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Shirley Towers Fire
The Shirley Towers Fire occurred in a tower block on 6 April 2010 in Southampton, Hampshire, England. Two firefighters were killed when a fire developed and spread from the 9th floor. The investigations and inquiries following the fire led to changes in fire safety rules nationally, particularly the regulations around electrical wiring. Background Shirley Towers is a 15-storey concrete tower block of 150 apartments located in the Shirley area of Southampton and is home to about 400 people. The building dates from the mid-1960s and is of the unusual scissor section construction where each apartment is spread over several floors in an interlocking design. The fire The fire started when curtains in the lounge of the flat caught fire from being on top of an uplighter lamp (light fitting.) Emergency crews were called at 20:10 on 6 April 2010. The fire response teams were confused by the complex layout of the building and of the flat itself. The flat was very smoky with zero vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southampton
Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Portsmouth and the towns of Havant, Waterlooville, Eastleigh, Fareham and Gosport. A major port, and close to the New Forest, it lies at the northernmost point of Southampton Water, at the confluence of the River Test and Itchen, with the River Hamble joining to the south. Southampton is classified as a Medium-Port City . Southampton was the departure point for the and home to 500 of the people who perished on board. The Spitfire was built in the city and Southampton has a strong association with the ''Mayflower'', being the departure point before the vessel was forced to return to Plymouth. In the past century, the city was one of Europe's main ports for ocean liners and more recently, Southampton is known as the home port of some of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The English language, the Anglican Church, and Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tower Block
A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and fun ..., as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdiction. It is used as a apartment building, residential, office building, or other functions including hotel, retail, or with multiple purposes combined. Residential high-rise buildings are also known in some varieties of English, such as British English, as tower blocks and may be referred to as MDUs, standing for multi-dwelling units. A very tall high-rise building is referred to as a skyscraper. High-rise buildings became possible to construct with the invention of the elevator (lift) and wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hampshire
Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire is the 9th-most populous county in England. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, located in the north of the county. The county is bordered by Dorset to the south-west, Wiltshire to the north-west, Berkshire to the north, Surrey to the north-east, and West Sussex to the south east. The county is geographically diverse, with upland rising to and mostly south-flowing rivers. There are areas of downland and marsh, and two national parks: the New Forest National Park, New Forest and part of the South Downs National Park, South Downs, which together cover 45 per cent of Hampshire. Settled about 14,000 years ago, Hampshire's recorded history dates to Roman Britain, when its chi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scissor Section Flat
The scissor section flat is a distinctive way of arranging the Apartment, flats in an apartment block that was developed in the 1950s by London County Council Architects department. The interlocking design provides a way of maximising the space given to flats in any building volume by reducing the space needed for entrance corridors and providing a dual aspect for each dwelling. When used in high rise tower blocks , the scissor arrangement also makes the elevator, lift installation cheaper as a landing is only required every three levels. But the design does have accessibility issues and the complex arrangement has caused confusion for emergency services. The design Scissor section flats consist of interlocking designs and typically are a mixture of 'up' flats and 'down' flats. In an 'up' flat, you enter the flat from a central entrance corridor and go up a half-storey set of stairs to the first 'main' level of the flat, typically containing the living room and kitchen. From ther ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southampton City Council
Southampton City Council is the local authority of the city of Southampton. It is a Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority, having the powers of a non-metropolitan county and district council combined. It provides a full range of local government services including council tax billing, libraries, social services, processing planning applications, waste collection and disposal, and it is a local education authority. The council uses a Executive arrangements#Leader and cabinet, leader and cabinet structure. Labour Party (UK), Labour has been in control of the council since 2022. History Southampton City Council has records in its archives of council meetings as early as 1199. The Local Government Act 1888 established Southampton as a county borough of the county Hampshire, then officially known as the ''County of Southampton''. This meant that the city of Southampton had independent governance from the county. Local government restructuring with an act in 1973 made the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Standards
