Well There's Your Problem | Episode 9: Grenfell Tower Fire

[@maxnewts]

Update almost five years later: still no justice for the people affected and still no building code reform to prevent any stupid fires

[@jellybeansi]

That's precisely what happens when human beings lose sight of their humanity and only care about manmade things like money or social power... It's horrible.

[@maxnewts]

@@jellybeansi I know, if only we didn’t have sponge brains in Whitehall, this wouldn’t have even happened in the first place

[@DistractedGlobeGuy]

@@jellybeansi humanity is precisely the problem here: individuals looking out for themselves at whatever cost, and fuck everybody else. In the words of a neoliberal, "you don't see [other animals] fucking each-other over for a goddamn percentage."

[@Ticklestein]

How weird, wasn’t labor running the city ever since? Apparently we need to vote them to prevent things. Or something.

[@marcuswalters8093]

6 now. I also just realised that they covered the tower in that stupid wrap for the same reason they did the cladding in the first place, so the posh kids don't have to look at the results of inadequate social housing.

[@sunyavadin]

My tower's had several fires in the last 20 years I've lived here. Not one has spread beyond the kitchen of the flat it happened in. Everyone followed the stay put advice, to provide firefighters with clear paths into the building to get to the fire. The fire doors kept fire and smoke from spreading. The fires were put out. This is the best possible advice *until you wrap the entire exterior of the building in flammable material and don't tell anybody* - at which point all the internal barriers which keep fires from spreading become worthless as the fire rockets up the exterior to every single flat. I'm very glad for the nice, old fashioned brick exterior of my building. A few months after Grenfell I did notice that the freshly erected student flats down the road from mine suddenly had scaffolding up on the exterior, and all the cladding was being stripped. So that was reassuring...

[@sunyavadin]

I was at my partner's flat in Manchester when the Joiner Street fire broke out a couple of streets away, six months after Grenfell, and that was tackled far easier without fatalities and only one person hospitalised (which was a double relief due to friends posting images on social media from *inside the building* at the time), because even with the wooden balconies of those units allowing the spread, it was at nowhere near the kind of rate that cladding would have allowed, and was possible to be put out.

[@ILikedGooglePlus]

Mate I lived in a new student block of flats when Grenfell happened, or I moved in just after. Almost 30 floors. And after Grenfell, it was revealed that the building had used the same flammable cladding as Grenfell. Took 9 months of scaffolding while they took it down

[@deadmeat1471]

That sounds fucking horrifying. Being told to stay put while its on fire........

[@jaredbowhay-pringle1460]

@@ILikedGooglePlus The residential building in the UK with the greatest number of floors at the time of the Grenfell fire was St George Wharf Tower, with 52.

[@ILikedGooglePlus]

@@jaredbowhay-pringle1460 You're right, my building was nowhere near 100 floors. No idea why I said 100, don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I meant 100 rooms (even though there's like 500 I think), or maybe I meant that it felt like 100 floors. Maybe I was just drunk when I wrote it. But yeah, it was about 25 floors Edit: The rest of my story was true though, lived in it covered in scaffolding while they replaced the cladding because of Grenfell

[@Cyarrick1]

One of the really wonderful things about firefighters, is that in that video, one of the first things they say is, "how are we going to get into that," basically "How can we brave certain death to save people." Firefighters=the very best

[@Ealsante]

ACAB, but AFRAA (All first responders are awesome)

[@cherylm2C6671]

Emergency and first responder safety should also be a consideration in any building. This district that had had only low-story water infrastructure. The worst happened. By requiring residents to shelter in place during a fire emergency, the so called instruction for safety attempted to shift bodily injury liability onto public by way of the fire department and the counsel district. It also exposed first responders to incredibly needless personal hazard- to save lives- to go into a burning, volatiles-clad high rise building and check-and-rescue every single occupant (whose obedience to the rules meant that they may not have been able to respond) right up to the top floor, with only the wee hoses at their backs.

[@Bluecho4]

My understanding of Fire Fighters is that it's one of the only government professions that is staffed exclusively by people motivated by Altruism. There's little power in being a fire-fighter. It's not like the police, where you get to push people around or kill with impunity. If you're part of the fire department administration, you're not getting much political power. If you're in the business of fighting fires, it's because you want to help people. And you have to want it enough to run into a burning building. Fire Fighters are far more brave, upstanding, and necessary than any police officer.

[@DistractedGlobeGuy]

And they didn't even shoot their dogs for barking. Fuckin' dirty godless reds should be hanged!

[@Praisethesunson]

​@@cherylm2C6671Look on the bright side. The cost savings from those ghoulish decisions paid for at least 2 weekends of party cocaine for the owners.

[@haurvajan]

wrt the ramadan mentions... honestly i think ramadan's the only reason the death toll wasn't higher. the guy whose fridge caught fire wasn't fully asleep, managed to get his family up and evacuated, had the fire brigade on the line almost instantly, and was already hauling ass evacuating fellow residents, knowing the fire brigade would need the path up to the fire cleared. he's an absolute hero who did everything in his power to save people, running back into a burning building even after his family was safe in an attempt to protect his neighbors. normally when you're tired and hungry is when you're at your worst. if this is the man at his worst, we don't deserve him at his best

[@camipco]

Local Muslim community organizations also did amazing work sheltering residents of all faiths in the aftermath.

[@NamelessMoreOne]

It's kind of impressive on how much more of a moral guidance this podcast has been to the way I work. Far more than the mandated "Ethics in Engineering" which was just spewing quotes from whoever... This really goes to show real consequences. Not legal consequences, not social consequences, just how much "closing your eyes" to reckless efficiency can make you completely blind. It specially amazes me on the decision with the cladding. I've seen similar decisions being made when deciding what's to happen in the construction site. "Oh, the incombustible version isn't readily available, we can install this one right away", "oh, I'll have to get it from 900 km away from here, it's going to drive price up too much"... Even during planning, sometimes I'm better off not mentioning the cheaper alternative that could be used if construction was adapted to it, because the adaptations never happen. The responsibility of those decisions, stopped by such a simple act beforehand, it's really heavy. I have to remind myself that, every time these disasters happened, there was a lot else going on besides that. A whole lot else, and a whole lot of "it's working fine here, why would you worry?". But it's scary, either way.

