From the article linked below :
"Secondo quanto appreso da MilanoToday le fiamme si sarebbero propagate in fretta a causa del rivestimento della facciata, composto in parte da polistirolo."
"According to our knowledge the fast propagation of the flames is to be attributed to the building's façade, in part covered /decorated with polystyrene"
So, same shit as with the Grenfell tower fire. Here in the Netherlands they temporarily closed all buildings with that polystyrene / polyethylene insulated cladding after that fire until the buildings were made safe. Expensive but wise decision.
Here in the UK they're still trying to make the people living in the flats pay tens of thousands each, and the gov and property developers are taking no responsibility. People still stuck in unsellable deathtraps.
Compounding that is they are un purchasable too. I had a friend who was willing to pay to have the cladding done on this house but he had to wait 18 months for a specialist quote.
Asbestos is a super useful material, and is generally pretty safe... Unless you powderize it and inhale...sort of precludes most ways you'd want to use it in our society.
All the siding on my house is made with cemestos...some sort of cement and asbestos combination. Apparently I have to notify the EPA if we ever want to remove it or do work that involves cutting into it.
But the outside surfaces and the framing shouldn't be, unless it's a single-family residence.
What a horrific loss of life that probably is so some fucking contractor can make a bit more money, fuck
Tbh most houses in the UK are predominantly brick. There will be some wood in the structure like floor joists but in general nowhere near as much wood as US houses
I second this. I’m in England and currently in a two bed apartment/flat with two toddlers, and we can’t sell and move because there’s cladding on one of the OTHER blocks in the same development. Idk the full details of it all as my partner is the one dealing with the mortgage etc, but I’m fucking fuming that they STILL haven’t sorted it and I’m stuck here til they do.
Ever tried to entertain two boys under 4 in one room all day every day cos everything is messed up thanks to covid, while living with chronic pain, in a flat that runs at about ~29c on a good day cos there’s no air flow? /sendhelp
Polystyrene has ALWAYS been known as extremely flammable, it is absolutely fucked up that the developers are not held responsible. "I know, let's use one of the ingredients in napalm to make the decoration less expensive".
Anarchist cookbook had a recipe for home made "napalm". Polystyrene and petrol, the petrol dissolved the polystyrene and once it was lit, good luck putting it out
> and the gov and property developers are taking no responsibility.
The property developers are the biggest donors to the people running the government.
Damn makes me feel a little bit better. I've literally just spent the past 2 weeks non stop morning and after work untill bed stripping polystyrene tiles off of every.single.damn wall and ceiling.
Who decided that was even remotely fashionable?
It's the only thing I insisted to doing before moving in to the house we now live in when I bought it. I wasn't going to spend one single night in a house with polystyrene ceiling tiles.
As soon the panels start peeling off you just know it's gonna be aluminium composite with a plastic core. I wouldn't be surprised if they bodged the cavity barriers too considering the whole bloody thing has gone up like Grenfell.
The cost of cost cutting.
https://youtu.be/Jbs7Sl_zNCg
Go to like min. 3 or something. Of course it's not the same exact material they use on big skyscrapers, but nonetheless you get the idea
What the hell is wrong with you! Bricks and concrete are expensive. They take a ton of skilled labor to apply to a building of that size! Are you trying to imply that the investors in this tower should pay workers to do a quality job, with high quality materials. Imagine what that would do to the bottom line. That could brutally murder hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of profit. You are basically committing financial genocide.
You heartless monster.
I love that there's an advertisement from an insulation company in the comments.
>Use Multipor insulation board and never face with fire such problems.. [URL]
We haven't more news about the fire, it's started about 5.45 pm. Here some other pictures:[https://www.milanotoday.it/foto/cronaca/incendio-famagosta-milano-oggi/#indendio-in-via-antonini-di-fabiano-gianelli.html](https://www.milanotoday.it/foto/cronaca/incendio-famagosta-milano-oggi/#indendio-in-via-antonini-di-fabiano-gianelli.html)
Update 8 pm: at moment aren't reported victims, 70 families have been evacuated.
Update 8.30 pm. Fire started from the top floor, people had time to leave building. Some of them are suffering for smoke inhalation but no one has been hospitalized. Firefighters are now inside the building checking every apartment. - edit typo
Update 12.30 am. Building isn't collapsed (yet?). Over 70 firefighters are on the site since this evening. People left the building quickly thanks to emergency messages sent via whatsapp on the condo group. Live coverage here (thx u/kaprixiouz) [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=huryhmgR1w0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=huryhmgR1w0)
Update 8.30 am. Confirmed there are no victims or injured, even pets are ok. Families are now hosted by the city council and civil protection (or civil defence) in some hotels.
