Steak and Cherry

Big city centre fires are quite unusual these days due to improved fire detection; last night's fire in Sauchiehall Street looks to have been quite serious and could have been much worse. The crews who attended made some rescues in what must have been quite challenging circumstances, and they  rescued a family from the top floor of the building. 

If you live in a flat, you're dependent on the fire safety of those around you - an even greater risk if you live above a restaurant or shops. I consider it a responsibility to have a smoke detector - and Strathclyde Fire and Rescue will come and fit one for free if you ask. Do it today. 

On a less serious note - I was only in the Steak and Cherry once, at the end of a very random night out, but I'm still sorry to see it go.

Shortly after 11pm on Tues 8th Feb 2011, Strathclyde Fire and Rescue's Operations 

support centre in Johnstone received reports of fire at the premises of The Steak & 

Cherry Restaurant in Sauchiehall street, Glasgow.Initial appliances from Cowcaddens, 

Springburn and Yorkhill community fire stations were quickly mobilised and in 

attendance.

The blaze which is thought to have started in the kitchen area of the premises,  

quickly spread to the upper floors and roofspace of the tenement style property. Due 

to the construction of these property types,hidden fire spread via enclosed voids and 

spaces, are notoriously difficult and dangerous for crew to tackle.
 
On arrival the crews were faced with a rapidly developing fire involving the 

restaurant itself and spreading to occupied residential tenement flats above. These 

intial crews had to deal simultaneously with the original fire, it's spread to the 

upper floors and more immediately,a family trapped by smoke in their top floor flat. 

In total two males, two females and a child were rescued by firefighter's using fire 

service ladders, which had been manhandled into position to an elevated area to the 

rear of the property.

Commenting on this aspect of the incident in particular, Area commander Garry Milne 

commended the crews saying " the rescue of this family from the upper floors, was a 

textbook ladder rescue".

The family was subsequently transported to the Royal Infirmary for a precautionary 

check-up. 

While this rescue was underway,firefighters assisted by their Police colleagues 

systematically searched and cleared adjacent flats.
 
Additional fire engines and crews were quickly ordered on to the incident, with at it's 

height, 11 engines, including two with a high reach capability responding and around 70 

Firefighters in attendance.
 
Premises and flats on either side of the affected part of the building were evacuated as a 

precautionary measure and in conjunction with Strathclyde Police and Local authority 

partners, overnight accomodation was arranged  for householders who required it.
 
The blaze was brought under control by a combination of high volume water jets being 

directed down from a high reach fire appliance and the sustained and determined efforts 

of Firefighter's entering with hand held hose lines.
 
Control of the incident was assisted greatly by Strathclyde Police organising traffic control,

cordons and an initial rest centre for residents evacuated.
 
A joint investigation into the cause of the blaze will be carried out by Strathclyde Fire and 

Rescue and Strathclyde Police. It is expected that crews will be in attendance for some 

considerable time and local traffic diversions have been put in place.
 
There is no further information available at this time.
 

Cheapside Street memorial

I was privileged to attend the memorial events on Sunday for the 50th anniversary of the Cheapside Street fire.

The event began with a wreath-laying ceremony at Necropolis, followed by a service at Glasgow Cathedral, and the unveiling of a plaque at a ceremony in George Square.

The whole day was very moving, and it made me reflect not only on the devastating loss of life back in 1960, but of the very real risks fire crews face every day.

A book to mark the anniversary has been launched, and I hope to get myself a copy soon.

Firefighters - invite them round!

As regular readers of the blog will know, I’ve been supporting a lot of the work done by Strathclyde Fire and Rescue. While I was visiting Calton Fire Station to see Firereach in action, I offered up my flat as a means of promoting Home Fire Safety Visits, an offer which was met very enthusiastically by the new Area Commander Frank Waters and Stephen McKee, Community Safety Co-ordinator for North East Glasgow.