[@MyKharli]

I do not believe anyone was blind , just hopeful .

[@deeznoots6241]

peter lewis knowing the tories they were hopeful that it would burn down

[@HarryS77]

Don't know if you've kept up with the story, but newly released internal emails paint an even worse picture. >In one email produced at the inquiry, a senior executive at Arconic, which made Grenfell’s polyethylene (PE) core cladding panels, told colleagues that a shortfall in the product’s fire performance was “something that we have to keep as VERY CONFIDENTIAL!!!!”. In another, he admitted PE panels would spread fire “over the entire height” of a tower. And Celotex, which made most of the plastic foam insulation, produced a “chilling” internal presentation in 2014 that announced it would be able to market its combustible product partly because “nobody understood the test requirements”, the inquiry heard. amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/09/grenfell-tower-suppliers-knew-their-cladding-would-burn-inquiry-told?__twitter_impression=true

[@frank6842]

As a journalism student, this podcast has help put things into perspective. Will definitely change the way I think.

[@adamflyshotmail]

You can hear the frustration mounting in those firefighters as they realize that this isnt a normal out of control fire. But a fire that is SO out of control that it can only be the result of negligent builders.

[@Summer-it3wh]

Ronan point came down because the lady who lived in the flat brought her ancient old gas cooker with her when she moved in (because gas cookers were expensive and electric ones even moreso to run) It set off a gas explosion that blew her out of the kitchen into the living room, largely unhurt! Unfortunately the pressure managed to blow the concrete panel that was the outer wall of her kitchen, clear off the side of the building. As the LPS buildings were reliant on the concrete panels to hold up the floors above, this caused several floors above to pancake down on top of the ones below. Fortunately as this happened because the lady was up early to make a cup of tea, most people weren't in their kitchens at the time. This shouldn't, in theory, have been able to happen, as the LPS was rated for far higher pressure than this. The reason this happened is because the large panels were often a bit shoddily made, and the bolt holes that the construction crews were supposed to use to bolt the panels together didn't line up properly (ease of construction with relatively unskilled labour was the main point of the LPS after all) and so, it turned out, that if the holes didn't line up, the crews often just didn't bother with the bolts. So it turned out her kitchen wall which was the main load bearing member for that side of the building was essentially press fit into the panels around it. Upon inspection, quite a few buildings in the area using the large panel system were found to be missing a lot of bolts and basically held together with dreams and gumption. E: Oh and vote labour obviously. And trans rights too.

[@JamesJacksonRaveneyes]

"held together with dreams and gumption" isn't that all lowest bidder construction?

[@blue9multimediagroup]

And they filled in the gaps with newspapers

[@Snugggg]

they wanted to do a controlled implosion demolition but after it was found the building was swaying 15cm they decided to forensically dismantle it and inspect the joins.

[@postoctobrist]

one thing I wanted to add but forgot to: when I mentioned Lancaster West being called 'the forgotten estate', one of the things I meant by that is that it wasn't a 'failed' project, a distinction Justin gets into in his social housing video. yeah it struggled with crime through the 90s, but by no means was it a particularly rough area by reputation or data when the fire happened. part of the tragedy is that it was successful enough, despite decades of cuts, that it was easy for policymakers just to overlook, because even the racist and shitty understanding of what an area in crisis looks like didn't apply

[@kommo1]

So a classic: Everything is fine, until suddenly it isnt.

[@postoctobrist]

@Oliver Eales yes

[@siblinganon66]

@@postoctobrist ... 3:05 seriously? Good social reformer with a big, bushy mustache. Born in Germany, moved to London in 1849. Buried in 1883 in Highgate cemetery. Doesn't ring a bell?

[@OH-pc5jx]

But Alice, investing any money, time, or interest in people who aren’t literally mid crisis or making huge amounts of money isn’t running your city like a business!

[@justinokraski3796]

@@OH-pc5jx it's a shame how much companies react to things rather than plan for things

[@MrPink125]

As someone who was the son of a secondary school teacher in the UK, academisation is basically a way to destroy the last bastion of the left-wing. These academies target union members immediately, and destroy any sort of union presence in the workplace. They run classrooms like prisons, and overwork and bully staff. My mum, who is a union representative, was disciplined for allowing a student to use the bathroom during her class. These companies are run by authoritarian capitalists with close ties to the Tory party. It is a deeply political measure, and it has a drastic effect on what children learn. These academies are hostile to critical thinking, and any course that does not tie into the economy.

[@ianhomerpura8937]

They're now doing this in developing countries as well, like now here in the Philippines, the Vice President - who is also Education Secretary - ordered all schools to name teachers who are members of the left-wing Alliance of Concerned Teachers.

[@raycearcher5794]

Concrete is very hard to set on fire, but if you wrap it in stuff that's very EASY to set on fire, you can work around it. Engineering!

[@Vanq22114]

Humans never fail to come up with ingenious ways to set shit on fire

[@at_omic8578]

@@Vanq22114 seriously, tell someone theres a new and unique way to set shit on fire and i guarantee theyll find a way to incorporate it into a building within the year

[@zao7035]

Building codes in Britain does require sprinklers, but it is only mandatory for new buildings built after 2007. And therefore, to this very day, 99% of all council towers have neither sprinklers nor evacuation alerts. "Not practical or economical," said the politicians.

[@ianhomerpura8937]

This is why in Singapore the government demolishes 50 year old HDB redevelopments and build brand new ones in their place.

[@JoshSweetvale]

Why invest in the surplus population?

[@Anonarchist]

why do "right to [blank]" policies invariably mean "no rights for you"?

[@darthbob88]

When conservatives talk about "right to [blank]", they mean removing *legal* obstacles to [blank]. Any *economic* hurdles you may face are for the market to deal with at its convenience, if ever. Plus the general conservative opposition to guaranteed access to anything.