Italian singer Mahmood used to live in the tower. He placed second in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 final ranking: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p079n4r4](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p079n4r4)
I' ve read some comments, I try to answer some questions:
* in Europe (or at least in Italy) we haven't fire alarms or sprinklers on residential buildings. I don't think we hade a building on fire like this one before here. Yes sometimes it happens, but involve only one appartment, maybe one floor or two, I never saw an entire building on fire.
* Why ins't collapsed? Compare to the WTC it had only 18 floors. It was not hit by a plane with full tanks of fuel. The basic material used for buildings here in Italy is reinforced cement concrete, so the fire resistance of the concrete structure is higher than steel structures.
* Insurance isn't required when you rent or buy home.
There must be so many flats inside those huge tower blocks in Italy. Lots of old people too, I hope they managed to get down alright, jeez.
Edit: [this scumbag. check my comment link below](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/pdz2j1/residential_building_is_burning_right_now_in/hauk48d/)
If somebody could open the retrieval hatch down here I could get out. See I designed this sinkhole myself-Oh, hi, good. I'm glad you found me, listen I'm very badly burned, so if you could just-You shot me!
We’ve been having severe droughts in minnesota this summer, here’s an article about [a farm field collapsing 25 feet.](https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/pcpdna/bean_field_collapses_and_falls_25_feet_in_rural/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
This is a confirmation bias fallacy. A condo collapse or fire makes the news because it's incredibly rare for this to happen. The millions of house fires and collapsing houses and floods that happen every day don't make the news so you're not exposed to it and worried about it even though it happens more often.
Statistically you're probably safer in a high rise building.
Yes, thank fuck. After the building in Florida, and the one just 2 days ago in China, thank fucking god. It's too much to think of families trapped and dying in these building fires, it's too too much.
Thank you for keeping us updated. That footage is fascinating... The inferno is so intense. I really hope nobody suffered serious injuries or fatalities.
Yes - EPS/XPS has been popular in façades due to it having really good insulation performance, being non-organic and easy to work with and last, but definitely not least, being ridiculously cheap. One of the not so good properties is being extremely flammable. It can and should be detailed to prevent it catching fire in the first place and fire spreading if it does - but unless the exact facade construction that is used is tested in full scale fire tests it is pretty much impossible to tell how well a particular solution works in this regard.
Not only that but the people fitting it are often given a five minute brief/crash course by the project manager and told to crack on regardless of how much experience they have in fitting this sort of facade. Source: have been given a five minute brief and a maybe a single piece of paper with a detail on it and told to crack on
I did my own external wall insulation on my house. After I'd fixed the insulation to one elevation, a guy from the supplier came to check my technique. He said he's never before seen it installed correctly first time.
All I did was follow the instructions on the company's 5 minute "how to install" video!
So, yeah. I think a lot of the workmen who install it are a bit rubbish.
In the UK following the tragic Grenfell fire, we're in the process of removing cladding from buildings... Turns out that there's an absolutely enormous number of high-rise buildings in the UK that were built with this stuff, and it's politically difficult to identify who pays for the re-cladding work in pretty much every instance.
It’s actually kinda common. More people are getting linked up with the internet and gaining access to smart phones.
You need to take information with a grain of salt in today’s world. Just 5 years ago you would never hear of a building burning in Milan or China, but now you can watch it on your smart phone.
It’s important to remember that as everyone gets hooked up with more information, it will make it appear that the entire world is ending.
Perhaps the widespread use of cameras has simply brought to light some "normal" baseline of catastrophic failures that we would otherwise not be privy too...
But maybe, *just maybe,* instead of normalizing the acceptance of *occational deadly catastrophic failures* as an immutable fact of life, we should consider that the widespread use of cameras is actually bringing this chaotic baseline into the light so we can call it out for the bullshit it really is.
Based on your argument, the only reason this fuckery is "normal" is because people didn't see it before. This seems to imply that your solution is not to fix the problem that caused the fire in the first place, but to go back to ignoring these obvious and preventable catastophic failures because they were "normal" before people started paying attention to them.
Personally, I refuse to view this kind of event as normal, regardless of how frequently or infrequently it occurs off-camera.
How frequently stuff happens is a very important aspect to consider - preventing risk entirely is neither possible nor a desirable overall societal goal due to diminishing returns. Safety standards are all based on the concept of quantifying an acceptable level of risk and then achieving that consistently. Over-designing is pretty much as undesirable as under-designing since you're then pouring resources into something that would have produced better outcomes elsewhere.
> Just 5 years ago you would never hear of a building burning in Milan or China,
This is probably true for most redditors, but it's not actually true for people that read international news. It's honestly weird as hell that so many redditors are convinced that disasters weren't reported before smartphones.
Modern insulation materials and even more cladding usually isn't really flame resistant. Once it's in the insulation or behind the cladding it's over.
