The Gray Monk: Tragedy in Newquay

August 20, 2007

Tragedy in Newquay

The fire on Friday night at the hotel in Newquay has, inevitably, raised a number of questions concerning the principal of "Integrated Risk Management Planning" or IRMP as it is known in Whitehall speak. It is slowly emerging that the fire cover in this area, whose normal population numbers some twenty thousand and rises to one hundred thousand during the holiday periods, has been cut back. Only one "pump" (the primary response unit of any UK Fire and Rescue Service) was able to respond immediately, a second was available but, thanks to the cut backs, could not be manned. Worse, the only high reach appliances in the protected area were bot out of commission - we don't know why - and the only available unit had to be sent from Plymouth some fifty miles away.

Now, to be fair, it must be said that the old system of a prescribed number of pumps to be available within a specified time for a series of risk categories was onerous and could be wasteful of resources, particularly in the larger cities where it often meant having duplication of resources within spitting distance of each other. In rural areas the picture has always been radically different - and Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service is a good example of a small rural service facing some difficult risks and terrain with minimal resources to begin with. Under IRMP the removal of the professionals from determination of the best way to provide the protection needed, by placing the political head - the Chairman of the Fire and Rescue Authority in overall charge - and by the use of a statistically based computer game to determine where your resources should be and what is required, has seen the available manpower and the equipment cut back below what most professional fire officers (Another term Whitehall has insisted be removed - everyone is now called a "Manager" to hide tha fact that many of the "new" "managers" know nothing at all about fire fighting) would consider either safe or adequate.

Yes, they eventuially mustered a hundred and twenty five fire fighters to fight the fire and twenty two pumps, but the critical time which determines whether the fire will be small or large is the first ten to twenty minutes. If it is not contained within the compartment of origin within that time, you have lost the war. Now it better also be explained that that first strike window is further narrowed by the fact that there is always a delay in first of all discovering the fire - much depends on the type of alarm system - and then in responding appropriately. Human instinct is always to try and deal with it first, only when it is already taking hold will the occupier think to call the fire services. Now enter a further "buggery factor". Thanks largely to the complete incompetence of most senior officers now in London, the fire service has become the focus of the "crew safety overrides all other considerations Brigade." Which means that the first strike against a fire may be delayed for up to twenty minutes before the officer in charge - and nowadays his crew are able to refuse to take orders if they disagree with them - may decide he has sufficient safety cover for an entry to be made. By that time there is little point in attempting an entry in most cases - the building is already a goner. And, anyone still inside it is a likely to be retreived eventually as charred flesh and bone.

I recently walked away from a circus performance in London that would have had the Keystone Cops in tears. The first pump arrived on the scene while the fire was still small and visible on the ground floor. The crew argued that they could not risk entry becauise there wasn't a second pump, which arrived, then a second argument ensued because there weren't enough "resources" on the ground. The fire meanwhile had spread internally and was now visible on the first floor. More resources arrived and the fire spread happily to the third floor and through the roof. Twenty five minutes after the first pump arrived the fire entered the adjoining properties through the roof and I walked away, sick to the stomach at what the service I had once been proud to be associated with has become. The sight of a fire fighter sporting dreadlocks and arguing with a senior officer was just too much for me. I hope the London Fire and Rescue Authority is sued for its back teeth!

One thing I am certain of is that already those responsible for this stripping of the fire and rescue services will be covering their tracks. You may be sure that the blame will be placed on the fire fighters or on the unwillingness of the service to "embrace new thinking" - a favourite Whitehall canard which conceals the fact that the fire and rescue service no longer has any professional guidance form Whitehall, all policy is now decided on cost and cost alone. The Fire and Rescue Authority in Cornwall will blame "Treasury Cuts" or "lack of government funding" for the parlous state of their service and any deficiencies uncovered during the investigation of this tragedy will be expunged from the report lest it embarass the "modernisers" and new non-professional Chief Officers.