[@a.p.2356]

@@darthbob88 sometimes it's just straight up doublespeak, like "right to work" legislation in the US. It literally means "right for employers to just fire you for any reason."

[@user-wt2dz5bx5m]

@A. P. You're thinking of "at-will" employment. "Right to Work" is sold to us by saying it gives workers the "freedom" to choose where you work regardless of union contracts; i.e. you can work somewhere contracted with a union without having to join or pay their dues. This reduces the power of collective bargaining and basically just makes it easier for business owners to pay lower wages and give worse healthcare.

[@MichaelClarkeWhittet]

right to go f*ck yourself

[@vienlacrose]

because people nowadays are too afraid of their legislators to dare beat the shared consensus of how to read Websters' Dictionary into their heads.

[@cobetco]

donoteat: "i'm a train simulator guy" me playing playing train sim while listening to the podcast "there are others?"

[@Critical_Hit]

Cob there are dozens of us, dozens!

[@BewegteBilderrahmen]

he made a model or two for a train simulator as a commission, check his videos, he goes into his usual details!

[@puppable]

train simulations good, car simulations bad

[@Huntracony]

@@puppable Truck simulator good, truck bad

[@ScotSteam47]

Does TRS2019 count? haha

[@TrogdorBurnin8or]

In the Old Country (take your pick), pigs were garbage disposals. You didn't waste food, ever, you just fed your pig whatever fresh foods you didn't want, whatever scraps were left in your butchery, whatever vegetables or fruits in your garden got over-ripe. There was a lot of variability to agriculture, which left a lot of extra in the good years, if you wanted to ensure enough in the bad years. If food ever got too scarce, you slaughtered the hog. The Flintstones takes a nod at the concept, but that's really pretty close to what it was like (and still is like, in places like rural China).

[@Amadeus_Phoenix]

The fire codes are pretty bad... But it definitely doesn't help when they're completely ignored anyway.

[@chaosof99]

I am from austria, and while I heard of the Grenfell tower fire, that a big cause being the wrong cladding, and the issue with Corbyn asking for people being rehoused in available space, I never really fully grasped the entire breath of the issue and how utterly preventable it seems. Like the firefighter here in the comments said, this was an oil lined chimney that they installed around the building. But worse than that, it was an oil lined chimney, that spewed cyanide gas and actively prevented attempts to combat the fire. Just absolutely horrifying. As for the political dimension: Fuck political conservatives and fuck the Tories in particular. We here in austria have our own issues with contemptible right-wingers, but the Tories seem even a class of their own in that regard. Anyhow, you guys are doing a great show. As always, I'll ask for an episode on the Boston Molasses Flood. However, in relation to this episode I'd also ask for an episode on the Hindenburgh disaster and the story that goes alongside it of how it was supposedly painted with gasoline. It could also be explored how that disaster lead to the demise of the airship as a commercial mode of transport.

[@MARKSTRINGFELLOW1]

Our fridges do not have big metal plates on the back(UK)

[@MrMoustaffa]

This was a good episode. Lots of goofing around and jokes, but you got serious when it came to actually talking about the incident itself. I think you summed it up well by talking about the firefighter laughing when seeing the block on fire. Some of these disasters are so horrible, catastrophic, and absolutely avoidable that the only way to process it is to laugh at the sheer ridiculous nature of it. It feels like a fever dream, that it couldn't possibly be real. In a way I feel like that's why the humor for this podcast is so important. If you didn't have that humor you guys would be wanting to jump off a building 5 episodes in, provided the guy who had it built didn't cut a corner on the elevator contract and it broke down on you plummeting you to your death ahead of schedule. Keep up the good work guys

[@BorrieBeats]

on the firefighter footage. you just can tell how much worse it is the closer they get. at the absurdity, he laughs.....the mood though & the palpable disbelief when they go over the westway is just a mixture of silence and the urge to say something.

[@LunaRose1312]

Hearing the disbelief from the fire fighters will live with me forever, I remember seeing it all in the moments following and I cried, not something I do often, grenfell broke the heart of the country, another cover-up

[@carterroane1034]

I'm planning on becoming a firefighter after college and this has made me only more determined.

[@cfredrics]

Thank you for your service

[@wabicajo]

All I can think of is the Monty Python sketch where John Cleese designs a slaughter house instead of an apartment building. Boris Johnson would probably go for something like that. Vote labour!

[@ewetoo]

"Oh i hadn't gauged your attitude to the tenants." and then they literally go for the guy whose apartment model catches fire.

[@ericjamieson]

That Monty Python sketch is based on the Ronan Point disaster that they talk about in the video.

[@rachelp2520]

There was nearly another Grenfell in North West UK but it's fine because it wasn't the same highly flammable cladding, it was a DIFFERENT highly flammable cladding! But don't worry guys! It wasn't a high-rise building, it was a couple inches below the limit that requires it to be classified as a high-rise, so the orders to the 220 students were to evacuate rather than shelter in place. Just don't mention the enormous void that travelled the height of the building, or the 2 stories of timber frame construction (which went up like firewood) that was added on top of the concrete construction when they turned it from offices into student accommodation. Or the daily alarms that meant that if the fire had started at midnight rather than 9pm, the students would have ignored it and stayed in bed. Nope. It's all fine. VOTE LABOUR. PLEASE.

[@rossmum]

Sounds very much like some of the new student accommodation at the university I briefly worked at. Lots of cladding, very little in the way of fire stairs, false alarms almost daily, and oh! Let's not forget that those flats with balconies had expanded mesh screening around the balconies for "safety", so there was no way in or out of the upper floors aside from the internal stairwells.

[@toomanythings]

I found you guys this week, and love your content. This was a tough one; I happened to be awake that whole night here in TN due to scheduling, and went to SKY news live here on YT early on and was horrified. I couldn't turn it off and was up long after sunup, mourning for people I'd never known and now I never would. Tonight I'd been crying over 19 children shot in Texas, then I saw this and felt the horror all over again. It's tough to be compassionate, but I'd much rather be someone who feels than to be a politician who doesn't. To you, to everyone, and especially the guy down below who doesn't understand that politics is personal, thank you for your stance and being so open about it.

