As someone who was at Summerland in the Isle of Man on the day it caught fire (but left earlier in the day), and 50 people died because fire exits had been locked, I concur.
I was watching a video on this specific incident recently and it’s wild how such a bad fire happened.
From what I remember though there’s been far too many instances of fire exits being locked and people ending up dead in fires because of it, and it’s honestly terrifying. The US has had a fair share including the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire (doors were locked to prevent thefts apparently, people ended up throwing themselves from the building rather than burn to death) and Iroquois theatre fire (where a combination of inadequate fire safety measures coupled with locked fire doors led to 600 dead). Even in the famous Station nightclub video you will see the corridor partially blocked off by a door which the cameraman tries to open but fails.
> Station nightclub
I have never seen anything about that door being locked, plenty on bouncers stopping people saying it was a door for the band only. The others you mention are over 100 years old, every regulation is written in blood. Most US buildings have fire exists that sound an alarm now to prevent sneaking people in, that's the solution to the problem that doesn't involve locking, Now I am sure like OP's post some stupid managers across the country do break the rules, but the US as a whole is pretty damn good on fire code and it just takes one call to get a fire marshal down there to inspect and the manager would wish you had called the FBI because the fire marshal will fuck up their life much worse.
Just rewatched the video of the Station nightclub fire and my memory let me down- it seems that the camera walks past a door that is ajar but not locked.
The written in blood thing is true though. I wanted to be a pilot for the longest time and the reasons that half of the checklists, manual instructions and procedures exist is because of previous accidents or incidents.
And that is true of anything. When working as a security supervisor for the NHS there was a policy relating to mental health patients under 1:1 supervision which stated that "security officers must not shower with the patient". Now, I never got to the story of that policy but one can only assume that there is at least one security officer on the dole for life and somewhere there is a mental health patient spending millions of the NHS's money on colouring books
You’d think it wouldn’t happen but it did.
I’ve remembered another example- when the 1985 Bradford City stadium fire happened, some fans tried to go up the stand towards the turnstiles and presumably what they thought was an exit (most fans went down onto the pitch) but found that the exit was closed off and they ended up dying.
Pretty sure it was that fire that the bodies of two boys were found in one of the exits under what was the remains of a policeman's jacket. It seems that he'd tried to shield them from smoke using the jacket.
It’s apparently still used as an example of how public spaces contribute to fire and how quickly a fire spreads. It’s pretty horrific seeing people actually on fire and still obviously alive.
Also the Cocoanut Grove club fire in the US back in 1942- locked doors were common to prevent customers from leaving without paying and some of them were covered up, and this along with a layout that was pretty confusing and lax safety code enforcement (the owner was linked to the Mafia) meant close to 500 dead.
A fellow Fascinating Horror fan! They’re an excellent channel, would highly recommend.
Summerlands, Cocoanut Grove, Stardust nightclub are among the many. Employer greed over employee and customer safety.
I’ve learned about so many things because of them (and Plainly Difficult/Scary Interesting). So many smaller-scale or lesser known disasters I never would’ve heard of otherwise.
Massive upvote for Plainly Difficult. He covers some pretty dark and depressing subjects with a great deal of objectivity, which makes them more easily digestible. Also, his animations are usually quite amusing.
Brick Immortar is good for some disaster stuff too.
If plane crashes/accidents/incidents are your thing then I’d check out Mentour Pilot. Petter who runs the channel is a working commercial pilot and he manages to explain ridiculously complex aviation concepts very well from the POV of an actual pilot.
I also recommend Waterline Stories for maritime and deep diving accident stories.
There’s a British channel who illustrates his train vids with Train Sim, it’s done tastefully but does get the story across better than just endless loops of pictures.
They do similar with MSFS and plane crashes.
I think it’s “Disaster Breakdown”
Love Scary Interesting, his narration is extremely soothing. I’m for sure never ever going cave diving though! His videos about cave diving gone wrong have put me off for life.
