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Parapet walls are a feature of London that I point out to tourists, explaining the context of 1666: https://www.locallocalhistory.co.uk/schools/preperation/fir
by Theodores 9y ago
Parapet walls are a feature of London that I point out to tourists, explaining the context of 1666:
https://www.locallocalhistory.co.uk/schools/preperation/fire-regs.htm https://www.locallocalhistory.co.uk/schools/preperation/fire...
350 years later we find that the lessons learned by our ancestors have been forgotten.
There is also the matter of the fridge/freezer, the alleged culprit. I am fairly sure that the fire brigade have got that right, you can trace a fire back to the start, much to the frustration of any arsonist! I am glad it was a fridge and not someone smoking or sitting around with candles. However, I am shocked at people's attitude towards leaving the house with appliances on. Washing machines are known to catch fire, as are tumble driers, but people don't care.
I did check the fridge freezer in question to see if it was one of the really stupidly designed ones that have all the gubbins at the bottom rather than the back. Sounds like it was a 'normal' design rather than one of the ones 'specifically designed to catch fire'.
The 'easy burn' fridge/freezer variants don't have the cooling metalwork at the back but at the bottom, with a fan to bring air in through a 4" or so high gap at the bottom of the fridge/freezer. What happens with this design is that the dirt and dust that collects on the floor in the kitchen gets sucked in, for the fans to get completely blocked with debris. If you pull off the plastic and get that dirt out it is like emptying the bag from a vacumn cleaner that nobody has emptied in months/years. Nobody thinks to clean out the bottom of these things so after a few years the whole thing gets replaced - warranty expired, too expensive to 'get the man out' to fix it.
Only if you are handy with a screwdriver and skint would you deduce and fix the problem yourself. By then the fuse has gone from the motor trying too hard to work so it is easy for the 'technically minded' to replace the fuse and be pleased that their ice cream isn't going to melt. To go to the next step and fix the problem that caused the fuseboard to trip (i.e. dust build up) doesn't happen, instead flipping the fuseboard on becomes just a routine thing you do.
I appreciate the action taken in light of Grenfell with Camden council evacuating the towers with the wrong cladding but I think more needs to be done on the fridge/freezer problem, particularly with flawed designs that really are 'built in obsolescence' due to the simple dust build up problem that people just do not know about.
- pja 9y ago> There is also the matter of the fridge/freezer, the alleged culprit. Not alleged: It’s known that this is how the fire started. The fire was called in by the resident of the flat when their fridge caught fire. The fire service came, put the fire out in the flat and exited the building. Only at that point did they discover that the fire had spread to the outer skin of the building & they had a major incident on their hands.