[@sparkpenguin]

i wish there were a transcript of (mostly) Alice's poignant neoliberalism rant which starts at around 1:22:40. the part with everyone chiming in about how shit all burns the same.... *kisses fingertips* that was powerful. we don't see too many prime examples of violence on the poor concentrated this way, and we have a duty not to let this become normal. this is barbarism. you indeed nailed it.

[@mpf1947]

You joked about R134, but the refrigerator in question was cooled by an even more questionable refrigerant: R290 (propane).

[@postoctobrist]

R290 and R290 accessories

[@abandonedchannel281]

F

[@vylbird8014]

The history of refrigeration is a history of 'Why did we ever think this was a good idea?' First we have the toxic refrigerant ammonia, so that keeps killing people so we replace it. With the explosive refrigerants like propane. But then fridges keep exploding. So out with that, in with CFCs. Not toxic, not explosive, perfect! Until we realise they are so potent at trashing ozone that even releasing tiny amounts will give the southern hemisphere skin cancer. So out with those, in with HFCs. Which are mostly safe. But expensive. So given half a chance, manufacturers will use anything else they can get away with.

[@Houseckat]

@@vylbird8014 We haven't even gotten rid of Ammonia. It's still used in industrial applications like coldstore warehouses and logistics refrigeration units.

[@chris_d]

@@vylbird8014 I've actually heard about a potential (environmental) comeback of ammonia! www.climatefriendlysupermarkets.org/technology-adoption

[@CODMarioWarfare]

"You have a core, made of _polyethylene_ ..." Oh God, such synthetic orgo chem names immediately bring to mind The Station Nightclub Fire

[@CODMarioWarfare]

Also, I thought that polyethylene smoke had cyanide in it as well

[@heartache5742]

polyethylene was named by chemistry people it's a chain of ethyl-something molecules joined together i don't remember my organic chemistry

[@AnonYMooseBoG]

@@heartache5742 Yeah, its basically just a long-ass carbohydrate chain with 2 hydrogen to every 1 carbon.

[@rainbowraver666]

@@AnonYMooseBoG found the biologist ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[@JoshSweetvale]

Ethyl means reactive. Poly means many.

[@deeznoots6241]

Dear god Ronan Point, you definitely need to cover it independently of Grenfell because it was essentially a giant Jenga tower barely standing up

[@Reddsoldier]

Jenga! Postmodern edition.

[@nonegiven2830]

kinda, It's more that as long as all the forces were going downwards, everything was fine and there wouldn't be any issues. It was the explosion pushing the floors apart enough to bump past the pegs and push the walls out. They went back and anchored the floors together with bolts after the fact

[@River_StGrey]

Wealth disparity in housing like that isn't very uncommon in America, we just tend to build shit horizontally and then gate off the rich people from the poor people and put up vines on trellises.

[@mathewkelly9968]

Lol that's hilarious the US is the capital of disparity

[@grmpEqweer]

Bigger country, more cars, less vertical storage of the poors.

[@FayeVert]

At least in America we require all apartment buildings to have two stairwells, for JUST this reason.

[@CrimVulgar]

I used to take the Hammersmith and City line to work when Grenfell happened, so my train went through Latimer Road station directly adjacent to the estate at like 7:30am, but I didn't actually see that anything was happening until I got to work and looked out the office window at the huge volumes of smoke. I didn't actually know about the degree of loss of life until later in the day. Grenfell had basically nothing to do with me personally, but it's really fucked me up over time, and it's a major contributor to me wanting to not live in a major city anymore. The complete lack of connection to the people I share the place with seems endemic to London and the UK cities in general. Naturally, I blame neoliberalism. Vote however the fuck you can to fuck up the Tories, but if there's any doubt about who that vote would best serve, vote Labour.

[@bussesandtrains1218]

greens Greens! GREEEEENS!!!!!!!!

[@CowMaster9001]

Weird In our country, the huge cities tend to be solidly Democrat. Is that not the case with London etc?

[@pennyforyourthots]

​@@CowMaster9001 because of the way the UK's political system works, despite the Tories and labour being the two biggest parties, the other parties are still somewhat able to take power in government through things like coalition's, so you have a lot of smaller specialized parties. Major cities probably are still generally more progressive, but the party Dynamics are a bit different I imagine. Because the US basically just has the two big ones, a "Democratic city" can mean anything from a 1980s Democrat whose basically a moderate Republican, to a progressive socdem. It's not necessarily a useful indicator of political affiliation. Also worth noting that the cities are disproportionately under-represented in national elections just because of the way the electoral college works, and gerrymandering at the state level often means they don't contribute as much as they should to state-level elections, so the whole system doesn't really map onto the UK.

[@ThisGuyAd.]

So glad you did this video. It breaks my heart what my country of birth has become. I'm so glad I left. This incident is the ultimate example of how the tory cheapskate ideology can kill. Vote Tory in this election and the blood of the victims of the next Grenfellesque disaster will be on your hands.

[@ThisGuyAd.]

How so@@CowMaster9001 ?

[@CowMaster9001]

@@ThisGuyAd. His EngSoc is just as anti-semitic as the Nazis were when they had as little power and respect as Corbyn does now.

[@mystichawk1612]

This is probably one of the saddest videos I have seen along with your comments. Coming from a building background with family in fire fighting just hearing one stairwell gave me chills. Then when you got into the details I was appalled at this preventable tragedy and the incredible social injustice of the whole bloody thing.

[@FayeVert]

I cannot comprehend people who seriously believe that single stair is a good thing and should be allowed in modern building codes.

