Open fire doors do not slow down the spread of fires. A fire that's not controlled spreads. If it spreads into the stairwell you've cut people off. The stairwell has features that protect it to allow for protected escape of residents.
The advise to stay put implies it's a certain construction. That is it's compartmentalized such that the building is designed to contain the fire to as small a space as possible. One flat, one corner of the building, one floor, etc. It's one tactic with pro's and con's like any others.
It also implies that its fire protection is based on passive protection not active. Active is sprinklers and other features. Passive as I understand it is about containment of the fire in as controlled a way as possible. Things like no flammable materials in common spaces. Penetrations through walls such as pipes or cable runs have protection. That is things like intumescent surrounds that swell up with heat to close the penetration. Sleeves on pipes such that when the fire side pipe softens and falls, thus allowing fire to pass into the hole through the wall, the sleeve drops covering the hole with a fire resistant layer.
It's often the hidden parts of a building that has such penetrations and are a risk of fire spread. It looks like this could be true here with the gap behind the cladding being an issue. BTW it's possible the material choice isn't at fault. The gap can act as a chimney. This could increase the temperature and cause materials to burn strongly that might have lasted longer. This is very much hypothetical. We don't know any facts about what happened despite the speculation. It'll take a thorough investigation for that.
BTW an interesting interview on r4 as I was driving home. The expert was the fire adviser to the government prior to 2015. That's a very senior fire and rescue service officer who's been recruited to advise the government on matters of fire safety. Like the chief scientific officer for fire matters.
He did an initial investigation into the 2009 fire being referred to on here as evidence of this government being negligent, Tory scum
That investigation was to learn initial lessons ahead if the main inquiry so that any lessons needed to be learnt could be passed on to councils and authorities as quickly as possible.A lot of points were made in this interview. He admitted a lot of similarities but tellingly stopped short of saying sprinklers would have saved lives. He even said sprinklers aren't the best solution/option in these buildings. It depends on each building what is best.
If this expert (and others I've seen on tv) cannot condemn the lack of action on sprinklers then who am I to disagree. Who are you to disagree?