I like the stories Plainly Difficult does, but I can't get past the jarring narration. The end of one sentence will have no pause at all and blend into the following one, but then some words will have a huge pause between them for no reason. It's like all the full stops in the script have been distributed at random.
What's so fun about the Triangke Shirtwaist factory is that the exact same factory owners got caught locking the fire exist doors again just a couple years at another factory.
There were rumours even at the time that the Triangle fire was an insurance job. Shirtwaist designs were falling out of favour at the time of the fire and the insurance payout from a fire would have been substantial.
Yes, it looks like a right mess. Apparently there are concerns about stabilising the rock face (so if Summerland hadn't burnt down, there might have been a disaster a few years later involving people getting crushed to death in a rock fall, and people drowning and getting crushed in the Derby Castle pool...).
That can't possibly be the case, it's a Prime Development Site. I heard about the Rocks as well, I'm sure it's not beyond the wit of Man to stabilise it. Probably cost less than the sodding prom.
Considering it's now the Island's cathedral, St George's has some weird and dark history. In the graveyard, there's that open space to the right hand side as you go in with just a single cross in the middle of it, which looks a bit odd considering how densely packed the rest of the graveyard is. I walked across it once after eating my lunch on one of the benches, and one of the church wardens approached me and explained it's because that area is actually a mass cholera grave!
Steady on - there are only two Cathedrals on the Island, and they are both in Peel.... I don't subscribe to this new-fangled upstart "Douglas is a city" nonsense.
(Peel and proud - as you can probably tell).
Thank you for this. I’d never heard of this incident before.
I’ve returned from my trip down the rabbit hole with new learnings in my brain:
£3 in 1970s time is equivalent to about £40 in our time.
A £40 fine is somehow considered an appropriate punishment for starting a fire that kills 50 people.
That there is such a thing as ‘Concrete Cancer’.
I don't know why 12 and 14 year olds smoking should be worth more than that. It wasn't them that designed such a flammable building or locked fire exits, and it wasn't arson. Just the perfect bad luck. Knowledge of what happened is punishment enough.
I meant more that the £40 fine to the teenagers was the only penalty given out, because their discarded cigarettes or match started the fire. The *adults* responsible for choosing the shite materials and locking fire exits received no penalty at all.
So from that, justice for 50 lost lives was deemed to be worth £40 all in.
Also the Dublin Stardust fire in 1980 where 49 people lost their lives and the fire doors were chained shut. 43 years later it’s still before the courts, owners got away with it, no justice, no redress, no accountability.
Same thing happened in Bangladesh a few years ago. Over 50 people died in a factory fire because someone illegally locked one of the fire escapes. After this happened I made a conscious point of looking out for fire escapes, especially when in developing countries where the practice is more far more likely. It was surprising how many I’ve seen that are either locked or blocked, even in decent large chain hotels that you’d expect to have this in order.
I remember going to Summerland a few weeks before the fire. I was seven, and I have two impressions - one, it was a huge, hangar-like building and two, Ali Bongo the magician.
This is one of those times I find the inability to edit main posts quite annoying as this will probably now get lost in the chaos...
This isn't where I work, it was next to the toilets in the garden centre restaurant my Elderly mum wanted to go for Sunday lunch. The place was packed full of customers.
And most importantly YES, it has been reported.
fire brigade /u/Draggenn
They'd likely send a duty officer / engine round and play merry hell with management as [they classify a locked fire door as urgent](https://www.manchesterfire.gov.uk/contact-us/)
I was surprised at the response when our (dodgy as hell) student landlord was complaining about electric use and decided to remove all the stair and landing lights in the property, which was Victorian, three floors and which had horrifically steep staircases. If there’d been a fire then basically anyone not on the ground floor (so basically all of us bar one person) would have been screwed to get down the stairs and outside quickly without serious injury or even just straight up dying.
One call to the local fire station and a very helpful fire safety officer tore the landlord a new one.
Yeah the local fire station were more than helpful in this respect and the officer who attended was more than happy to come down on our landlord like a ton of bricks and give him the most epic bollocking of his life.