[@morganalabeille5004]

Man, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory episode is going to be brutal

[@Jujudocine]

As a south american, important timestamps: 0:00:10 - well there's your problem 0:01:58 - the history of social housing in the united kingdom 0:03:35 - introductions and pronoun checks 0:05:29 - social housing in the united kingdom 0:14:33 - TOWER BLOCKS! 0:16:00 - every architect is a piece of shit 0:16:39 - british fire code is shit 0:24:21 - tennants management organization 0:29:30 - french ambulance 0:30:27 - grendfell action group 0:44:13 - the cladding 0:51:37 - the start of the fire 0:53:59 - the thing about modern forniture 0:59:18 - fuck the libdems 01:18:58 - ayo tony

[@romulusnuma116]

"Magic is made out of Oli" is the best quote from this podcast

[@splicerparade4648]

Love this podcast but I literally had to brace myself to watch this one. I think Alice was right when she said everyone was traumatised by Grenfell to some extent. I'm going to vote for Labour, but I'm sure my area is going to go Tory as usual, and the idea that the rest of the country might go Tory too is terrifying. I wouldn't be alive right now without the NHS and social welfare programmes. Christ I hope Labour gets in.

[@Calpsotoma]

What kinda dork shows up to this podcast and is like "why are you making this political"?

[@Reddsoldier]

Some neet whose sad that their ideology murders thousands of people both indirectly and directly.

[@uristboatmurdered6051]

@@Reddsoldier Don't think that's the part they're sad about. It's that other people are calling them out on it.

[@Reddsoldier]

@@uristboatmurdered6051 Fuckin' snowflake conservatives better grow a pair tbh.

[@Brooklyn-Manhattan]

@@Reddsoldier That's ableist. * starts laughing at my own joke * "You see, it's funny because..." * Dies *

[@MrAlex_Raven]

To be fair, they're literally begging for it in some podcast episodes.

[@ATLevi-qw2su]

42:30 *Star Trek Discovery s1 spoilers* my headcannon is that Lorca didn't read up on non-mirror earth history, so in his fascist universe Musk was like a famous dictator or smth and he just zoned out and didn't realise he was talking to normal timeline people.

[@drewgehringer7813]

Unfortunately in season 2 we find out Tilly attended Elon Musk High School, so the main timeline liked him at some point too

[@TalesOfWar]

@@drewgehringer7813 More reasons to dislike Kurtzman Trek.

[@JazzBoat_]

on Alice talking about people waking up the morning after; I had a school trip to London Zoo that morning and you could see the plume of smoke for miles upon miles and this dark husk just on the horizon of the tower itself. Unsettling to say the least, and this was before most of the news had come in. It was weird to see it in the morning and just think it was just a fire and to then know later how bad it was.

[@Zizzily]

"In the United States, we have fire codes that work. Most of the time." Station nightclub fire would like to have a word.

[@dynamicworlds1]

Hearing another developed nation compared to the US as having worse safety regulations makes me concerned.

[@rebeccatrishel]

The nightclub wasn't to code

[@Zizzily]

@@rebeccatrishel There were violations, yes but it had been inspected by the fire department multiple times, were cited but never made to fix anything, the inspectors missed the wrong type of foam in use, and didn't realize the building needed fire sprinklers. Grenfell Tower wasn't to code either. Good code vs. enforcement to make the code actually work are two different things.

[@rebeccatrishel]

@@Zizzily The biggest issue with the club was that they weren't supposed to be using pyrotechnics, I'd say.

[@mcamp9445]

Thus most of the time

[@LordSandwichII]

I have to say that I love the way this podcast is named. To me, it conjures up an image of a conceited investigator holding up a piece of wreckage, loudly and knowingly declaring to everybody else "well there's your problem!", as if one lone thing is the cause of a disaster, rather than a complex web of societal, political, and cultural phenomena that come together to cause a disaster. I think the name of the podcast itself is an excellent critique of that sort of mindset.

[@DistractedGlobeGuy]

Except the core message of this series is that there _is_ one simple cause for almost every industrial disaster: corporate greed.

[@pennyforyourthots]

​@@DistractedGlobeGuy corporate greed is, in itself, a web conflicting interests and motivations. I'm not really sure I described it as a "simple cause"

[@jackainsley4365]

"We all simultaneously die of flu while cursing Elon Musk with our dying breath." Not the point of this episode I know, but hearing you all joke about being sick and having the flu is so surreal now.

[@hannahjackhalcro3848]

They jinxed it

[@unexpectedkissa]

Watching/listening to this nearly 3 years later, I had to go and check when this was originally released, because of the surreal-ness...

[@TLDelapore]

I can't believe 600 people lived in that building and 72 died. It's one of the worst examples of cost cutting killing people needlessly and it still could have easily been 3-4x more people if not for sheer dumb luck.

[@AggressiveLemur]

"How can you let them do this!" "Money, mostly."

[@JoshSweetvale]

Some human lives have negative value to society.

[@awkwardturtle7973]

Ooh Tacoma Narrows looking forward to next week's show

[@j2simpso]

Daniel Zawadzki in case you mixed it Tacoma Narrows is a running joke on the show since the bridge deserves zero coverage since the flaw is literally in the name of the bridge (let’s build a narrow bridge... well there’s yer problem!)

[@excitableboy7031]

@@j2simpso in case you missed it getting hyped for the Tacoma narrows bridge is a running joke in the comments section. And the narrow(s) part isn't the bridge but the bit underneath. Straits are also called narrows.

[@deeznoots6241]

j2simpso no the flaw was not that it was narrow, it’s that the design caused airflow to go over and under the bridge rather than through it like most bridges would, this caused aeroelastic flutter. Also calling it a design flaw is kinda unfair since the disaster was effectively the first of its kind so people were unaware that that sort of thing could even happen.

[@mikeblatzheim2797]

@@deeznoots6241 Going over and under isn't a flaw in itself if the design has the proper aerodynamic profile, the problem was that at certain windspeeds the wind passing over caused harmonized oscillations with the bridge's own movements and thus amplified them to the point of failure. In Europe most suspension bridges are still built with a narrow profile, but those are tested in a wind tunnel to avoid such problems.

[@j2simpso]

Deez Noots I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. Certainly the establishment and popular media wants us to believe this theory on the cause of failure - I’m just pointing out an alternative theory that could just as well explain the cause. The fact of the matter is narrow bridges are inherently less stable than their wider counterparts. There’s simply less bridge deck to distribute the load!

