Washing machine fire kills elderly man
An elderly man is thought to have been killed in a matter of seconds after inhaling cyanide when his washing machine went up in flames last year.
John Russell, 80, who lived in Lower Morden is thought to have died after trying to extinguish a washing machine fire in his kitchen on 18th September 2010.
London Fire Brigade reported that Mr Russell’s washing machine was set alight due to an electrical fault and the flames then spread to other nearby flammable materials.
Mr Atkinson from the London Fire Brigade said: “We believe that, at some point, he intervened and probably tried to tackle the fire by shutting the door behind him to keep it confined. Unfortunately that exacerbated the situation for him. He seemed to be an old-school type of gentleman but it would have been better to have left it.”
A verdict of accidental death was found and coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox said: “I find that, on the balance of probabilities, it was something as toxic as cyanide that killed him very quickly indeed before he could have been burned. No smoke alarms were fitted but would it have prevented this death? I suspect it would not have done.”
Council admits insufficient Fire Risk Assessments at Lakanal House
On 3rd July 2009, a serious fire broke out on the 9th floor of the Lakanal House flats in Camberwell, London.
150 people were evacuated from the flats and 6 people lost their lives. 18 fire engines attended the blaze.
Southwark Council said that it had spent around £3,500,000 on refurbishment to meet current fire safety standard.
Kim Humphreys of Southwark Council said: “London Fire Brigade provided our housing officers with training which we presumed, erroneously, would meet the requirements. This has not been the case and that’s why we decided that we are going to have outside experts provide us with fire risk assessments for those complex blocks. We have identified that we want to go further than just the basic fire risk assessment and we will be carrying out intrusive inspections of those blocks.”
The Council have now taken further steps to ensure that staff receive sufficient training. An article on the Councils website said: “As we are London’s largest social landlord, with over 50,000 properties and over 300 high rise blocks, we take our responsibilities seriously. The responsibility to do a fire risk assessment was transferred to local councils in 2006. We asked the London Fire Brigade to train our staff to conduct fire risk assessments and they trained 132 Southwark housing officers. Following the training programme a number of follow-up sessions were run to support staff. Blocks over six storeys have had an FRA conducted by a council officer. Where we believe it is necessary we can escalate the fire risk assessment for further technical or intrusive work, carried out by external experts”.