British Standards (BS) are the standards produced by the BSI Group which is incorporated under a royal charter and which is formally designated as the Standards organization#National standards bodies, national standards body (NSB) for the UK. The BSI Group produces British Standards under the authority of the charter, which lays down as one of the BSI's objectives to: Formally, as stated in a 2002 memorandum of understanding between the BSI and the United Kingdom Government, British Standards are defined as: Products and services which BSI certifies as having met the requirements of specific standards within designated schemes are awarded the Kitemark. History BSI Group began in 1901 as the ''Engineering Standards Committee'', led by James Mansergh, to standardize the number and type of steel sections, in order to make United Kingdom, British manufacturers more efficient and competitive. Over time the standards developed to cover many aspects of tangible engineering, and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harrow Court Fire
The Harrow Court fire occurred in a tower block on 2 February 2005 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England. Three people were killed, two of them firefighters, when a fire developed and spread from the 14th floor. An investigation of the fire found that there was an Abnormal Rapid Fire Development, caused by a candle melting the surface of a television, which then spread rapidly up the outside of the building to subsequent floors. In honour of the two firefighters who lost their lives, Jeff Wornham (aged 28) and Michael Miller (aged 26), Stevenage Borough Council named two adjoining roads in a new nearby development 'Miller Way' and 'Wornham Avenue', in 2006 and 2007 respectively. The fire at Harrow Court featured in the BBC 2 documentary broadcast 30 October 2018 ''The Fires that Foretold Grenfell'', as one of five significant fires in the UK which occurred prior to the Grenfell Tower fire, which called for changes to regulations and policies. Background Harrow Court is a 17-store ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2009 Lakanal House Tower Block Fire
The Lakanal House fire occurred in a tower block on 3 July 2009 in Camberwell, London. Six people were killed, and at least twenty injured, when a high-rise fire, caused by a faulty television set, developed and spread through a number of flats in the twelve-storey building. Background Lakanal House is a 14-storey tower block that forms part of the Sceaux Gardens Estate, Camberwell. It contains 98 flats, and is high. The building dates from 1959. It is made up of two-bedroom maisonettes of a two-storey interlocking design. The flats are entered from the right or left side of a central access corridor. On the access level, there are two bedrooms and a bathroom. There are stairs to the upper level where a lounge and kitchen stretch across the full width of the block. This means that the lounge for each flat is above one of the bedrooms of that flat and one of the bedrooms of the flat on the opposite side of the access corridor. The flats were built with fire exits from the lou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grenfell Tower Fire
On 14 June 2017, a high-rise fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of flats in North Kensington, West London, at 00:54 BST and burned for 60 hours. 72 people died, two later in hospital, with more than 70 injured and 223 escaping. It was the deadliest structural fire in the United Kingdom since the 1988 ''Piper Alpha'' oil-platform disaster and the worst UK residential fire since World War II. The fire was started by an electrical fault in a refrigerator on the fourth floor. This spread rapidly up the building's exterior, bringing flame and smoke to all residential floors, accelerated by dangerously combustible aluminium composite cladding and external insulation, with an air gap between them enabling the stack effect. The fire was declared a major incident with more than 250 London Fire Brigade firefighters and 70 fire engines from stations across London involved in efforts to control the fire and rescue residents. More than 100 London Ambulance Service crews ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2010 Fires In The United Kingdom
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. In conventions of sign where zero is considered neither positive nor negative, 1 is the first and smallest positive integer. It is also sometimes considered the first of the infinite sequence of natural numbers, followed by 2, although by other definitions 1 is the second natural number, following 0. The fundamental mathematical property of 1 is to be a multiplicative identity, meaning that any number multiplied by 1 equals the same number. Most if not all properties of 1 can be deduced from this. In advanced mathematics, a multiplicative identity is often denoted 1, even if it is not a number. 1 is by convention not considered a prime number; this was not universally accepted until the mid-20th century. Additionally, 1 is the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Building And Structure Fires In England
A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for a wide number of factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, land prices, ground conditions, specific uses, prestige, and aesthetic reasons. To better understand the term ''building'' compare the list of nonbuilding structures. Buildings serve several societal needs – primarily as shelter from weather, security, living space, privacy, to store belongings, and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical division of the human habitat (a place of comfort and safety) and the ''outside'' (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful). Ever since the first cave paintings, buildings have also become objects or canvasses of much artis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