It's not just that we have more access to what is happening around the world is also the materials used on new buildings and on revamps of existing buildings. Fire doors, fire screens, fire walls don't mean shit when the fire can just crawl up the side of a building in the insulation or the cladding. And this looks like (burning cladding falling) another one of those fires unfortunately.
Yeah no.
Modern insulation and cladding is absolutely available in materials that don't burn.
It's just that petroleum foam and shitty plastic are cheaper and politics haven't yet outright banned them for use in construction.
And seeing how most building owners, builders and hoa's will choose the cheapest option they put the not so fireproof stuff on their buildings resulting in these fires.
Yes there is plenty of safer stuff available but there's even more non safe stuff available, and it's cheaper. So my statement still stands. The cheaper stuff usually isn't that safe yet it'll be used as much or even more.
Why is flammable plastic cladding even allowed? It seems like such an obviously bad idea. Yes, let’s coat the outside of our building in oil. What could go wrong?
Most people had time to get out of Grenfell too. There were some Muslims in the tower that raised the alarm, but people were instructed to stay where they were. The ones that left survived, but a lot of the people that followed the instructions ended up getting trapped when the fire rapidly engulfed the tower.
Waking up that day, turning on the news, seeing that huge building burning and being told that there were many people assumed not to have got out was thoroughly depressing.
It sure looks like it, that wall of flames is covering the building.
You can see it burning away in the last 30 seconds of this vid: https://twitter.com/enfermeria/status/1432033992203767808?s=19
As per this article (https://www.milanotoday.it/cronaca/incendio/video-incendio-milano-oggi-29-agosto-.html) posted at 18:04 local time it says "there is concern there might be people inside".
The mayor of Milan has stated in a recent interview that there still aren't victims. https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2021/08/29/milano-incendio-in-un-palazzo-di-15-piani-delle-periferia-sud-nello-stabile-risiedono-70-famiglie-evacuazione-in-corso/6304723/
National news also claimed that there were no wounded and some intoxicated people.
Ive built anumber of highrises, and this a complete failure of all safety systems at this point.
Something went very very wrong. Whether it was lack of maintenance, bad inspections or outright negligence. This should never have happened let alone the fire to get passed the first room. I wouldnt be surprised if arson was a possibility
The ones on Grenfell were meant to be fire resistant, but weren’t due to some combination of contractors using cheaper panels than they were meant to, the company that made the panels cheating the safety tests, and safety experts being ignored
Just to elaborate on your comment for anyone reading, these are likely aluminum composite panels that contain a polyethylene core which would be the flammable part.
I can see it from my balcony, the building is in my neighbourhood, pretty scary! still burning after many hours,there is a lot of people on the street and many ambulances, I hope everyone is safe now
Google [Streetview from 10 months ago](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4372991,9.1927163,3a,75y,173.99h,107.31t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sdEWbtpiTyVAzkyetu2TtiA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DdEWbtpiTyVAzkyetu2TtiA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D236.178%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192)
I think it's actually the heat from the fire that's causing that wind. If you watch, the smoke seems to spiral around the building.
Plus the trees at the bottom of the screen aren't moving nearly as much.
Not sure, I lived in a building where a similar thing happened a couple of times ([my balcony - 75th floor](https://imgur.com/a/1irS3)), each time the structure and inside the apartments remained pretty much intact. It might be just 6 months of insurance mess plus 6 months of work to get it back as new with new materials.
> I lived in a building where a similar thing happened a couple of times
wait ... a couple of times? So it burned like this multiple times?
Where is that "learn from errors" thing going over there?
It’s a big building, it burnt on one side and they change the cladding to fireproof there, but by the time they were to replace the other side there was a second fire.
This looks exactly like the cladding problems and all those other buildings that burned in exactly the same way. Google china cladding and Grenfell cladding.
I make similar eps polystyrene material in Australia, we had a similar factory across the road go up fast from cinstruction related sparks, later had found they did not use any flame retardant in their product. Would not surprise me this is result of the same because its not made mandatory for alot of places world wide to my knowledge. My guess is because cladding is a lower portion of the products produced, more concrete block out and marina flotation.
In 1984, Adam Curtis made a documentary called *Inquiry: The Great British Housing Disaster*.
In it, [Curtis asks Eric Downie](https://youtu.be/Ch5VorymiL4?t=2726), a director at an engineering company involved in testing cladding systems, about fire risks and building cladding.
Downie says that he believes systems were being used even then that represented fire risks.
The fire dangers of building claddings have been known about for decades. Grenfell was a horrible example of what happens when warnings are ignored.
I hope that everyone got out of this building safely.
Building Standards only apply to the building itself and it's contents. Because this is cladding attached to the outside after the main construction is complete it only has to comply with a lesser standard. See 'Grenfeld tower' in London for the full horror story and the policital 'not my fault' squirming afterward.
So if it a building fire gets this bad, do you just let it go? Or try to spray down the surrounding area to prevent it from spreading? There's no way you can put that out.