White Watch came to my flat (as they do with any other Home Fire Safety Visit), along with a journalist from the News of the World and a photographer. The team ran through the Home Fire Safety Visit as they would with any member of the public, checking each room for fire risks such as overloaded plug sockets, candles, and other flammable items.

I live in an older tenement building and a lot of the plug sockets are single ones, so I do use a lot of extension cords. I was reminded that they can overheat, particularly when devices like hair straighteners and hairdryers are plugged into the same one. I learned that the old style plug adaptors are more hazardous than the new bar ones, and I now switch all adaptors off when they’re not in use.

A significant risk factor is of course smoking – cigarettes left burning when people nod off in their armchairs or in bed can quickly cause a fire to break out. I don’t smoke, or allow people to smoke in my flat, so that wasn’t directly an issue for me. It could be an issue for me though if it happens to one of my neighbours. I live in a close with ten other households, and I’m sure a few of them smoke. The fire fighters told me a recent fire where the person had fallen asleep, but the neighbours heard the smoke alarm going off, and called 999. If they hadn’t, their neighbour could have died, and the fire could easily have spread to other houses in the street.

I was shocked to find that my own smoke detector, which had been in the flat since I moved in two years ago, was found to be faulty. The fire fighter who checked it reckoned it was a loose connection. As part of the service, Strathclyde Fire and Rescue will fit a smoke alarm for free. It has a ten-year lifespan, and is smaller and neater than most I’ve seen. You can also press a button to turn off the beeper if it goes off by accident (I set it off soon after while cooking bacon!).

I feel a good deal safer knowing that I now have a properly installed, functioning, reliable smoke alarm, and I would recommend the Home Fire Safety visit to anyone. The fire fighters carrying out the visit encourage you also to make an escape plan, to think about what you would do in a fire, and to make your own home safer. They pointed out things I wouldn’t have thought of, like the importance of having well-fitted doors to prevent the spread of smoke. It’s also worth recommending to family and friends – we could all be victims of fire, and it’s clear that the best early warning is a smoke detector.

Book your Home Fire Safety Visit today. Call 0800 0731 999, text "Check" to 61611 on your mobile phone or follow the link to fill in the request form.

Photos by Carol McCabe Photography
35 Summertown Road
Glasgow
G51 2QA
Web: www.cmcpictures.co.uk

Sprinklers save lives

I hadn't thought much about sprinklers until today - well, other than reckoning they're a good idea and generally thinking that they should be fitted wherever possible. At lunchtime, I attended a presentation by Strathclyde Fire and Rescue, who have recently been stepping up their campaign to have sprinklers fitted in homes.

They showed a video of the outcome of a fire in two very similar rooms; one with a sprinkler, one without. The temperature in the rooms rose quickly with the fire, but the sprinkler detected this and went off automatically at around seventy - seventy-five degrees centigrade, doused the fire and the room was saved. Without the sprinkler, the fire in the other room spread, and the room very quickly got destroyed. No prizes for guessing which room on the left was which!
What really struck me was the speed that the fire spread, and the Fire and Rescue officers I spoke to reinforced this point to me after the presentation. By the time a fire crew gets to a house fire, it could easily be too late. A sprinkler could intervene and prevent a fire - the system on display today showed that it could also have flashing lights and alarms to alert neighbours in a tenement of block of flats.

It was also mentioned that lots of new houses come with burglar alarms as standard now, but not with sprinklers. I suppose people tend not to think about fire prevention when they buy a property, but given the risks and the statistics, fire is probably more likely to happen.

I came away from the meeting thinking that it's time to actually force house builders to take fire safety into consideration through legislation. You could ask them to do it voluntarily, but I'm not sure that that's working thus far. Interestingly, pie-eating former Minister Frank McAveety spoke at the meeting, and was still swithering over whether he favoured voluntarism or enforcement through legislation; he talked about Cross - Party Groups and Petitions as a means of bringing this forward. I think an SNP government could to better than that, and I hope the Fire and Rescue services get serious and get chatting to the government on this issue pronto.