London Fire

I sat this week and observed the news-feed over the London fire.  A number of things bothered me about this episode.

This was a building with roughly four apartments on each floor....one single elevator, and one single stairway.  In a fire situation, it was a no-win situation.  If you were above the fifth floor, your odds of getting out were severely limited.  If you were above the 15th floor....it's just about impossible odds of getting out.

This material added in the renovation phase from a couple of years ago?  It's been a big sales item in Germany, and I noted last year in Frankfurt.....they had a building which went quickly from a minor one-apartment fire to a massive fire.....same type material.  Luckily, this was a three-story building....not a multi-floor building.  My guess is that in roughly four months.....some PhD guy will come out and prove this renovation material is a major threat, and trigger a massive removal-type situation across Europe.  Billions will be spent to remove it from the exterior of buildings.

Then I come to this personal feeling....that you need some type of rope-harness deal in your apartment and a repel-type device that you could just hook onto a doorway and break a window and slide down.  It doesn't require rocket-science.  Some engineer ought to be able to fashion something that cost less than a hundred bucks and guaranteed to dump you 300 feet to the ground....safely.