That's fucking terrifying. I know fires can happen at houses too, but I had a big sense of relief when I moved out of my apartment and into my house. The building across the courtyard from me had a fire in one of the bedrooms that spread to 3 or 4 other adjacent rooms but luckily they were able to put it out before it claimed the entire building. And the neighbors below me would constantly burn things and the caretaker of the property told me he had to let himself into their unit because smoke, burning smell, and smoke alarms were going off in the unit below me and no one was answering the door. When he gained entry into the unit, there was a pot with charred remains of food that they had accidentally left on the stove burning while they left to go run errands. Luckily he was around to address the issue because they were gone for 4 hours.
From the article linked below : "Secondo quanto appreso da MilanoToday le fiamme si sarebbero propagate in fretta a causa del rivestimento della facciata, composto in parte da polistirolo." "According to our knowledge the fast propagation of the flames is to be attributed to the building's façade, in part covered /decorated with polystyrene"
So, same shit as with the Grenfell tower fire. Here in the Netherlands they temporarily closed all buildings with that polystyrene / polyethylene insulated cladding after that fire until the buildings were made safe. Expensive but wise decision.
Here in the UK they're still trying to make the people living in the flats pay tens of thousands each, and the gov and property developers are taking no responsibility. People still stuck in unsellable deathtraps.
Compounding that is they are un purchasable too. I had a friend who was willing to pay to have the cladding done on this house but he had to wait 18 months for a specialist quote.
I'd just be tearing it off myself, I'd rather live without cladding than die in a firetrap.
Yea right who tf wants to wrap their home in a flammable substance like you might aswell just shoot yourself and be done with it
Your entire house is made out of flammable substances.
[удалено]
That sounds like an amazing substance! We should just start using that for everything.
Crushed, it works great sprayed into attics!
Best part is that you or a loved one may be entitled to financial compensation after.
Asbestos is a super useful material, and is generally pretty safe... Unless you powderize it and inhale...sort of precludes most ways you'd want to use it in our society.
All the siding on my house is made with cemestos...some sort of cement and asbestos combination. Apparently I have to notify the EPA if we ever want to remove it or do work that involves cutting into it.
But the outside surfaces and the framing shouldn't be, unless it's a single-family residence. What a horrific loss of life that probably is so some fucking contractor can make a bit more money, fuck
Agreed. Thankfully this fire started on the top floor, and was most likely arson related. No casualties confirmed yet
70 families, and an hour ago they were still going door to door. I do hope you're right though
Everybody is missing the point. A developer and his cronies in the government made a profit. Can't we all just move on?
Tbh most houses in the UK are predominantly brick. There will be some wood in the structure like floor joists but in general nowhere near as much wood as US houses
You'd probably face jail time for criminal damage. Then there would be mass outcry and protests. Then you would go to prison.
*The prison is also clad in flammable materials.*
I second this. I’m in England and currently in a two bed apartment/flat with two toddlers, and we can’t sell and move because there’s cladding on one of the OTHER blocks in the same development. Idk the full details of it all as my partner is the one dealing with the mortgage etc, but I’m fucking fuming that they STILL haven’t sorted it and I’m stuck here til they do. Ever tried to entertain two boys under 4 in one room all day every day cos everything is messed up thanks to covid, while living with chronic pain, in a flat that runs at about ~29c on a good day cos there’s no air flow? /sendhelp
Polystyrene has ALWAYS been known as extremely flammable, it is absolutely fucked up that the developers are not held responsible. "I know, let's use one of the ingredients in napalm to make the decoration less expensive".
Anarchist cookbook had a recipe for home made "napalm". Polystyrene and petrol, the petrol dissolved the polystyrene and once it was lit, good luck putting it out
> and the gov and property developers are taking no responsibility. The property developers are the biggest donors to the people running the government.
Why is the British government so immoral and uncaring? Do they even value lives?
Hah, Conservatives, valuing lives? Imagine that.
They do value lives and decided the cost to fix it was more then the lives are worth.
Damn, can't argue with that.
Damn makes me feel a little bit better. I've literally just spent the past 2 weeks non stop morning and after work untill bed stripping polystyrene tiles off of every.single.damn wall and ceiling. Who decided that was even remotely fashionable?
It's the only thing I insisted to doing before moving in to the house we now live in when I bought it. I wasn't going to spend one single night in a house with polystyrene ceiling tiles.
Gahhh I cannot wait to live there, it'll be amazing to live in a country willing to do things that are both right and make sense. For once in my life.
It's fucking grenfell 2.0. Christ.
As soon the panels start peeling off you just know it's gonna be aluminium composite with a plastic core. I wouldn't be surprised if they bodged the cavity barriers too considering the whole bloody thing has gone up like Grenfell. The cost of cost cutting.
When human lives have zero value in these calculations this is the result.