[@bilbobaggins5752]

Grenfell happened just a week after the 2017 election where the Tories had just won as well.

[@AnEnemy100]

Speaking of irony: “The model of Hotpoint fridge-freezer blamed for starting the Grenfell Tower fire does not need to undergo a national recall, an independent investigation has concluded. Consumers are advised they can continue to use the Hotpoint FF175B model “as normal” without any modification, after it was deemed to pose a low risk.” 15 May 2018

[@midgetwthahacksaw]

In a way, this was the UK's 9/11 but without the planes or the tower collapsing. At least in terms of the magnitude of the fire and lives lost. Sure, not quite the same because of the culture lens but the fear in those firefighters in London made me think of the firefighters in New York. Both set with the impossible task of fighting a fire which was never supposed to happen to begin with.

[@TheStig_TG]

This and 7/7

[@ErwinPommel]

Unlike 9/11, this one actually _was_ an inside job. And everyone knows it, yet nothing was done.

[@crowwithaknife1312]

9/11 but with the racism aspects reversed (not to be confused with ‘reverse racism’)

[@BorgCoitus]

The video of the firefighters going up to the building was heartbreaking.

[@Praisethesunson]

If the capitalist owners are the ones who have to march into a building they cut corners on. This problem would happen far less.

[@s-e-e-k-i-n-g]

Very randomly encountered this podcast via this episode and I'm a fan now, also thank you SO MUCH for CC! Never stop voting labour, my heart goes out to you UK, I'm sorry for the loss

[@michlo3393]

1:02:00 Reminiscent of a video taken on 9/11 of firefighters arriving at the World Trade Center and you can overhear one of them ask another "how are we going to get water that high?".

[@TrashHeapCustodian]

"Kensington and Chelsea council wanted to build an Air Force" **ERIK PRINCE HAS ENTERED THE CHAT**

[@rileye9599]

3:35 Well There's Your Pronouns

[@fernandomarques5166]

Coming from episode 159, the differences are stark, our fav trio grew so much and yet the witty commentary and jokes are still there. It's familiar yet different, love the podcast.

[@TheAramil]

This was a departure from past episodes in that everyone was roughly the same volume all the way through. I listened to the whole thing without having to skip back or rip out my headphones. 10/10 editing, will return to watching the series.

[@noriringtail7428]

Watching this after the election was a mistake.

[@andrewbower2533]

“The magic is made out of oil” *waves wand* expecto petroleum!

[@bradyburden3444]

Extracto petroleum

[@ThePorpoisepower]

"Load bearing drywall" that's one of the scarriest things I've ever heard.

[@catstorm26]

Thankfully in the context (groverhaus) it is/was (?) a single family home and no one was hurt except for grover's fragile pride.

[@PobortzaPl]

I'm on the commissioner side here. She was right in saying that she wouldn't make anything different from what was done. Because had she said it she would be asked WHY she hadn't done something differently. And she COULDN'T done anything differently because how the hell could she know what in the fuck was going on. Her remark that she hadn't a plan for it is what firmly puts me in her corner. She, in my opinion, really wanted to hammer in the point that what happened shouldn't fucking happen in the first place.

[@katie4408]

I know nothing about firefighting, but I agree, and..... ......when you "plan" for something that should be impossible, you are likely going to make a plan based on guesses, instead of evidence based best practices. This means that you could end up with a "plan" that is worse than "no plan." A bad plan takes away from the firefighters ability to make expert decisions on site as they learn more. Not ideal, but I'd rather the firefighters feel enabled to rely on their own instincts rather than follow a bad made-up plan.

[@PobortzaPl]

@@katie4408 That part about bad plan being worse then no plan might be a part of what people mean when they say "bad decision done fast is better then the best decision done too late"

[@Nico_M.]

I agree with you. If a possible issue is so big that it can destroy the thing, you have to make sure it cannot happen, but because that's impossible, you have to rely on detecting it early and keep it from spreading all over the place, and this is done from the design itself. You cannot ask the leader of the fire brigade to solve such a problem, is like being angry with your doctor because it cannot reattach your arm after you played with a chainsaw.

[@johnathanh2660]

For me it's case of the LFB being thrown in the ditch and being blamed for not climbing out. They didn't dig the ditch. The first priority of any organisation is keeping their own staff safe. For rescue services that's always a trade off, but in circumstances like this with the sheer scale and confusion it would be easy to lose a fireman in the melee. As for the 'controversial' stay put policy, it's heartbreaking that LFB were expected to 'change this' in an ad hoc manner on the night. More to the point with the smoke and gas in the stairwell there was only a window of a few minutes before the (single) stairwell became impassable. NB: The idea itself that the tower block be converted *from* a stay put policy based on a single stairwell in itself is ludicrous. Look at the Bethnell Green Tube disaster (1943?) where nearly 100 people were crushed to death. Most heartbreakingly, LFB were using a secondary control centre that evening. It didn't have a working TV. The controllers were relying on radio reports.

[@Murammassa]

God bless your podcast, literal highlight of my day

[@katiepatrick425]

Hi it's me again. I made it through 3 Mile last night.... well, I mean I fell asleep midway through the 3 Mile ep again, but I woke up at 1a then restarted it and finished. This ep is the next on the playlist. I guess I started it at about 1:30a. Knocked me tf out. Thanks again for making a show interesting enough to listen to but let's me fall asleep. FML with this TBI. Katie- she/her

[@adder3597]

This is basically a full-on 'Fuck The Tories' special. Well deserved. (Note the date: by this stage the Tories have also abolished PHE and made more U-turns than you could imagine).

[@LuckeWent]

that firefighter filmed video was the most disturbing thing ive seen in ages.

[@casanovafunkenstein5090]

Yeah, you can really hear the fear in their voices it's awful

[@annafdd]

I saw it live on the BBC while it was happening.