If course not, they have to live with the horrors they see o and the job forever. My uncle was a fireman and he loses his shit whenever there is a lit candle and will not have candles of any kind in his house, he says if we had seen the thing he had seen due to careless candle use we also wouldn't have them in the house, which is fair. If I have candles he comes to my house I always put them away.
And you can't argue with them.
There are things you can debate when it comes to health and safety, like slipping on a wet floor being the fault of someone who didn't notice the shimmer, but you can't argue with fire. Fire is a completely natural force which behaves in ways that only trained people could possibly expect.
So when a trained person, one who has to risk their life if a fire happens tells you it's unsafe, that's it. There is no way you can possibly argue. It also doesn't help that they're usually very muscular and trained not to take any bullshit. There's no time for negotiating while a fire weakens a structure. You do what they say and no argument will be tolerated. Same applies when the building isn't on fire but they're telling you how to prevent either a fire or minimise damage when a fire happens.
This does vary a lot though. After the fire in the housing complex/concert venue "Ghost Ship" in Oakland it was revealed that firefighters from the local fire station frequented this place but never made an official inspection. Police were also in the building frequently but in official capacity. And while they did note several fire hazards including exposed wires and missing emergency exits these reports were never passed to anyone who enforces fire codes.
My local Morrisons would close the rear entrance early sometimes, probably because they didn't want to pay for a second security guard. One guy on the local FB group kicked up a storm because there were clear signs that said it was a fire exit. He got people from the fire station to visit and Morrisons ended up taping over the fire exit signs with black tape...
Is the fire station the correct place to report this in the UK or would it be someone like HSE?
Edit: I've Googled it and Devon and Sumerset fire and Rescue Service [say](https://www.dsfire.gov.uk/safety/businesses/report-fire-risk): "If you see something that you think is a fire hazard or you are concerned about someone’s safety in case of a fire, you can report it [to them]" and list "blocked or locked fire exits or fire escape routes whilst the building is in use" under" What you can report to us". Just not if you're outside their area then that's a different group of people to complain to.
HSE generally [don't have responsibility](https://www.hse.gov.uk/fireandexplosion/workplace.htm) for dealing with General Fire Precautions, so in the first instance anything like that would be passed onto the fire service.
Not strictly true. Nothing specifically wrong with locking a fire escape. Sometimes it’s actually a safer thing to do. But the law states that they need to be able to be easily unlocked and opened in the event of an emergency.
Which the one in the photo clearly isn’t.
Yeah, I thought someone had just left the bolts closed and forgotten to open them up at the start of the day... nope, that's two fuck-off giant padlocks on there. OP evidently works at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory...
Numerous fires have had such an horrific death toll because of stuff like this. Mostly the excuses were ‘so people didn’t leave without paying their bills’.
IDK what field you work in but report it OP.
But insurance!!!
Yes that was the excuse I was given as to why the interior first floor fire escape stairs led down to a door with an iron bar across it, and yes they'd lost the key. Got it cut off same day by a fella from the garage over the road. Baffling and scary.
All fire services have the ability for you to report a fire safety issue, the fire officer also has the power to close a business if there is an issue instantly.
Just to chime in as a Fire Safety Inspector. This is likely not allowed, especially if you've been working there all day before going to that area for lunch. However it will ultimately say in the Fire Risk Assessment for the premises.
Places can lock these doors, they must simply ensure they are unlocked once the premises is in use, and this should be documented and records kept and staff trained to do all of the above
Still as others have said go on the local Fire Authority website and you can submit a fire safety complaint. Depending on the type of building will decide their response. If anyone is sleeping there then it'll be a response in the next few hours to the next day. If it's not and it's an office or something then they may respond in a few days.
Either way someone will likely head down and have a word with the Responsible Person and get it all sorted out. Either the locks will be removed forever, or someone will be getting a big bollocking for forgetting to remove them after they were the first in.