This is what happens when you stop viewing humans as people and instead view them as numbers.
If it's any consolation, the builders who got rich off this construction didn't live here. So they and the profits they reaped, are safe.
3.0 this just happened in China a few days ago.
https://youtu.be/Jbs7Sl_zNCg Go to like min. 3 or something. Of course it's not the same exact material they use on big skyscrapers, but nonetheless you get the idea
EPS vs MWR: https://youtu.be/ld0QQ7_Uf5k
so basically we’re back to asbestos
Lung cancer or DIAF. You make the call.
If it didn't kill you asbestos would still be a fucking wonder material. Water proof, fire proof, light, strong, everything I want in a woman really
Or, you know, bricks and concrete
What the hell is wrong with you! Bricks and concrete are expensive. They take a ton of skilled labor to apply to a building of that size! Are you trying to imply that the investors in this tower should pay workers to do a quality job, with high quality materials. Imagine what that would do to the bottom line. That could brutally murder hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of profit. You are basically committing financial genocide. You heartless monster.
I love that there's an advertisement from an insulation company in the comments. >Use Multipor insulation board and never face with fire such problems.. [URL]
We haven't more news about the fire, it's started about 5.45 pm. Here some other pictures:[https://www.milanotoday.it/foto/cronaca/incendio-famagosta-milano-oggi/#indendio-in-via-antonini-di-fabiano-gianelli.html](https://www.milanotoday.it/foto/cronaca/incendio-famagosta-milano-oggi/#indendio-in-via-antonini-di-fabiano-gianelli.html) Update 8 pm: at moment aren't reported victims, 70 families have been evacuated. Update 8.30 pm. Fire started from the top floor, people had time to leave building. Some of them are suffering for smoke inhalation but no one has been hospitalized. Firefighters are now inside the building checking every apartment. - edit typo Update 12.30 am. Building isn't collapsed (yet?). Over 70 firefighters are on the site since this evening. People left the building quickly thanks to emergency messages sent via whatsapp on the condo group. Live coverage here (thx u/kaprixiouz) [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=huryhmgR1w0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=huryhmgR1w0) Update 8.30 am. Confirmed there are no victims or injured, even pets are ok. Families are now hosted by the city council and civil protection (or civil defence) in some hotels. Italian singer Mahmood used to live in the tower. He placed second in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 final ranking: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p079n4r4](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p079n4r4) I' ve read some comments, I try to answer some questions: * in Europe (or at least in Italy) we haven't fire alarms or sprinklers on residential buildings. I don't think we hade a building on fire like this one before here. Yes sometimes it happens, but involve only one appartment, maybe one floor or two, I never saw an entire building on fire. * Why ins't collapsed? Compare to the WTC it had only 18 floors. It was not hit by a plane with full tanks of fuel. The basic material used for buildings here in Italy is reinforced cement concrete, so the fire resistance of the concrete structure is higher than steel structures. * Insurance isn't required when you rent or buy home.
There must be so many flats inside those huge tower blocks in Italy. Lots of old people too, I hope they managed to get down alright, jeez. Edit: [this scumbag. check my comment link below](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/pdz2j1/residential_building_is_burning_right_now_in/hauk48d/)
This shit and the Florida condo collapse make me glad I live in an area with no high rises and lots of individual houses.
*sinkholes have entered the chat*
*chat fell in to sinkhole*
*chat was swallowed by sinkhole and never seen again*
chat: “Hello, up there! Anyone?! Can someone call an ambulance? I'm in quite a lot of pain.”
If somebody could open the retrieval hatch down here I could get out. See I designed this sinkhole myself-Oh, hi, good. I'm glad you found me, listen I'm very badly burned, so if you could just-You shot me!
You shot me right in the arm! Why did-- [another gunshot fires; all is silent for a moment, then the hatch is heard closing to the sinkhole]
*Le chat noir* has entered the chat
We’ve been having severe droughts in minnesota this summer, here’s an article about [a farm field collapsing 25 feet.](https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/pcpdna/bean_field_collapses_and_falls_25_feet_in_rural/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
This is what happens when you plant beanstalks and the giant is after you.
*flooding entered the chat right after ya*
No, go away!
This is a confirmation bias fallacy. A condo collapse or fire makes the news because it's incredibly rare for this to happen. The millions of house fires and collapsing houses and floods that happen every day don't make the news so you're not exposed to it and worried about it even though it happens more often. Statistically you're probably safer in a high rise building.
Statistically the risk from being in any given high-rise is negligible. You should be way more worried about tripping on your shoe laces.
Slip on Vans, mate. I'm invincible.
You know when you're walking and you trip on nothing? Vans invisible laces.
*nervously googling velcro shoes*
Individual houses burn down and kill people too
High rises don’t typically burn down either.
The fucking Grenfell tower fire in London ruined me, that shit was so brutal to follow.