None of which will bring back the lives lost or comfort those involved. And it will not change a thing in the "new" fire and rescue service which no longer enters buildings to fight a fire, nor is fire fighting its concern. The new regime is a major con trick, since the focus on health and safety, no risk fire fighting means simply that, if you have a fire in your home, the FRA does not expect its fire fighters to extinguish it, but to watch it burn. IRMP has reduced the fire protection provided by the Fire and Rescue Services, and it has allowed the politicians to spend money on glitzy and almost worthless projects aimed at "prevention". While I am a strong advocate of prevention I do believe it must be done professionally and not through comic books and showy demonstrations.

There is a second thing about this fire which should be called into question and that is the whole concpet of "Risk Appropriate Solutions" which allow the user to decide what protection is adequate - quite often without the slightest understanding of what they are actually dealing with. The FRA's are no better, several have dispensed with professional fire officers auditing this important work and engaged unqualified people as "Code Enforcers". In other words they believe that a building which "fits the book" is a fire proof. Nequay is a prime example of one that wasn't and there are thousands more around the country. For this regime to work, every hotel and every public building has to be sprinkler protected and there has to be a legal obligation on the water suppliers to maintain the pressure required for these to operate. For far too long the Wankers in Whitehall have resisted the requirement to fit sprinklers to these buildings and talked up the cost. It is time to fire the lot of them out of their cushy "no-blame" posts and expose their lies on this head - and their incompetence to "manage" anything.

If the politicians want to go down the route of a dumbed down, under equipped, non-professional fire and rescue service they have no choice. Sprinkler protection is an essential for every public building from here on in, schools, hospitals, hotels, shpoos and shopping centres are just the tip of the iceberg. Private homes should no longer be built without them either. The politicians, the civil servants and the "modernisers" in the FRS management have lied about fire and fire safety, now they stand exposed. Let us hope that this tragedy triggers another look at how the service is managed, staffed, regulated and organised.

But I won't be holding my breath - there haven't been enough deaths yet.

Posted by The Gray Monk at August 20, 2007 09:00 AM

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Comments

That is terrible!

I've always been a firm believer that the folks at the top of a chain of command in any emergency response oriented agency should be people who worked their way up from the bottom, not career denizens of the rear echelons who have no clue as to the realities on the front lines.

This should include those who prioritize budgetary issues, as they will always have a true grasp of what their allocations will mean in terms of getting the job done (in this case, bottom line, saving lives), while professional bean counters haven't a clue, they invariably view their function as pleasing their masters through "cost efficiency".

That said, I completely agree that the politicians above them should get the boot, preferably a solidly delivered size 14: Their lowballing the funding for the UK Fire & Rescue Service indicates where in the pecking order of their priorities one might find the lives and otherwise well-being of the same public whose taxes pay their high salaries. There is little doubt that much of the money they deny the fire departments goes to pork projects geared toward obtaining reelection votes (here in America, we are all too familiar with pork barrel earmarks).

If one of the responsible politicians' houses burned down around him and his family in the same circumstances as the fire you described in your post, you can bet that he would be foaming at the mouth as he hurled blame in every direction but his own.

As for the firefighters who were there, well, in that line of work one would figure that rather than complain about the lack of "ideal" circumstances, they would improvise in any way they could and take whatever risks were necessary to try and control the fire while getting people out of the building. Such jobs are more a calling than a case of sitting around, awaiting a pension.

The gentleman with the dreadlocks should have been suspended on the spot for insubordination and later fired, and his commander should have been at least demoted for lack of decisive leadership skills, if not canned as well.

During my hitch in the Coast Guard, some of the Search & Rescue ops in which I was involved (as a deckie, always right in the middle of the hands-on part of things) required jumping right in and getting the job done while putting fear of injury or worse on hold (yay, adrenaline!) -- the rescuees came first. A goatf**k like that which you describe would never have occurred.

I don't blame you for walking away in disgust.

Posted by: Seth at August 21, 2007 07:06 AM