4 ms·
Grenfell is what happens when building regulations are poorly enforced. In principle, each apartment in Grenfell should have been able to burn out completely w
by multjoy 3y ago
Grenfell is what happens when building regulations are poorly enforced.
In principle, each apartment in Grenfell should have been able to burn out completely while the neighbouring units were untouched, so there was no need for a second stair as any evacuation would have been limited to units adjacent rather than the entire population.
What actually happened is that years of neglect had seen firebreaks and bulkheads repeatedly compromised and then a load of flammable cladding added to the outside, because the building industry is basically rotten.
Had the same incident taken place when the building was first constructed, the damage would have been limited to the one apartment.
- Animats 3y agoWhich is why the article's call for "reform of defect liability laws that drive insurance costs up for condo developers" makes his whole position deeply suspicious.
- autoexec 3y agoExactly. If modern day advances make single-stair multifamily homes perfectly safe than there's zero reason to give condo developers a free pass for designs that are found to have led to families burning death.
- closeparen 3y agoEurope is a lot more sophisticated about both regulation and multi-family housing then we are, I’m not sure we should interpret North America’s quirks as advances. If they are advances, we might ask to what end: most building and planning code was created with the express purpose of engineering a suburban single-family detached homeowner-driver society, not to create safe or pleasant urbanism.
- eru 3y agoKeep in mind that Grenfell was the responsibility of the local council. It was not run by eg a multinational corporation, which usually have better management and a commercial reputation to defend (and deep pockets to go after in a law suit). Big business gets a lot of flak, but they are honestly better on average than small businesses and many local governments institutions.
- defrost 3y agoUnregulated | poorly enforced "big business" is no better and arguably worse. The crux appears to be adequate resources to enforce standards > a commercial reputation to defend (and deep pockets to go after in a law suit). Meanwhile, in "the real world" sufficiently large businesses are routinely silo'd into seperate sub companies and those that are associated with disaster, product liability, deaths, etc are often mysteriously bankrupt or with insufficient funds to meet penalties of pennies on the dollar.
- eru 3y agoIf you do that siloing, you don't benefit from reputation, yes.
- defrost 3y agoIt wasn't a question. If BigWellKnownCompany uses TLASubsidiary (Delaware) LLC to handle contracts then they are still BigWellKnownCompany with reputation and in the event of litagation the buck (generally) stops with the bankrupcy of TLASubsidiary (Delaware) LLC. There are exceptions (see, for example, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and it's failure to shield behind LTL Management) but it works in the real world often enough to be Standard Operating Procedure.
- eru 3y agoYes, reputation and legal liability are two different things. Either the subsidiary shares in the reputation, but then also passes on damages to the reputation. Or it ain't. The same is true for legal liability: if the parent company is legally liable for the subsidiaries debts, then the subsidiary can (all else being equal) borrow cheaper. If that chain is severed, the subsidiary borrows only as cheaply as a stand-alone small company, or perhaps even worse, because severing that liability also serves as a signal to potential creditors to better watch out for shenanigans. With a clever enough PR department (respectively legal department), you can try to have it both ways. But a sufficiently clever PR department can do anything.