My first thought when I heard about the incident was "send a helicopter winchman down", without thinking of the downdraught. I think the problem with having the helicopter higher is that the winch cable is then much longer so any movement in the helicopter or winchman being blown in the breeze/downdraught like a pendulum is going to be much greater so it will be much harder for the winchman to stay in exactly the right place as he is trying to "hit" the chimney to secure his line so he can "land" safely and jettison the line.
Interesting that when the cherry picker was brought in, its cage was round the opposite side of the chimney to the victim. I wonder if that was simply due to which side had access at the bottom, or whether there was another reason for approaching from that side.
To be more precise: taxes. Germany, like Japan, is a country that [still] has the quaint notion that what must come first in their society is the general well-being of that society.
Thanks to (was it Cursitor?) I have recently read what Thatcher said, verbatim, about there being "no such thing as society", and I understand a lot more about what she _meant_. Perhaps it was the indiscriminate application of Reaganomics, and the unstoppable, exponential growth of its worst aspects that has ruined our infrastructure.
"They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours."
As she wrote later: "My meaning, clear at the time but subsequently distorted beyond recognition, was that society was not an abstraction, separate from the men and women who composed it, but a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations."
Unless (as I mentioned upthread) you secure the bottom end of the line somewhere near the base of the chimney, lift the helicopter and slowly move so that the line comes close to the person in distress, and then send someone down to rescue them ? Negating the pendulum effect ?
At the end of the day, any technique used would have been a one-off and impossible to have exactly risk assessed beforehand.
Even typing this, I wonder if it might have been possible for a helicopter to have dropped one end of a cable - suitably weighted - into the chimney so rescuers could climb up the outside (taking note that the condition of the brickwork at the lip may not have been 100% ...)
No cos the outside was alight. To be honest I do feel the witch hunt for the Fire service here is a little unfair. Why? Well the advice to stay in your room is sound had it not been for extensive work done on the building which compromised the sealed unit approach. Remember no sprinklers and not many stairs, due to the age of the building. If there had been a stampede out people would have been trampled. I am not aware that the fire service were aware of the dire state of the modifications to the structure. If a criticism is needed its why the residents warnings about the problems for some years had not been passed on to the fire service who might have had more clout to get the issues fixed before the inevitable happened. It is as is so often the case easy with 2020 hindsight to be critical. Its not going to bring people back. The whole modification and fire approval of buildings scheme needs a rethink. Brian
Air-sea rescue helicopters operating out of Culdrose on the Lizard in Cornwall or Chivenor in North Devon, regularly winch a man down onto the heaving deck of vessels in distress or to recover a casualty, under the most horrendous conditions - gale force winds, mountainous seas and the boat plus rigging swaying around all over the place. Getting that man off the chimney would have been a doddle for them.
I read on BBC red button that he was hanging upside-down for much of the time. How'd he manage that, and what was he hanging by?
Yes, the main blame for the fire needs to be placed on the people that specified a flammable cladding and/or those who installed it - and it's quite possible that one thing was specified and a very different thing was actually installed.
The fire brigade advice of "stay put" was bad *in the circumstances*. I hadn't realised that there was no way to communicate with the residents (building-wide PA, two different fire alarm signals) to tell them to evacuate instead of staying put.
Hopefully lessons will be learned about:
- no flammable cladding
- better comms between fire-fighters on the ground and those making decisions that more junior on-the-ground officers were not authorised to take
- need for PA system or two-tone alarm to tell residents when to stay put and when to evacuate
- need for more than one staircase or else lifts that are immune to loss of building power (*), so evacuation and fire brigade use don't come into conflict
- need for fire brigade to be informed of any changes to a building (eg cladding) which may affect evacuation advice
If residents had been told to stay put in the event of a fire, I wonder whether there would have been any way to countermand that advice, even if the fire brigade had assessed the situation and officers had appreciated it and made the decision *immediately*. Even "immediately" might have been too late if there was no PA or coded alarm to tell people to evacuate, despite safety briefings to the contrary.
(*) As is common in very tall skyscrapers in the US: separate protected power supply to the lift motors that bypasses all RCD protection which could trip the normal building power in the event of water and electricity mixing.
He had somehow gone himself trapped and hanging by his leg. Quite easy to hook a leg through a ladder, to leave both arms free to work, though I appreciate he wasn't there to work.
Personally I'd not be happy for Cumbria Fire & Rescue spending that sort of money on an aerial platform that would essentially gather dust in a garage. Spending a tiny fraction of it finding out who has what "useful bits of kit" and maintaining a database of that information would be a far better value.
All the Air Ambulance services are charities and don't receive any on going government funding. 9 of the 18 have recently got a share of £10m one off funding for new and improved facilties.
Early enough maybe, making the huge assumptions about getting it in place on a large enough area for the outriggers. (IIRC access even for ordinary fire engines had been stuffed by local developments). But would it have stood the radiant heat once the side it was on started burning?
The planning and design of the refurbishment of Grenfell started in
2012 with the work done 2015-16. I think the Law changed in 2005 regarding who is the "responsible person" or, if they don't have the knowledge/skills required, "compentent person" required to draw up a fire risk assesment. Suffice to say the Fire and Rescue services don't do it but they do carry out inspections.
Clearly having pistols also helped some of the officers to subsequently write books about their experiences. Rather than do the decent thing and go down with their ship.
The difference with ships is that they're often already pitching about with people hanging on to things. Presumably in this case, from the ground they couldn't tell how precariously this chap was balanced, and the last thing thay wanted was for any down draft to be seen to have knocked him off. Assuming there was no strong wind I still think they would have got away with a longer rope just provided they were prepared for the rescuer to dangle long enough maybe up to 5 minutes for any pendulum effect to reduce - and obviously they didn't want him bashing into the chimney or anything. But I still think a bit of patience would have done the trick in the absence of any strong wind at least.
Evidently his leg was trapped against the chimney through a rung of the ladder. Quite possibly the circulation to that leg would have been serverly restricted but once the rescuer had got a roped harness round the top half of his body somehow, he could worry about that afterwards. Had this been visible from the ground or the helicopter then the rescuer could possibly have gone equipped with an angle grider or similar to subsequently cut through the rungs.
I somehow suspect that while rescuing the chap was the first priority, a second proiority which ran it pretty close was not to attempt anything if there was the slightest chance it was seen to knock him off the chimney.
If this was at the height of the Blitz nobody would bat an eyelid. But nowadays with "loved ones"demanding resignations, tabloid monstering, and compo chasing lawyers nobody would want to take the risk.
As I would have thought someone living down in Cornwall would know all the air sea rescue is now done by helicopters operated on behalf of the Coastguard by whoever has the contract at the time currently Bristows now a US company and another example of us giving up part of what we should control to foreign interests.
Chivenor can hardly be regulary winching a man down as the rescue helicopter left in 2015. The Navy ceased responsibility for rescue work at Culdrose in 2016 though Bristows do operate from there.
Bristows crews are recruited from the ranks of experienced former service crews and are still first class.
The helicopter that attempted the rescue was one of the Coastguard SAR machines manned by such people and if they thought the rescue was going to be a doddle they would have continued.
The one who survived saw as many off as possible till there were no boats left that could be launched, he didn?t leave on a boat and jumped into the sea as the ship went down. and later in life proved no coward in acts in WW1 , in WW2 rather than hand his own boat over to be used at Dunkirk he took it there himself.
I think that's a tad unfair. But ultimately if there are no guidelines to adhere to, it follows that anything attempted could be characterised as risky in hindsight. Arguably that is one purpose of guidelines ...
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.