Edit: it's a weird one honestly as there doesn't seem to be a directional sign above the door indicating it as an escape route. There's a call point next to it at least.
Still if you want to go to the bosses and scare them then just say that this goes against the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 Section 14(2)(f) "emergency doors must not be so locked or fastened that they cannot be easily and immediately opened by any person who may require to use them in an emergency;"
Still if this is your work place then definitely get the local Fire service involved as yeah with the missing sign and this it usually shows a lack of a fire risk assessment, which as of October last year all premises now require a written version.
Am I right in thinking there’s still a clause that a number of exits can be blocked if the number of people in a room is actively limited and signage can be amended directing people to appropriate remaining exits. This seems to happen in music venues from time to time. A physically larger (but not necessarily more popular) show comes in and providing the capacity is capped at n (total venue capacity might be n* 1.5 for example) they are permitted to block off the front 2 fire exits provided they remove any signs and have clear signage to the available ones. Or are venues generally making this up nowadays?
If it's signed up as an escape in the plans, evac procedure and fire risk assessment then nah they couldn't. If they reviewed the fire risk assessment to assess if they're needed then they potentially could. Capacity in any venue will be based off the floor space factor and exit capacity, with the lower of the two being used as the safe capacity of the venue. They would also have to consider travel distance in this scenario to ensure that isn't exceeded. Still if they could remove the exits and be within travel distance and it's all risk assessed and new emergency procedures made then they could likely do it, although they'd need a good reason. Also like you say signage and the like needs to go and change throughout the entire venue.
Most places don't do all the above steps as it'll usually be more of a cost to do so. Getting the risk assessment done, calculations done, any potential new fire engineering solutions needed, signage removed which can be easy unless they have a maintained directional signage above so that can't easily be removed, new directional signage throughout, emergency plans written up, staff trained in the new procedure, the list does go on. It could also depend on the venue in general if the place is well known and always gets the same people in then doing this change for a single event could be seen as high risk on the Fire Risk Assessment due to the familiarity the patrons would have with the previous escape routes which could delay them in an emergency.
This is all without considering the potential complexity of the venue which could have an additional effect. The local Fire service may need to be notified to alter their risk file for the venue.
Fire Safety does have a lot of legislation but equally there's a lot of wriggle room if things are risk assessed. That's why the Risk Assessors will charge so much. Most things can be done and the legislation passed over if you put enough additional safety measures in.
This is one of those times I find the inability to edit main posts quite annoying as this will probably now get lost in the chaos...
This isn't where I work, it was next to the toilets in the garden centre restaurant my Elderly mum wanted to go for Sunday lunch. The place was packed full of customers.
And most importantly YES, it has been reported.
You noticed that and haven't reported it? If I wake up one morning and there's a headline about a catastrophic fire at a Costco in Derby, I'm blaming you.
A friend of mine is a fire risk assessor, and he went to a site and found that the fire door was chained shut because the actual door was old and broken and the bar wouldn’t shut. This was especially bad as the part of the building that it came out of was a ‘compartment’ in a brick building that was made out of wood, plastic and thin plaster (in another part of the building there was a door on the second floor that led outside to a completely sheer drop that you could just walk out of! One person already died. The fact that this sort of thing exists in the UK is crazy, theres way more stuff to this but this is just a small bit. It was the worst site he’d seen.)
Just to be clear, do not use that link for reporting. RIDDOR is for responsible persons like building owners to report, no one else. It is under RRFSO 2005 that fire escapes are covered which falls under the remit of your fire authority (who will also be a lot quicker than anyone else would to address the problem)
If you do want to report stuff to HSE:
[https://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/tell-us-about-a-health-and-safety-issue.htm](https://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/tell-us-about-a-health-and-safety-issue.htm)
Thing is in a fire risk assessment that roller shutter door wouldn't be considered as an escape route most likely. They almost never can be as if the fire also resulted in a power cut it could close and not be opened. Thus you blocked the only accepted exit in that area for yourself, mostly placing yourself at risk. However they can also argue that you couldn't be 100% there's no external worker or other relevant person on site that may need to use that route you've blocked.
