The Knowsley Heights fire occurred in 1991 at the 11-story Knowsley Heights

tower block A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdicti ...

Huyton Huyton ( ) is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley, Merseyside, England. Part of the Liverpool Urban Area, it borders the Liverpool suburbs of Dovecot, Knotty Ash and Belle Vale, and the neighbouring village of Roby, with which ...

, Merseyside. No-one was injured in the fire.

Fire

The fire was deliberately started when

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was set alight outside the 11-story Knowsley Heights

, Merseyside. The flames began at the bottom of the building, and spread through a gap between the wall and the newly installed rainscreen cladding. The fire spread to all floors of the 11-storey building, causing extensive damage to the walls and windows of the building. The interior of the building did not suffer damage, as the fire did not enter the inside of the building. No-one was injured in the fire.

Aftermath

The

Building Research Establishment The Building Research Establishment (BRE) is a centre of building science in the United Kingdom, owned by charitable organisation the BRE Trust. It is a former UK government national laboratory that was privatised in 1997. BRE provides resear ...

(BRE) determined that the cladding around Knowsley Heights was a low risk of

combustibility A combustible material is something that can burn (i.e., ''combust'') in air. A combustible material is flammable if it ignites easily at ambient temperatures. In other words, a combustible material ignites with some effort and a flammable mat ...

. They also highlighted that the building lacked

firebreak A firebreak or double track (also called a fire line, fuel break, fireroad and firetrail in Australia) is a gap in vegetation or other combustible material that acts as a barrier to slow or stop the progress of a bushfire or wildfire. A firebre ...

s. The cladding used in Knowsley Heights was declared legal. The incident was mentioned by BRE for subsequent changes in building regulations. The Knowsley Heights fire featured in the BBC Two documentary ''The Fires that Foretold Grenfell'', which was first broadcast in October 2018.

References

{{reflist, 30em 1991 in England 1991 fires in the United Kingdom Building and structure fires in England Residential building fires

Fire

Aftermath

See also

References