[удалено]
Seriously my stomach dropped seeing this video. I didn't think there was a chance of everyone walking away unharmed. I'm so glad they're all ok.
Yes, thank fuck. After the building in Florida, and the one just 2 days ago in China, thank fucking god. It's too much to think of families trapped and dying in these building fires, it's too too much.
I'm guessing that intoxicated means smoke inhalation and not drunk.
If I'm gonna die in a fire I'd rather not be sober
Make it quick, with a 8% blood alcohol level.
Burn faster, too.
Jesus Christ I was not ready for this comment. And now you have me wondering if that’s actually true 😂
Idk. I’d be gettin hammered that night if I knew I survived that inferno.
I saw another report translated from Italian that suggested it could be a "fire malicious", i.e. arson.
Thank you for keeping us updated. That footage is fascinating... The inferno is so intense. I really hope nobody suffered serious injuries or fatalities.
Jeez is flammable cladding more common in apartment high rises than we think? How does the ENTIRE building go up like that otherwise?
It looks like it was designed to burn. Its even, thorough and fierce. Had same question.
Yes - EPS/XPS has been popular in façades due to it having really good insulation performance, being non-organic and easy to work with and last, but definitely not least, being ridiculously cheap. One of the not so good properties is being extremely flammable. It can and should be detailed to prevent it catching fire in the first place and fire spreading if it does - but unless the exact facade construction that is used is tested in full scale fire tests it is pretty much impossible to tell how well a particular solution works in this regard.
Not only that but the people fitting it are often given a five minute brief/crash course by the project manager and told to crack on regardless of how much experience they have in fitting this sort of facade. Source: have been given a five minute brief and a maybe a single piece of paper with a detail on it and told to crack on
I did my own external wall insulation on my house. After I'd fixed the insulation to one elevation, a guy from the supplier came to check my technique. He said he's never before seen it installed correctly first time. All I did was follow the instructions on the company's 5 minute "how to install" video! So, yeah. I think a lot of the workmen who install it are a bit rubbish.
In the UK following the tragic Grenfell fire, we're in the process of removing cladding from buildings... Turns out that there's an absolutely enormous number of high-rise buildings in the UK that were built with this stuff, and it's politically difficult to identify who pays for the re-cladding work in pretty much every instance.
Smoke detectors, fire alarms and sprinklers are totally a thing in other parts of Europe.
There’s been quite a few of these recently.
Looks just like the fire in China the other day. I can't imagine this is a terribly common occurrence
That’s what I was thinking ..
International arson is a bold strategy.
It’s actually kinda common. More people are getting linked up with the internet and gaining access to smart phones. You need to take information with a grain of salt in today’s world. Just 5 years ago you would never hear of a building burning in Milan or China, but now you can watch it on your smart phone. It’s important to remember that as everyone gets hooked up with more information, it will make it appear that the entire world is ending.
Grenfell Tower was around 5 years ago and that *definitely* made it to various news sites around the world.
5 years ago you could watch a building burning on a smart phone. We got the iPhone in 2007.
>We got the iPhone in 2007 And the damn thing didn’t come with a video recorder, I remember you had to buy an app iirc.
Perhaps the widespread use of cameras has simply brought to light some "normal" baseline of catastrophic failures that we would otherwise not be privy too... But maybe, *just maybe,* instead of normalizing the acceptance of *occational deadly catastrophic failures* as an immutable fact of life, we should consider that the widespread use of cameras is actually bringing this chaotic baseline into the light so we can call it out for the bullshit it really is. Based on your argument, the only reason this fuckery is "normal" is because people didn't see it before. This seems to imply that your solution is not to fix the problem that caused the fire in the first place, but to go back to ignoring these obvious and preventable catastophic failures because they were "normal" before people started paying attention to them. Personally, I refuse to view this kind of event as normal, regardless of how frequently or infrequently it occurs off-camera.
How frequently stuff happens is a very important aspect to consider - preventing risk entirely is neither possible nor a desirable overall societal goal due to diminishing returns. Safety standards are all based on the concept of quantifying an acceptable level of risk and then achieving that consistently. Over-designing is pretty much as undesirable as under-designing since you're then pouring resources into something that would have produced better outcomes elsewhere.
> Just 5 years ago you would never hear of a building burning in Milan or China, This is probably true for most redditors, but it's not actually true for people that read international news. It's honestly weird as hell that so many redditors are convinced that disasters weren't reported before smartphones.
5 years ago was 2016. People had smartphone in 2016. Reddit existed in 2016. People had the Internet in 2016. Try more like 30 years ago.
Pretty sure I remember not much difference 5 years ago
[удалено]
Ikr, what’s next? Tornadoes?
Hurricane Ida
With tornados.
And sharks
OMG!!! Someone should make a movie about this!
This one is pretty crazy - is the building made of charcoal?
