Fire Fatalities beyond the dwelling of fire origin in Scotland

3 Phase 2- Review of Fire Investigation reports

3.1 Phase 2 (FI reports)- Data supplied by SFRS

During Phase 1, 105 fatalities of interest were identified to be reviewed further to consider if there had been any occupant fatalities beyond the flat of fire origin. SFRS were requested to provide these fire investigation reports, and they were subsequently accessed following meetings with SFRS personnel on two occasions, once in Cambuslang and once in London.

In total, 99 FI reports (covering 105 fatalities) were identified for detailed investigation.

The SFRS were unable to provide 22 reports (covering 22 fatalities).

The reason as to why 22 reports were unavailable was due to the majority of these being completed by hand during the period from 2009 to 2011; these reports were not transferred across to the electronic system and so were not available. Also, some of the reports were still active, not closed out and therefore not available. Additionally, SFRS have a ten-year retention schedule for FI reports and so some may well have been deleted permanently.

The “Time of call” from the IRS reports was used to identify the corresponding FI report.

There were clear differences between the “Extent of damage” data obtained from the IRS review compared with the same data from the FI reports. The reporting in IRS was often with damage extending beyond the room of flat of fire origin (see Table 5) and this includes smoke and heat damage. For the review of FI reports, the extent of damage was limited to the spread of the fire only.

Additionally, the SFRS requested that a further 5 reports (covering 5 fatalities) be investigated as they may be of interest to the project, bringing the total number of reports investigated to 82 reports (covering 88 fatalities).

Each report was read in its entirety to extract the following key information:

• SFRS Incident ID and Time of call (to identify and confirm incident to be reviewed),
• Summary of where the fire originated and how far the fire spread,
• Location of where fatality was found and confirming whether this was beyond the “dwelling of fire origin”,
• A search was made for any mention of the word “Clad” (to investigate whether the report made mention of cladding that had contributed towards fire spread).

The quantitative data resulting from the above analysis is reported in Section 3.2 of this report.

Additionally, some of the reports with more general, but relevant, findings of interest are included in Section 3.3 of this report.

3.2 Phase 2 (FI reports)- Key findings

During the review of the 82 FI reports (covering 88 fatalities), it was clear that, seven FI reports (covering seven fatalities), (8% of the data sets) related to deaths which were not direct fire fatalities (see Table 11). During a previous collaborative research project [2] investigating all domestic dwelling fire fatalities in Scotland (including houses), it was observed that 12 of 123 FI reports were not fire fatalities which is around 10%, similar to the levels reported in this study.

In one of these cases, the cause of death was reported as “Death in a fire following an explosion” in which the explosion took place in the void between two flats. This is not within the remit of this project, which is focused on fire spread beyond the flat of fire origin, so was excluded.

This resulted in 75 fire fatality reports, covering 81 fire fatalities, from which the following information was extracted and is presented in this section:

• where the fire originated,
• where the fire fatality(ies) was / were found,
• if there were any fatalities beyond the dwelling of fire origin,
• if cladding was considered to be a contributing factor to the fatalities.

3.2.1 Fire Origin

The frequency table below summarizes the number of fatalities with the room/location of fire origin.

A similar proportion of fires originated in the bedroom, kitchen and living room that in total accounted for 80% of fire fatalities. Around 10% of the fires originated in the hallway with 6% being deliberate fires, all with pockets in multiple locations.

3.2.2 Fire Fatality location

The frequency table below summarises the different locations in which the fire fatality was found.

The greatest numb er of fire fatalities (42%) were found in the bedroom, next was the living room (17%) and then with 15% taking place in the hallway inside the flat as people attempted to leave by the front door. Only 10% of fire fatalities actually occurred in the kitchen, which is equal in number to those found in the bathroom.

3.2.3 Fire Fatality beyond dwelling of fire origin

The table below summarises the number of fatalities within or beyond the flat of fire origin.

There was only one case of a fire fatality beyond the flat of fire origin and this is explored in detail in Section 3.3.1.

3.2.4 Cladding

The table below summarizes the number of fire fatalities and any mention of cladding in the FI reports.

Of all the FI reports reviewed, there were no cases where the cladding contributed to the spread of the fire beyond the flat of fire origin.

There was one case where heat and smoke damage affected the exterior cladding around another flat’s windows.

There was one instance where one window and the guttering of the flat above the flat of fire origin were heat and smoke damaged, but no mention was made to any cladding.

In both cases, this level of damage is reasonably foreseeable as, during flashover, windows do fail thus permitting fire to spread outside the compartment and potentially result in damage to the floor above. In both cases shown above, timely firefighting activities prevented further damage and brought the fire under control.

3.3 Phase 2 (FI reports) - Additional findings

There were some findings within a few of the FI reports that may be of interest and are therefore included in this section with some additional relevant information.

3.3.1 Fire fatality in flat next to flat of fire origin

There was one case of arson that led to a fire fatality in another flat. The resident X1 of flat X (on an upper storey) set multiple seats of fire before leaving their flat. The resident hoped that after the fire, the council would offer a replacement flat which better met their needs.

Sometime after the fires had been set, resident Y1 of flat Y, adjacent to flat X, became aware of the fire and called SFRS. Resident Y1 tried to escape but was unable to on account of a build-up of smoke in the communal area. Resident Y1 returned to Flat Y and shut the door but did not lock it.

When the SFRS arrived, they evacuated the building and commenced a search of flats X and Y. Resident Y1, was middle aged with no history of a medical condition and was assessed as not being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, was found deceased in Flat Y.

Photos from the FI report indicate smoke staining on the walls of flat Y to be around shoulder level. The cause of death was recorded as inhalation of smoke and fire gases. Resident Y had a level of carboxyhaemoglobin of around 50%.

The SFRS investigators believed resident Y, whilst trying to make an escape, left the flat door open. It is suspected by SFRS that smoke entered flat Y via the open front door during this attempted escape. It is not known whether resident Y1’s exposure to the toxic smoke occurred whilst in the communal area or in Flat Y or both.

The SFRS fire Investigators were contacted by BRE Global to discuss this case. The SFRS fire Investigators were of the opinion, “had the deceased remained in their own Flat, for the entire duration of the fire event (without attempting to escape) and instead followed SFRS advice to open windows and ‘stay put’, they believed this individual would likely not have died. The SFRS fire investigators reported there was no failure of compartmentation from the flat of fire origin to the flat in which the fire fatality occurred at the time the fatality was recovered. BRE Global is not in a position to verify or challenge the observation about compartmentation breach but notes in the FI report which referred to the floor of flat Y collapsing into flat Z directly below it, at some point during firefighting operations.

Nobody was hurt when the collapse occurred as, by this time, the building had already been evacuated. The fire/smoke spread leading to the fatality was considered to be internal to the building and therefore not related to the external cladding.

3.3.2 Fatality in flats of more than one storey

There were 2 cases where fire fatalities occurred in a flat on a different floor to the floor of fire origin.

In one case of arson, a fire was set, using accelerant through the letterbox, on the ground floor. The resulting fire led to three fatalities at first floor level of the same flat. The fire/smoke spread leading to the fatalities was considered to be internal to the building and therefore not related to the external cladding.

In another case, an accidental fire started at the bottom of the stairs (on the ground floor). The resulting fire led to one fire fatality on the first floor of the same flat. The fire/smoke spread leading to the fatality was considered to be internal to the building and therefore not related to the external cladding.