[@H313NA]

Just got around to watching this. Thank you for the informative coverage. I worked about two miles from Grenfell when it caught fire; I could literally smell the smoke for the entire day. The first thing people were saying to each other was "have you heard?" Passing the building was bizarre. The Circle and Hammersmith & City Tube lines run right by it. Almost nothing can prepare you from this burnt-out monolith suddenly popping into view - the train carriage would fall quiet as we rode past.

[@martinda7446]

Lack of empathy, guilt, conscience or remorse . Shallow experiences of feelings or emotions . Impulsivity and a weak ability to defer gratification and control behavior. Superficial charm and glibness . Irresponsibility and a failure to accept responsibility for their actions. A grandiose sense of their own worth. Is that descriptive of your average Tory or a psychopath? For the sake of sanity vote Labour.

[@postoctobrist]

until I hit 'read more' I thought you were talking about us and I was like, that's fair

[@martinda7446]

@@postoctobrist Yep, I score highly on a Wednesday when I'm most nuts.

[@boheyo]

Well all I'm missing is the charm

[@CowMaster9001]

Sounds like Jeremy Corbyn....

[@JoshSweetvale]

Labour: Not sadists!

[@soniab78]

Ugh. The Aldridge Academies. They decided to try the first 'All-Through Academy' (ages 4-19) here on Portland, basically wanted to merge the 7 schools (that were all ofsted rated as at least good) into one academy. Started with a promised £60 million budget. The locals, who quite liked having a choice of educational settings fairly close to where they live on the island and, like options on the island if their child didn't enjoy one school setting ect, opposed this successfully. So Aldridge company wasn't having that, they fought the planning, using pretty much the entire budget pushing planning through. One of the local schools headteacher was being very vocal with his opposition, getting interviewed in The Guardian ect was basically told he could keep his school seperate from the academy if he shut up with the shouting and then retired. Which is what he did! The Isle of Portland Aldridge Academy (IPACA) opened using the existing school buildings as campuses. The curriculum focused on business, staff didn't actually need teaching qualifications, my niece actually had a few science lessons where the kids just followed a KZbin tutorial. Decent teachers resigned... Aldridge then poured all available budget into purchasing part of a building shared with a Hotel... On a fucking Business park! More bulldozing of planning against locals wishes as it is a shitty, bleak site for a school and is exposed to awful wind and sideways rain in winter . When they eventually opened the brand-new building a year later than originally planned, they had created an amazing academy, with open-plan learning and a slide for the kids to ride down from the library! That's right, you heard me, OPEN PLAN Learning for children aged 4- 19!! Well, it didn't work out, (who could've guessed?!!) Within 2 years the school went from good to failing, Aldridge pulled out and deleted us from his academy website!! A new, locally run, well established Academy took over 3 years ago and after extensive remodelling of the brand newly renovated building which was not fit for purpose, have now turned the school around to be in the top 6% of schools in England. Tldr; Aldridge Academy bad, Aspirations Academy good. Fuck Aldridge and his Shitty Academy.

[@thisislesbomaya]

i cant wait for the tacoma narrows bridge episide!

[@Full_Otto_Bismarck]

Shake hands with Labour, meet the party you aught to know.

[@pseudonymous1382]

Clearly three finger Joe is a labour voter.

[@vienlacrose]

The best chemists are the ones who've lost a finger; for whatever their views on God may be, rest assured they know intimately the reality of death.

[@aturchomicz821]

And then unexpectedly the liberals win and nobody is happy XD

[@ellenorbjornsdottir1166]

@@pseudonymous1382 He used to be a Tory

[@hbrano1]

There is a line in "Towering Inferno", where the firemarshall says that if you build houses taller than the ladders of the firebrigade, then there is practically nothing they can do.

[@liamspence1291]

Loving the foreshadowing on the whole "the plague is back baby!"

[@sweetprimrose]

Also my dad is a Fire Alarm inspector and I worked with him at a job in a high rise - there's alarms and sensors and sprinklers and shit in the walls and all that stuff. Also Vote Labor in all countries - and when possible - The Greens.

[@1121494]

Fucking FPTP.

[@heavymetalcommy]

a shout out to the comrades in the acorn tenants union who fight against slum landlordry across the uk.

[@OpreRoma]

I requested this in the donoteat discord a while back, it's such a clusterfuck where absolutely everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and every single bad decision that could be made was made. Multiple fires like this had happened previously, Lakanal House set on fire and people were killed less than 10 years before Grenfell and the exact same issues caused it. Fires back in the early 90s had happened for the same reason. The survivors still haven't been provided with new housing. Grenfell was murder, justice for Grenfell

[@nonegiven2830]

My understanding on Ronan Point was that the floors were held in place with gravity and the building above. So when the gas explosion happened, it lifted the floor above enough to pop out the walls, then when the floor came back down, there was no wall to support it, so disaster. After Ronan Point they went back and put bolts in to anchor the floors to the walls.

[@pastell6395]

God what a gut-punch of an episode. The glenfell fires always just reduce me to tears. It really feels like one of those hyper-horrific fires of the early industrial age but Fucking Yesterday. ONE. FIRE. ESCAPE. Anyway, its great to finally have some engineering/disaster media that's leftist.

[@CowMaster9001]

Probably because leftism is a disaster

[@DeoMachina]

Watching the tower fire was bad enough, but what really chills me to the bone was the tories that made a paper effigy of the tower and set it alight later (complete with little brown paper people inside, of course) They literally celebrate when they kill people, outwardly.

[@DeoMachina]

@Oliver Eales Going to have a hard time convincing me that a property millionaire was voting Labour all this time, Oliver. Especially when the papers ran the story about them being members of the Conservatives already.

[@sheeplord4976]

@@DeoMachina you know there are more political ideologies than conservative and liberal, right?

[@DeoMachina]

@@sheeplord4976 Pretty sure the local communist party wasn't cheering on the cremation of dozens of living people either my dude

[@sheeplord4976]

The communists in america are cheering on the burning of buildings with people inside right now.