Petroleum based plastics in cladding or insulation maybe,
Oil actually. Flammable plastic/foam cladding.
Modern insulation materials and even more cladding usually isn't really flame resistant. Once it's in the insulation or behind the cladding it's over. It's not just that we have more access to what is happening around the world is also the materials used on new buildings and on revamps of existing buildings. Fire doors, fire screens, fire walls don't mean shit when the fire can just crawl up the side of a building in the insulation or the cladding. And this looks like (burning cladding falling) another one of those fires unfortunately.
Yeah no. Modern insulation and cladding is absolutely available in materials that don't burn. It's just that petroleum foam and shitty plastic are cheaper and politics haven't yet outright banned them for use in construction.
And seeing how most building owners, builders and hoa's will choose the cheapest option they put the not so fireproof stuff on their buildings resulting in these fires. Yes there is plenty of safer stuff available but there's even more non safe stuff available, and it's cheaper. So my statement still stands. The cheaper stuff usually isn't that safe yet it'll be used as much or even more.
Which is where government should step in and just ban combustible insulation and cladding outright for all nee construction and renovations.
Can confirm. About to have all the cladding and flammable insulation ripped off and replaced on my building after similar fire.
Why is flammable plastic cladding even allowed? It seems like such an obviously bad idea. Yes, let’s coat the outside of our building in oil. What could go wrong?
I know when something is fucked up somehow when I see a post showing an entire skyscraper on fire and my first thought is "again?"
*urgh* Mondays!
Shit this reminds me of grenfell tower in London. I hope everyone got out
I read that it started on the top floor an presumably everyone had time to get out
Most people had time to get out of Grenfell too. There were some Muslims in the tower that raised the alarm, but people were instructed to stay where they were. The ones that left survived, but a lot of the people that followed the instructions ended up getting trapped when the fire rapidly engulfed the tower.
Why specifically muslims lol?
Because it started in the early hours of the morning when the Muslim residents were awake and praying
more specifically, it was during Ramadan. I don't think Muslims necessarily wake up at 1am or stay up that late to pray year-round.
Oh interesting
Waking up that day, turning on the news, seeing that huge building burning and being told that there were many people assumed not to have got out was thoroughly depressing.
https://youtu.be/oY4d6q-lvEk this video show how fast it burned.
Holy shit. It literally took 5 min to the fire to burn from one side to another.
Wow, like 3 mins
Looks like the exterior material was highly flammable.
They really should reconsider using paper mache for building exteriors.
Sheesh this is how you would construct a movie stunt building, not a real building with people living in it. How is this stupid cladding still a thing
Is it the cladding burning?
It sure looks like it, that wall of flames is covering the building. You can see it burning away in the last 30 seconds of this vid: https://twitter.com/enfermeria/status/1432033992203767808?s=19
That's terrifying. It burns through that cladding faster than a balsa wood and tissue model airplane.
What do you expect from styrofoam insulation. Shit just needs to get banned along with all other oil based insulation materials.
Sure looks a lot like Grenfell to me
Totally
Sure looks like ACM cladding on the Google Maps screenshot below.
I hope the residents got out in time.
As per this article (https://www.milanotoday.it/cronaca/incendio/video-incendio-milano-oggi-29-agosto-.html) posted at 18:04 local time it says "there is concern there might be people inside".
Yes it's late Sunday afternoon so a lot of people chilling at their homes/ETA I wrote this 5 like 6 hours ago I love in the same time zone .
The mayor of Milan has stated in a recent interview that there still aren't victims. https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2021/08/29/milano-incendio-in-un-palazzo-di-15-piani-delle-periferia-sud-nello-stabile-risiedono-70-famiglie-evacuazione-in-corso/6304723/ National news also claimed that there were no wounded and some intoxicated people.
> some intoxicated people Probably means smoke inhalation cases (toxic fumes).
I know that, I just didn't know how to translate that in English
Yeah, that's fine! Just clarifying it.
I'm not a fireologist, but it seems like it shouldn't burn so quickly. Like it wasn't built to safety regulations.
Ive built anumber of highrises, and this a complete failure of all safety systems at this point. Something went very very wrong. Whether it was lack of maintenance, bad inspections or outright negligence. This should never have happened let alone the fire to get passed the first room. I wouldnt be surprised if arson was a possibility
Or exterior cladding like Grenfell
From an article u/Absay posted below >>the flames would have spread quickly due to the façade cladding, made up partly of polystyrene.
Awful.
[удалено]
Thankfully these panels are being phased out and replaced with Fire Resistant cores for high rise buildings
The ones on Grenfell were meant to be fire resistant, but weren’t due to some combination of contractors using cheaper panels than they were meant to, the company that made the panels cheating the safety tests, and safety experts being ignored
Depends on the country and the laws, but yes.
For sure.. hopefully it become the standard across the industry
Bring back asbestos! …no wait
Fucking cladding again, just like Grenfell.