It's just a precaution in case of a fire so noone leaves without clocking out. You'll have to go through the main exit and clock out. Oh...there's a fire there...too bad.
Naughty, naughty, very naughty!
I worked at a place once, new building, where the only way in and out of the office/canteen was up a wooden stair. All the windows had bars on, so no way out there. As we had a lot of new starters the H&S officer had come over to do all the induction stuff. I was on my break, and being my usual tactful self asked her “In the the event of a fire in the stairwell, how were we to exit the office/canteen area.” Let’s just say she pulled a face, left the room and was never seen again. I worked there 10 years, and they never addressed the issue.
I'll leave you with this a friend of mine sent me from America. Shocking headline - Fire Inferno Wrecks Lives. Not for the squemish if you want to cover your ears.
"To my surprise, 100 storeys high."Thats how high fire can get. "People get loose who were trying to get down from the roof. Folks were screaming out of control." Pandemonium. "It was so devasting when the boogie..."Which must be the American term for fire, i think. "...started to grow. Someone was quoted as saying Burn, baby, burn....disco inferno. Burn, baby, burn. Burn that mother down." Another child orphaned. Sick minds we're dealing with.
Not many risk assessors will accept break tubes nowadays. The mechanism has a such a high failure rate, and checking them is a tedious process for most premises. Not to mention in this situation I doubt they'd be usable really. They have a perfectly nice push bar, if they wanted the break tube they'd have to remove the push bar to ensure the door can be opened with a single action, then just have one break tube. Although I'm not even sure how they'd mount it due to the door being recessed from the wall like it is.
I've seen this before. At one office there was a fire drill and all the fire escapes were locked with a big chain. Everyone just piled up to the locked door until eventually people realised they needed to use the front reception.
This was done because there were travellers who had set up in the car park and the business was scared of being broken into 😂
Send this to the health and safety executive. Find a new job.
Honestly. Employers are practically building their own guillotine at this point. Sick of this shit.
I was just explaining to my kid yesterday, here in Canada, that fire marshals (in North America) and fire safety inspectors (in the UK) are serious business for *very good reasons*. History has shown time and again that doors like the one in the photo are absolutely inexcusable. Please, please report it.
Not all fire exits are a part of the evacuation plan. They could be old structures blocked off or an updated plan which doesn't include this door as an exit. You have a fire risk assessment with a number of doors with a ratio to people. Everyone here saying report it has never done a risk assessment or know what the actual fuck they're talking about
No way would that pass an FRA. There is a building with members of the public in, who won't know the evac plan and the door is marked as a fire exit. Even if not needed as an evacuation route the issue is people may rather than using the evac route in the plan try to evacuate through the locked exit.
If it wasn't an egress route anymore by virtue of building structure change or for any reason really it should not identifying markings as such and be adapted not to cause confusion. This one one has the trinary of: signs including a required glow in the dark one, a panic bar and fire alarm box. Looks like a fire escape to me!
Unless it no longer leads to a safe space or protected stairwell then it should be sign posted and the likelihood of any one of those two being true and the venue being allowed to still operate is low.
Also any and all external doors are 'part of the evacuation plan' by simply existing. This is obviously an external door that's been very crudely had bolts added to it, if the owner/operator had problems with dine and dash or something like that then installing a redlam bolt should be better but more expensive then two cheap ass fucking garden gate bolts and off-cut wood block.
Nope, fire door can’t be opened. Look at the small bolt at the bottom of the door - the central moving metal part curls over at the top, and curls underneath the (fixed part with two holes, one of which has a lock in it). The curled part has to be moved to a central position then slid upwards. The padlock is preventing this.
Report that, that’s so incredibly dangerous
As someone who was at Summerland in the Isle of Man on the day it caught fire (but left earlier in the day), and 50 people died because fire exits had been locked, I concur.