[@DeoMachina]

@@sheeplord4976 This isn't actually happening

[@tedy431]

Alice didn't know what a Homeowners Association is :( Alice, HOAs are not advocacy groups, they are basically just the people that choose the property management company :/

[@CowMaster9001]

And impose their impotent fascist tendencies over meaningless shit like building color

[@lazamair]

Psionic Tarrasque and whether or not you can keep your garage door open

[@frank6842]

They were going to fine me $30 a day for having a bird feeder.

[@TheStig_TG]

@@CowMaster9001 We should start a revolution against them.

[@TheSnowLeopard]

Props for the high quality subtitles, makes watching at 4x speed a breeze.

[@kevinbyrne4538]

One Meridian Plaza in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania burned in 1991; the fire ceased when it reached the 30th floor, which had sprinklers.

[@blue9multimediagroup]

They were going off 40+year old fire codes

[@JHempel13]

KEEP THE POLITICS OUT OF MY ENGINEERING DISASTER PODCAST jk, ofc, love the show ♥️♥️♥️

[@aurorawaxwing5866]

Keeping politics out of engineering feels like paradox.

[@snoopy_peanuts_77]

no...because we need regulations...cuz this

[@sorcerer3419]

my favorite mothman tracker podcast

[@postoctobrist]

why'd they even elect mothman to the borough council anyway

[@lukeman9851]

"Magic is made of oil" Ah, I see you've read The Magic Goes Away by Larry Niven

[@Dorian_sapiens]

UK, vote Labour! 🌹 That said, I'll be back after Dec 13, because I don't have time to watch this before the walkout starts.

[@inTIMMYdator44]

Starting an hour and a half podcast at midnight during finals week. What could go wrong

[@dpa5097]

that british eminent domain stuff you talk about initially sounds like what Douglas Adams describes at the beginning of Hitchikers Guide

[@mattbutler2125]

Vote labour, please.

[@mattbutler2125]

Oh, and vote. Every time. Every election. It matters.

[@SpaceGhost1701]

Corbyn is anti-EU, he wants to leave NATO, doesn't think Israel should exist, he has consistently supported far-left authoritarian governments, and wants to drastically reduce the size of the UK military and eliminate its nuclear deterrent. A vote for labour is a vote for isolationism, antisemitism, authoritarianism, and a greatly diminished United Kingdom.

[@excitableboy7031]

@@glamblaster6382 replace "Corbyn" with, idk, Raab, and read it yourself. How's that for a perspective?

[@NeighborSenpai]

@@glamblaster6382 the antisemitism isn't great I think, I'm not a jew but I don't think you should harass any race

[@Jablicek]

@@mattbutler2125 I feel the Lib Dems are a better vote this time around.

[@Irondrone4]

1:05:20 I remember seeing pictures of Chinese firefighters that had military-grade missile launching trucks for fighting high-rise fires. I have no idea how effective rockets filled with foam/water would be in practice, but it speaks to just how far the problem of high-rise fires will push rescuers.

[@teslashark]

I think nobody actually deployed them so far, some fire suppressant rockets have been used on forest fires but not very effective.

[@jeshirekitenkatt1212]

"i have the plague, it's back!" aged like milk eh

[@Huntracony]

You're almost making me appreciate that my apartment building has three fire drills a year... Almost.

[@doc7000]

You guys should cover the Rocketdyne facility that was in canoga park California where they built rockets and dumped all of that waste and burned it in open pits near by wrecking the area. If that isn't good enough for you it is also the location of the worse nuclear meltdown in US history back in 1959 which created entire blocks where every house someone living there has cancer.

[@cherylm2C6671]

thank you for posting this video. Not only material and labor shortcuts, but legal circumvention, helped this disaster to happen.

[@bewilderbeastie8899]

The fact that no one did anything about it. Everything is still the fucking same, because it costs too much to do anything, and the lives of people who live in places like this frankly don't matter to anyone in power. I'm very tired.

[@TuckerWhite94]

Sometimes, I wonder how more people aren't blackpilled.

[@JoshSweetvale]

They don't matter. Not "to people in power" - at all. If they were all dead, who'd notice? They certainly wouldn't.

[@josephwheal6909]

god watching this ep in may 2021 just really makes it an even more hellish experience

[@zimmerwald1915]

21:27 Wait just a goddamn minute. Isn't Alice anti-sprinkler because sprinklers only exist to drown you if the building collapses on top of you?

[@Quintinohthree]

If Alice's comments on gender are anything to go by, she isn't necessarily constant in her convictions, and that should be a good thing.

[@nithingr4359]

Dear God, you guys sound like you've caught Zizekitis. Get well. Vote Labour.

[@postoctobrist]

we got it from eating out of ze trash can of ideology

[@Bakkland]

*sniff*

[@frapippo420]

You know, the bacteria and so on, and so on...

[@williamchamberlain2263]

Fourth time listening, first time watching, and the view from inside the fire engine at 1:01:35 is insane

[@halb23]

Great episode, great podcast. But god, even with the content warning that video was hard to stomach. One of the biggest tragedies our country has faced, and those lads had to deal with it and tried their damn hardest

[@Schmidtelpunkt]

Eschede is an interesting chain of misjudgements and coincidences, most on their own entirely harmless, which with just a single link missing, could have ended a lot less catastrophic and maybe even just become a maintainance case.

[@JamesJacksonRaveneyes]

Please do the Center City Philadelphia 22nd and Market building collapse... it's all politics and engineering!

[@nicolescats2]

Thank you for not only providing me with an interesting podcast, but also reminded me to double check how to get my terrible window in a window quickly open and what will cut through the stupid screen if I can't kick it out for some reason. Running down the stairs is my normal fire escape plan (only on the second floor), but this old house is stupid, and it's important to know alternate routes.

[@kevinbyrne4538]

The exterior cladding of the Mermoz Tower in Roubaix, France burned in 2012 -- like the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.

[@barleysixseventwo6665]

Speaking of fire codes, I can’t tell you how many times in Berlin I slammed face first into a door because I’m used to American Fire safety standards where the major exits always open outwards, not inwards. The fact that the crossbar-vs-handle system we have here isn’t consistently applied over there did not help AT ALL!