Shocked when last night when I first saw any footage of the fire in the carpark and this morning I understand that part of the carpark has collapsed. This reminded me of a similar fire in Liverpool back in 2017 which resulted in the demolition of the carpark. What is scary is that according to this report, the lessons of that fire still have not been learned. I also have attached the fire brigade report of the incident.

 

Lessons of Liverpool car park blaze have not been learnt, safety body warns    | New Civil Engineer

 

 

kings-dock-car-park-fire-iit.pdf

Got to laugh at the report about the Liverpool fire being hot enough to melt aluminium, it has a far lower melting point than steel 🙄. Be that is it may, the Luton car park was all exposed steel beams and therefore lacked the extra protection against fire like the report from the "New Civil Engineer" states, this extract from that report certainly is very true for the Luton fire.

 

"The Echo Arena MSCP in Liverpool demonstrated that a 15-minute fire-resistance rating may be totally inadequate for exposed steel framed MSCP structures occupied by modern vehicles.

 

However, the reporter claims that designers and clients are refusing to change their methods until the regulations change.

 

“There is little doubt, says the reporter, that the Echo Arena car park may have collapsed if it had been constructed to current standards in unprotected structural steelwork,” the report adds."

One hopes that the car park owners will be refused their insurance claims for not following best practice. A few big losses might change attitudes where legislation hasn’t forced it.

 

 Or possibly the car owners insurers may go after the car park owner to recover losses.

I doubt that will happen, car parking is always at drivers risk and that will be I fear the angle of some insurers in order to reduce the payouts to owners. Car parks I agree need to be made to be safer though with at least spacings of a car door and half between adjacent spacings and fire wall between rows. I think that sprinklers may not a good idea as burning fuel will simply float on top of water and thus spread fire much quicker. Greater spacings and barriers and no exposed steel frames would give fire services more time to contain the fire. 

38 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

at least spacings of a car door and half between adjacent spacings

You make that sound like a cheap and easy fix. Capacity of (any) car park so adjusted would be massively reduced though.