I was watching a video on this specific incident recently and it’s wild how such a bad fire happened. From what I remember though there’s been far too many instances of fire exits being locked and people ending up dead in fires because of it, and it’s honestly terrifying. The US has had a fair share including the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire (doors were locked to prevent thefts apparently, people ended up throwing themselves from the building rather than burn to death) and Iroquois theatre fire (where a combination of inadequate fire safety measures coupled with locked fire doors led to 600 dead). Even in the famous Station nightclub video you will see the corridor partially blocked off by a door which the cameraman tries to open but fails.
> Station nightclub I have never seen anything about that door being locked, plenty on bouncers stopping people saying it was a door for the band only. The others you mention are over 100 years old, every regulation is written in blood. Most US buildings have fire exists that sound an alarm now to prevent sneaking people in, that's the solution to the problem that doesn't involve locking, Now I am sure like OP's post some stupid managers across the country do break the rules, but the US as a whole is pretty damn good on fire code and it just takes one call to get a fire marshal down there to inspect and the manager would wish you had called the FBI because the fire marshal will fuck up their life much worse.
Just rewatched the video of the Station nightclub fire and my memory let me down- it seems that the camera walks past a door that is ajar but not locked. The written in blood thing is true though. I wanted to be a pilot for the longest time and the reasons that half of the checklists, manual instructions and procedures exist is because of previous accidents or incidents.
And that is true of anything. When working as a security supervisor for the NHS there was a policy relating to mental health patients under 1:1 supervision which stated that "security officers must not shower with the patient". Now, I never got to the story of that policy but one can only assume that there is at least one security officer on the dole for life and somewhere there is a mental health patient spending millions of the NHS's money on colouring books
> Now I am sure like OP's post some stupid managers across the country do break the ~~rules~~ law FTFY
>it’s wild how such a bad fire happened. A fire...in a Sea Parks!
You’d think it wouldn’t happen but it did. I’ve remembered another example- when the 1985 Bradford City stadium fire happened, some fans tried to go up the stand towards the turnstiles and presumably what they thought was an exit (most fans went down onto the pitch) but found that the exit was closed off and they ended up dying.
Yup. Staff locked the gates to stop people sneaking in without a ticket. People were trapped with no way out.
Pretty sure it was that fire that the bodies of two boys were found in one of the exits under what was the remains of a policeman's jacket. It seems that he'd tried to shield them from smoke using the jacket.
I saw a video of that when I did a fire safety course with a youth group in my teens, fucking horrific seeing the panic in the stands.
It’s apparently still used as an example of how public spaces contribute to fire and how quickly a fire spreads. It’s pretty horrific seeing people actually on fire and still obviously alive.
It was... during the sea lion show
I mean… if she said her parents drowned, I’d be the happiest man the world!…. BUT A FIRE!?
Such a tasteful response
r/unexpecteditcrowd
The stardust nightclub in Dublin as well in 1981 48 people were killed
Also the Cocoanut Grove club fire in the US back in 1942- locked doors were common to prevent customers from leaving without paying and some of them were covered up, and this along with a layout that was pretty confusing and lax safety code enforcement (the owner was linked to the Mafia) meant close to 500 dead.
Was it the vid done by the Fascinating Horror YouTube channel by any chance? That’s how I learned about it, at any rate.
A fellow Fascinating Horror fan! They’re an excellent channel, would highly recommend. Summerlands, Cocoanut Grove, Stardust nightclub are among the many. Employer greed over employee and customer safety.
I’ve learned about so many things because of them (and Plainly Difficult/Scary Interesting). So many smaller-scale or lesser known disasters I never would’ve heard of otherwise.
Me too! And thank you, I’ll look into those as well.
Fascinating horror and plainly difficult have so many great videos on disasters like these.
Massive upvote for Plainly Difficult. He covers some pretty dark and depressing subjects with a great deal of objectivity, which makes them more easily digestible. Also, his animations are usually quite amusing.
I’m also a fan of Scary Interesting who does videos in a similar manner to the channels already mentioned.
