire trucks, helicopters rescuing people from a burning lift, and a grizzled fire chief as the hero.
It was the second highest grossing film of the year in the U.S. in 1974, a flick which sat near the top of the popular disaster movie genre of the day, amongst other notables like Earthquake, Avalanche, and Airport. It was also a sign of the times. Back in the 70’s, building fires were a very real risk. Fires in that day were much more prevalent and much more dangerous than they are today.
When was the last time you saw a building fire? When was the last time you thought about the possibility of one? Probably in fleeting moments when a fire brigade truck screams by, lights flashing, or when your work is interrupted for one of those tests of the alarm system. The fire scene has changed since 1974. Buildings are safer, fires are less prevalent, and fire fighting techniques have evolved. Here in Australia, bushfires are top of mind in terms of hot stuff to worry about. Things have changed so much that the role of fire fighters has been reevaluated in recent times, because being a fire fighter is becoming less and less about actually fighting fires and more about fire prevention and emergency response.
Towering infernos aren’t something that happen much anymore, and certainly aren’t something that people worry about.
Residents of the 24-storey Grenfell tower in west London certainly weren’t thinking about fires when they went to sleep on the night of 13th June 2017. Shortly after midnight, though, reports say that a fire broke out on the 4th floor from a faulty refrigerator. The fire began to get out of control, however the fire brigade arrived 6 minutes after an alarm rang in, and they made quick work of it. Upon further inspection it became apparent that the fire had spread, made its way to the exterior of the building, and raged up the facade.
60 hours later, the fire was out, though only the flames. Thus started the long and arduous process of figuring out how a refrigerator fire led to the deaths of 71 men, women and children and a building burned into a blackened shell. News headlines told the tale:
London Tower Fire: Witnesses Describe ‘Devastation’ — abc.net.au
High Rise Horror — Daily Express, UK
Disaster in 15 Minutes — The Times, UK
How the Hell Could it Happen? — The Daily Mail, UK
Investigations turned up any number of safety issues with the building, mainly due to the fact that Grenfell had been built in 1974 — the same year The Towering Inferno was released — and was built to the building codes of the day: a lack of fire sprinklers that could have made quick work of the refrigerator fire that was the start of it all, to the building only having a means of egress from the upper floors via a single stairwell. Current building codes call for at least two means of egress, to address the case where one has been compromised. While these issues were raised and are important, one problem kept coming up and has persisted as the poster child for deadly fires everywhere: metal panels cladding the facade. Fire sprinklers and stairwells just don’t provide the same visual impact like a facade in flames. It did not take long until the other causes took a back seat to the evil metal panels, and like the fire itself, the word about the panels spread fast across the globe.
Three months after Grenfell, Combustible aired on the ABC News Australia program Four Corners. It picked up on the Grenfell ‘fear the metal panels’ thread and put an Australian spin on it by looking back at Australia’s own mini-Grenfell, the 2014 Lacrosse building fire in Melbourne. When Fire Brigade representatives and fire engineers were interviewed about Lacrosse and metal panel cladding on buildings in Australia, they responded by saying ‘we’ve never seen anything like it before’ and another incredulous ‘how the hell has this happened?’. Four Corners hit the jackpot with their Combustible episode, harnessing the harboured emotions from Grenfell, and inadvertently (or deliberately, more likely) spreading fear. If a spark had been ignited in Australia by the Grenfell fire, Four Corners fanned the flames.
Needing to act fast, shortly after Four Corners the Victorian Government provided a thoughtful and nuanced response to the furore by outright banning metal panel cladding of a certain type which is made with a combustible polyethylene sandwiched between aluminum. The Master Builders and the Property Council, two prominent industry associations, quickly came out in favour of the ban.
With the evil materials told to get out and not come back, the Government then covered the rest of the potential culprits by having the Planning Minister throw mud at the building industry as a whole for not self regulating and taking care of the issue itself, and also by publicly telling the Victorian Building Authority (VBA), the chief Victorian building industry regulator, to get its act together.
