Looks like somewhere along the Great West Road....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -dead.html



I imagine SOT will be along in due course to give the full SP but this looks like another attempt to circumvent the gas meter......



Sounds like the one they found on the pavement may have been blown through rather than jumping from the window.

They said Heston on the news. Never considered the meter by-pass as a cause. I bet that happens a lot these days.

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Lets be careful out there !

Meter By-pass - Were the people in the building all accounted for on the rent book?

The news did say that the landlord was to be questioned.

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Lets be careful out there !

Unfortunately, I cant provide any more on this tragic fire.

One thing I can say is that there are two sources of information that can be misleading in these sorts of incidents. 1) Witnesses and 2) the media. To illustrate this, I recall a multi fatal fire in Granville Rd Hayes where a lady and a number of her kids died. Witness told the media that they had seen the mum running around the 1st floor bedroom chanting when the house was alight. It was nonsense, as in fact her husband had killed her before setting fire to the place

So I doubt whether the 'explosion' reported in Heston was due to a gas meter by pass, or indeed anything to do with gas. Looking a the photos (OK, not the most scientific method of research) there is no evidence of windows being blown out, just glazing & other fire damage consistent with a fire in the top floor flat, spreading to the roof.

When a fire develops, there are many reasons why 'explosion' type noises can be heard. From aerosol cans exploding and windows breaking (broken glass falling to a pavement will sound like an explosion to a sleeping person who is woken by it) - to a backdraft or flashover - two different ways in which fires develop and spread.

Fire originating from bypassing gas (or electric) meters is surprisingly rare. I can only recall a handful (around 5) in 32 years in the fire service. The most dramatic was a block of flats near what is now Westfield White city. A local Arthur Daley was knocking out gas meter bypass 'kits' at a pub on the Edward Woods estate. This area consists of 5 x 22 storey blocks of flats. http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8334/8147 ... 7675_z.jpg The kits used plastic garden hose and connectors. One poor sod has installed such a kit and many weeks later it leaked and the resulting explosion sent him on an 18 storey head first tumble into the car park below. Not a pretty sight

The gas authority attended and acting on info that these devices were widespread, Police carried out a number forced entries to sample how widespread this problem was. The results were alarming. Within hours, the gas was isolated to all of the estate and over the next few days, Police assisted gas officials to enter all 350+ flats to search & remove scores of devices. This could have so easily have turning into another Ronan Point disaster

I have no idea what stared this Heston fire, but there are many premises in the Southall/Heston area which are dangerously over crowded. This brings a who load of problems and I understand this is why the landlord is being questioned.

One thing I am 99% certain about - I doubt whether this flat had a working smoke alarm. God knows why anyone wouldn't have one. At < £5 (or free if you ask the fire brigade for one), it's mad that people dont have them or test them regularly. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU TESTED YOURS??

Her indoors burnt my steak the other day so mine got a good test......

As for the detailed insight thanks for that SOT.

Maybe an overcrowding issue but surely if the fire started with conventional means some in there would have heard or smelled it.

We used to rent a house out once in Greeford back in 89.it had 4 people living in it. One of them lit a cigarette and the match ignited a thread on the side of the couch. That couch was fully ablaze before we could get half a bowl of water to throw over it. Believe me once it gets hold, it gone so quick. When you see it first hand. It's not hard to understand how people get traped and killed.

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Posts often deleted................Why? I don't know.

Must have been an old sofa.

I think it was sometime in the 70's they enacted legislation saying all interior furniture had to be constructed mainly from fireproof materials. Of course most have wood inside which cannot be made fireproof but they can treat the soft furnishings these days, so they will not catch even ig you aim a blow torch at them.

It was 1988 when the 'Furniture and Furnishings (Fire Safety) Regulations' were introduced, and they've been amended in 1989, 1993 and 2010

Very basically, the covering of soft furniture has to me 'match proof' (I remember this was a test involving dropping a lit match on the fabric) and the fillings have to pass rigorous fire resisting standards, This does not make them fireproof, but just more difficult to set alight than much of the old stuff. But they do still burn very well and the safety measures can be easily bypassed by any person intent on arson. Mental health hospitals and prisons have even stricter standards which make them almost impossible to ignite, but patients and inmates regularly manage to torch their rooms. This is what happens when you have ill/angry people with time on their hands

My first sofa when I set up home was part of a second hand 3 piece suite. It was made of a sculpted polystyrene block covered in lovely PVC (it was hideous in this weather as it would stick to naked skin!!). This would almost certainly not pass the 88 regulations.

However, the risks associated with modern furnishings has not made domestic dwellings safer. The use of plastics (which produce high heat outputs and toxic smoke) tend to spread fire more rapidly that traditional furnishings such as horse hair filled settees and natural fibre coverings and curtains. Have a look at this video. OK, it's from the US but compares traditional room's fire development to a modern room setting. The time given is from ignition to flashover (when all of the room is involved in fire). It goes on a bit, so perhaps watch the first 2 mins and then inch it forward a bit at a time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDNPhq5ggoE

Lastly arson fires (and the Heston fire is being treated as suspicious) will burn at least as quickly as this, and faster if an accelerant (like petrol) has been used

This proves why it is smoke detectors and not modern furnishings - that save lives. With Hillingdon Boro's fire cover soon to be reduced from five fire engines to five, there's never been a better time to install smoke detectors of test your own

Have just had a hard-wired (mains powered) smoke detector installed.
They are compulsory here in new houses and if you sell an older house, also two residual current devices (RCDs) have to be fitted.

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When a crash seems inevitable, try to hit the softest, cheapest object in the vicinity as slowly and gently as possible.