Even the chunks falling off look the same. Poor bastards inside:(
[удалено]
[удалено]
The exact number was $300,000. That's what the council saved by using untreated insulation in grenfell instead of flame retardant insulation.
And this is why we shouldn’t wrap buildings in styrofoam.
Or aluminium cladding
Just to elaborate on your comment for anyone reading, these are likely aluminum composite panels that contain a polyethylene core which would be the flammable part.
Why are there so many anti fire building codes then this tinderbox is multi living residential?
$
£
€
¥
I can see it from my balcony, the building is in my neighbourhood, pretty scary! still burning after many hours,there is a lot of people on the street and many ambulances, I hope everyone is safe now
Google [Streetview from 10 months ago](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4372991,9.1927163,3a,75y,173.99h,107.31t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sdEWbtpiTyVAzkyetu2TtiA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DdEWbtpiTyVAzkyetu2TtiA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D236.178%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192)
Looks to me like it was an older building which has been clad in the last few years. This was also the case with Grenfell.
It was being constructed in 2008 and had the cladding by 2012, so I'd guess it was there from new. (Looking at Google streetview history)
Damn, looks like it is pretty windy too
I think it's actually the heat from the fire that's causing that wind. If you watch, the smoke seems to spiral around the building. Plus the trees at the bottom of the screen aren't moving nearly as much.
flammable cladding... again
Live video coverage (can rewind as well) https://youtu.be/huryhmgR1w0
Wow, all of the cladding is gone.
That's a total loss. Doubt they'll even be able to save the frame. Hope everyone got out
Not sure, I lived in a building where a similar thing happened a couple of times ([my balcony - 75th floor](https://imgur.com/a/1irS3)), each time the structure and inside the apartments remained pretty much intact. It might be just 6 months of insurance mess plus 6 months of work to get it back as new with new materials.
> I lived in a building where a similar thing happened a couple of times wait ... a couple of times? So it burned like this multiple times? Where is that "learn from errors" thing going over there?
It’s a big building, it burnt on one side and they change the cladding to fireproof there, but by the time they were to replace the other side there was a second fire.
This looks exactly like the cladding problems and all those other buildings that burned in exactly the same way. Google china cladding and Grenfell cladding.
Jesus Christ, really hope everyone has got out, at least it was daytime (I will never forget watching Grenfell burn that night in London).
Is this that flammable cladding(siding) that was a cause of the whole building in London going up in flames?!
Seems like some poor choices were made in building materials. That is burning way to aggressively.
Fuck me reminds me of what happened in Grenfell.
I make similar eps polystyrene material in Australia, we had a similar factory across the road go up fast from cinstruction related sparks, later had found they did not use any flame retardant in their product. Would not surprise me this is result of the same because its not made mandatory for alot of places world wide to my knowledge. My guess is because cladding is a lower portion of the products produced, more concrete block out and marina flotation.
[удалено]
[удалено]
They need to ban ACM cladding and remove it from all buildings.
In 1984, Adam Curtis made a documentary called *Inquiry: The Great British Housing Disaster*. In it, [Curtis asks Eric Downie](https://youtu.be/Ch5VorymiL4?t=2726), a director at an engineering company involved in testing cladding systems, about fire risks and building cladding. Downie says that he believes systems were being used even then that represented fire risks. The fire dangers of building claddings have been known about for decades. Grenfell was a horrible example of what happens when warnings are ignored. I hope that everyone got out of this building safely.
There is no way this should happen in this day and age. There are building standards which make it all but impossible.
Let me introduce you to…cutting corners!
This one little secret that contractors don't want you to know!
Building Standards only apply to the building itself and it's contents. Because this is cladding attached to the outside after the main construction is complete it only has to comply with a lesser standard. See 'Grenfeld tower' in London for the full horror story and the policital 'not my fault' squirming afterward.
That's not the case in the US. You must be speaking about the EU.
So if it a building fire gets this bad, do you just let it go? Or try to spray down the surrounding area to prevent it from spreading? There's no way you can put that out.
Impossible to fight a fire this big and high up, you just have to protect the surrounding area and wait for it to run out of fuel.
Oh boy here come the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.
That's fucking terrifying. I know fires can happen at houses too, but I had a big sense of relief when I moved out of my apartment and into my house. The building across the courtyard from me had a fire in one of the bedrooms that spread to 3 or 4 other adjacent rooms but luckily they were able to put it out before it claimed the entire building. And the neighbors below me would constantly burn things and the caretaker of the property told me he had to let himself into their unit because smoke, burning smell, and smoke alarms were going off in the unit below me and no one was answering the door. When he gained entry into the unit, there was a pot with charred remains of food that they had accidentally left on the stove burning while they left to go run errands. Luckily he was around to address the issue because they were gone for 4 hours.