On the defensive from the boss’ scrutiny, the VBA pointed the finger at contractors and began directing them to replace cladding they had installed. Considering the government’s task force had identified up to 1400 buildings clad with evil metal panels, this was no small order. And considering these were buildings where the cladding was installed legally, had been inspected, and were provided Certificates of Occupancy, these directions were not going to go over well with the building industry.
The Liberals, not wanting to miss an opportunity to live up to their ‘Opposition’ label and feeling the need to say something, blamed Labor.
Contractor procurement practices were scrutinised, metal panel manufacturers were put under the microscope, and the role of building surveyors reconsidered.
And the fire spread. No one is immune.
Grenfell hit home in Australia, and particularly in Melbourne, because of the 2014 Lacrosse fire. Lacrosse did burn, and it was covered in metal panels, however that’s where the similarities to Grenfell end. Thankfully, no one died. Everyone got out. People live in the building to this day, and there are still metal panels adorning the facade. Why the difference?
The difference is that Lacrosse had fire safety systems that worked. Things like fire sprinklers, enough exits so people could evacuate, and fire-rated construction. Discussed but overshadowed once the panel beating started, was that Grenfell lacked these things, and this is what turned it from a Lacrosse where everyone got out, into a nightmare.
Amongst the hubbub, it was also overlooked just exactly what all the fear was related to — building fires and in particular combustible materials that make up our buildings and will potentially spontaneously combust and take everyone down with the building. Combustible means ‘able to catch fire and burn easily’. In the face of a building fire, a serious one which poses a high risk to occupants, maybe a better question is, what materials in our buildings are not combustible?
Fabrics? Synthetic materials, which make up stuff like carpet? Plastics, which are found in things like electrical wiring? Burn, baby, burn. That nice Swedish-ish furniture you’ve got? Flame on. Wood? Wood? I won’t patronise you.
‘Let’s just build everything out of steel and concrete!’, you might be saying. Well….
There’s an extraordinary hierarchy amongst the building codes of material testing and approval, fire engineering, building surveyor reviews, inspections, etc. etc. that are intended to address potential risks to construction and fire safety in general. Australia’s not perfect in this regard — the combustibility testing of the metal panels themselves has been questioned — however the systems in place are pretty robust and are part of the reason people are still barbecuing on their balconies at the Lacrosse building. Australia tries on the title of nanny state in any number of areas, with fire safety definitely being one of them:
So should we all be selling our mod apartments and moving into concrete bunkers? Not yet. Even the government’s not convinced anyone’s at risk: As a post script to the government task force’s announcement that they found 1400 buildings which ‘need immediate consideration’, they noted that all are safe to occupy. Which begs the question… why the hell are we stirring things up so vigorously?
If the aluminum panels with nasty petroleum-based flammable materials sandwiched inside are exponentially more combustible and dangerous than all other alternatives, by all means we should stop using them. Buildings are made up of a vast number of materials, however, some fairly combustible, some not, and they are woven together in a complicated tapestry such that zeroing in on a single product in an attempt to make buildings safer shows little understanding of how things are actually built. We’re never going to get to the point where none of the materials we use in construction will burn.
What we should be worried about was made abundantly clear by Grenfell. Not the evil metal panels, but buildings with antiquated fire safety systems and those with only one way out in the case of emergency. We need systems to check existing buildings and that they are safe beyond only whether or not there are metal panels on the outside.
We should be logical and proactive, rather than spreading fear, looking for scapegoats, and banning things.
The Towering Inferno concludes with a monologue by the architect of the building which went up in flames, and when asked what they should do with the building, he says: ‘I don’t know. Maybe they just oughta leave it the way it is. Kind of a shrine to all the bullshit in the world.’ This sounds like a good option for Grenfell, as long as every time we see it, we pay homage to the 71 residents who weren’t lucky enough to make it out.
And as long as the real issues with the building are understood and addressed so that it doesn’t happen again.
