A Plaque In Eldon Street
I saw this plaque in Eldon Street by Liverpool Street station today,as I made my way to football at Ipswich today.
A Plaque In Eldon Street
I assume it is one of a series, as there is a similar one in Sydney Street, in which the famous siege took place in 1911.
Are there any others?
They seem a good idea to me. Especially, if they make people think more about taking more precautions with fire!
Poundland Stops Sales Of Chinese Lanterns
Poundland should be congratulated on this move reported here on the BBC.
I must say, it’s about time especially after the big fire last week.
Should We Ban Chinese Lanterns?
The enormous fire at Smethwick, which appears to have been caused by a Chinese lantern, is getting the authorities to change their attitude to these devices.
We never had any problems on the stud, with Chinese lanterns, but I have read of farmers, who have. And Tim Farron, MP is calling for action, as is reported here.
My worry is that hooligans being hooligans, that after this fire, others might decide what a great way to have a bit of fun!
Perhaps an outright ban would be a bit harsh, but surely, we could insist on some form of insurance, for those who launch them!
It will be interesting to see, if the owners of the Smethwick site, can trace the person, who launched the errant lantern, whether they attempt some form of legal redress.
Londoners Don’t Seem Bothered About Fire Station Closures
I find this story about public meetings on the closure of fire stations rather interesting. Here’s a paragraph.
Londoners have been turning up in single figures to meetings on Boris Johnson’s fire station closure plans which are costing more than £100,000 to stage.
A single resident attended events in Newham, Brent and Harrow while just two turned up in Barking & Dagenham and four in the City of London. Mr Johnson plans to axe 12 fire stations, 18 engines and 520 jobs to save £45 million from the fire service budget.
You can take several view on this from two extremes.
If you are a die-hard supporter of cuts and would vote for Boris at all costs, you probably wouldn’t go.
But I suspect, that it’s more down to the fact, that we rarely see a serious incident. I have only seen one this year and that appeared to be a fire in an empty building, which perhaps half a dozen appliances attended.
If only a few attended some of these meeting, it would seem that they weren’t even picketed by fire-fighters and their families.
So I suspect, that Londoners in general, aren’t particularly worried about the plans.
Another Serious Problem In The Gulf
This story on the BBC’s web site, looks like a severe problem that is going to happen in the Gulf States.
It would appear no-one has died in these high-rise fires, but it strikes me after reading the article, that regulations and building materials aren’t what we would expect in Europe or North America.
A few years ago, I went to Dubai and the number of residential towers going up was amazing. But how many of them are fire traps?
We’ve had the some problems with tower blocks in this country, like the fire at Lakanal House in 2009, but hopefully we’ve not sed too much dangerous cladding. The only tower block, I’ve lived in was Cromwell Tower in the Barbican, which was built in concrete to a very high standard in the 1960s. You felt very safe in that building.
Typing “Barbican Fire” into Google, just gives you this relevant link and that’s about an event, where the City of London Fire Brigade and showing children how to be aware of fire.
My only quesion, is do fire brigades do enough of that sort of thing.
We Shouldn’t live Near Petrochemical Plants
In my three years at ICI in the late 1960s, I went over several chemical plants. I have heard so many stories about how supposedly safe plants have exploded killing numbers of people.
On one plant, I heard a tale of an instrument being installed to analyse the gases in a burner. The instrument found that the gases were in such a composition that they might explode. The plant manager immediately shut the plant down and they worked out a strategy to run the plant in a safe manner. They informed the European chemical company from whom they had licensed the design of the plant of what they had found and were politely told that it wasn’t possible to build an instrument that could measure the composition of the gases. A few months later, the European company’s plant buried itself in a hillside.
And then there was the Flixborough disaster in 1974. I had left ICI by that date, but I was in contact with some of my former colleagues and also some other chemical engineers. From somewhere I heard the rumour that one of the problems at Flixborough was that the plant had originally been designed in metric units and then to build it, these had been converted to Imperial. So when they bypassed a reactor, they got the calculations wrong.
Remember that ICI went fully metric in about 1955 for chemical plant design. Safety was one of the reasons they stated!
Now these all go to show, that no matter how careful you are, mistakes will get made. Mistakes you can’t afford to make, when dealing with dangerous chemicals.
Therefore every chemical or petrochemical plant should be assessed for danger and an appropriate exclusion zone declared around it, where no houses, offices or other dangerous plants are allowed.
It would appear that in the latest explosion in Texas, that there were houses too near to the plant that exploded.
It’s A Pig Of A Job, But Someone’s Got To Do It
I saw this story about a pig being used to train firefighters, in The Times, but it is also here in the Daily Mail.
I’m reminded of the time C and myself caught an escaped pony and Suffolk Police turned up as they had had reports of damage to flower beds being caused by the escapee. At the time, the police used Escort vans for local officers and we almost convinced him to put it in the back to take it to the station.
So perhaps, animal training is something that is now more common with the Fire and Police Services.
And We Think It’s Cold Here!
Just look at this video from Chicago on the BBC’s web site.
It makes you cold, to look at it.
Goats Cheese Closes Tunnel
This story from Norway, could almost be read as a classic spoof, like London bus found on the Moon from the Daily Sport. This is the first three paragraphs.
A road tunnel in Norway has been closed – by a lorry-load of burning cheese.
About 27 tonnes of caramelised brown goat cheese – a delicacy known as Brunost – caught light as it was being driven through the Brattli Tunnel at Tysfjord, northern Norway, last week.
The fire raged for five days and smouldering toxic gases were slowing the recovery operation, officials said.
I wonder if Waitrose stocks this cheese? Brunost sounds so dangerous, that it could be used as a substitute for Semtex.
The Shutting Of My Local Fire Station
My local fire station at Kingsland is slated to be closed. As can be expected there is now a vigorous campaign to save it.
In London, we’ve had closures of hospitals and A & E units, but here in this part of the capital, there doesn’t seem to have been a backlash against that. I have two large newly-rebuilt hospitals at the Royal London and UCLH, which are just a very simple journey away. And in the other direction there’s Homerton, of which I have one small good experience. Talking to local people, I’ve never heard a complaint about hospital healthcare in this area. So the reorganisation may have worked well, despite the partial closure of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, which we used to use, when we lived in the Barbican.
Obviously, there have been a few glitches, but now that GP surgeries are bigger and much more capable, I don’t think that anybody is saying that the changes have not been positive. The planning of the changes obviously used all of the data to get the balance right.
The coverage and number of stations of the London Fire Brigade has probably changed little since I used to live in North London as a child.
These days though, you rarely see a fire engine. I think I can remember just one or two since I moved here two years ago. I’d love to see the data for how many call-outs there have been in London over the years. I suspect that the pattern has changed dramatically with more serious fires in high buildings and road accidents. After all high buildings and badly driven high-performance cars have become more common.
So does the London Fire Brigade fit the threats it faces?
I suspect not, as too much it is based on an historic map, when house and generally small fires were a lot more numerous. But now that many more houses and premises have smoke detection systems, the tragic domestic fires have been reduced. We still get them I know, but isn’t it about time, that premises had to have a fire inspection, every few years or so.
The trouble is that the man on the Dalston Omnibus, doesn’t generally believe what politicians tell them. So we get a stand off, which in the end doesn’t change anything.
The full data from all of the London Fire Brigade should be published, to see where the service needs to be changed. some of the decisions prompted by the data, will be unpalatable to some, but what we want is a better fire Service, not one designed on London’s structure of many years ago.
I doubt we’ll see the data made available, as it might point to a different decision.
The Anonymous Widower 