Grenfell Tower

• I’VE lived on the ninth floor of a 10-storey, 80-flat, purpose-built block for more than 20 years. There are no sprinklers, no communal fire alarms and I’m sure the flats’ “compartmentalisation” has been compromised by various refurbishment works.

The original ventilation ducts are communal so could spread fire. Some fire doors are broken or permanently wedged open. What are meant to be internal-flat fire doors are not, and are hollow. There is also no emergency lighting.

I’ve always been frightened of fire in this block. A visiting fire safety officer once told me that if there were ever a fire between me and the front door, my only option was to stay put and wait – but he said fire engine ladders don’t go further than the fifth floor. Do many people know this?

So if you’re in any mid-rise or high-rise and the central stairwell is too full of smoke to get down and you’re above the fifth floor, your only option is really to jump or wait – and we’ve seen what happens when you do that.

There’s no tenants’ and residents’ association on this estate. It dissolved because of apathy sadly. People don’t – or can’t – know who to speak out to.

The day of Grenfell, I told our ward Labour councillors about how our block is a fire risk but they assured me, as has the leader of Islington Council in a round robin email, that they are “confident that in Islington we have good and robust management of our
housing, including tower blocks”. I don’t feel confident.

The council is saying it is still safer to “stay put” in its letter on Friday, although further advice is confusing. It’s also saying that “All tower blocks in Islington are hardwired with fire detection alarms in all estate dwellings”. Does this simply mean domestic fire alarms in individual flats? That’s all we have here in our block and possibly many other blocks.

But if you’re at the top of a block, by the time your domestic alarm goes off in a major fire it will be too late to escape. It’s not the same as a communal alarm that rings loudly through the building. And who is maintaining or checking alarms and fire safety of leaseholders? Worries about anti-social behaviour and kids setting off alarms surely outweigh this potential threat to life?

All that has happened in our block since the Lakanal fire is cleaning out some cupboards, installation of resident fire-front doors and some stickers. This is not enough.

My worry is that the council does the bare minimum according to possibly flawed regulations, and also that the main definition of high-rise is 11 storeys and higher. What if, like me, you are in a 10-storey block? No sprinklers? No fire precautions because you’re not officially a high-rise?

Sprinklers only cost £200K. I think communal sprinklers should be mandatory in both mid- and high-rises, especially where the compartmentalisation of flats has been compromised by original design faults or refurbishment.

Islington Council leader Richard Watts has said there is £38million in the pipeline for fire safety improvements. This is good news. I hope that rather than just concentrating on auditing tower blocks with cladding similar to Grenfell, as it has said, the council reviews all mid- and high-rises and uses this money to proactively install relatively cheap sprinkler and communal alarm systems at the very least to show it really cares for its residents’ safety and to reassure them.

It is easy for authorities to say sprinklers are not always appropriate but, as the Fire Brigades Union has reportedly said, no one in this country has ever died in a building with sprinklers. Wet and dry risers are no good if fire officers can’t get to them. Isn’t it about time we rewarded our fire service by investing in more state-of-the-art technology and machinery so they can go beyond the fifth floor?

If I feel like this on the ninth floor, I can’t imagine how residents in the tall tower blocks with cladding will feel. If councils are telling you you are safe when you don’t believe you are, who will listen?

S PATEL
Islington resident