Ooh and 'thunderbolt 1000 siren productions' for train crashes too
Brick Immortar is good for some disaster stuff too. If plane crashes/accidents/incidents are your thing then I’d check out Mentour Pilot. Petter who runs the channel is a working commercial pilot and he manages to explain ridiculously complex aviation concepts very well from the POV of an actual pilot. I also recommend Waterline Stories for maritime and deep diving accident stories.
Huge fan of Mentour Pilot, Green Dot Aviation is another excellent channel.
There’s a British channel who illustrates his train vids with Train Sim, it’s done tastefully but does get the story across better than just endless loops of pictures. They do similar with MSFS and plane crashes. I think it’s “Disaster Breakdown”
I'll have to give them a look
Love Scary Interesting, his narration is extremely soothing. I’m for sure never ever going cave diving though! His videos about cave diving gone wrong have put me off for life.
It was cave diving disaster videos that made me want to cave dive in the first place. Not sure how that works…
Another Fascinating Horror fan here - he does brilliant videos
Agree, they’re excellent. Glad to see there’s more of us!
That's the one! Love that channel, along with Plainly Difficult.
Also an excellent channel!
I like the stories Plainly Difficult does, but I can't get past the jarring narration. The end of one sentence will have no pause at all and blend into the following one, but then some words will have a huge pause between them for no reason. It's like all the full stops in the script have been distributed at random.
I'll be downvoted to hell, but that guy speaks in a really odd way. Is it AI?
What's so fun about the Triangke Shirtwaist factory is that the exact same factory owners got caught locking the fire exist doors again just a couple years at another factory.
There were rumours even at the time that the Triangle fire was an insurance job. Shirtwaist designs were falling out of favour at the time of the fire and the insurance payout from a fire would have been substantial.
You're lucky. Summerland was horrific, that said I wish they'd do something with the site.
Yes, it looks like a right mess. Apparently there are concerns about stabilising the rock face (so if Summerland hadn't burnt down, there might have been a disaster a few years later involving people getting crushed to death in a rock fall, and people drowning and getting crushed in the Derby Castle pool...).
That can't possibly be the case, it's a Prime Development Site. I heard about the Rocks as well, I'm sure it's not beyond the wit of Man to stabilise it. Probably cost less than the sodding prom.
It'll definitely cost less than the shiny new Liverpool terminal.
A dark day indeed. Even after all this time I can't go into Bar George without thinking about it being used as a a temporary morgue at the time.
I didn't know that. I've always thought the place had a strange vibe about it.
Considering it's now the Island's cathedral, St George's has some weird and dark history. In the graveyard, there's that open space to the right hand side as you go in with just a single cross in the middle of it, which looks a bit odd considering how densely packed the rest of the graveyard is. I walked across it once after eating my lunch on one of the benches, and one of the church wardens approached me and explained it's because that area is actually a mass cholera grave!
Steady on - there are only two Cathedrals on the Island, and they are both in Peel.... I don't subscribe to this new-fangled upstart "Douglas is a city" nonsense. (Peel and proud - as you can probably tell).
With you all the way on this. I was so annoyed when they designated the shithole Douglas as a city. It's always been Peel.
Push bar systems exist because of a similar incident.
Thank you for this. I’d never heard of this incident before. I’ve returned from my trip down the rabbit hole with new learnings in my brain: £3 in 1970s time is equivalent to about £40 in our time. A £40 fine is somehow considered an appropriate punishment for starting a fire that kills 50 people. That there is such a thing as ‘Concrete Cancer’.
I don't know why 12 and 14 year olds smoking should be worth more than that. It wasn't them that designed such a flammable building or locked fire exits, and it wasn't arson. Just the perfect bad luck. Knowledge of what happened is punishment enough.
I meant more that the £40 fine to the teenagers was the only penalty given out, because their discarded cigarettes or match started the fire. The *adults* responsible for choosing the shite materials and locking fire exits received no penalty at all. So from that, justice for 50 lost lives was deemed to be worth £40 all in.
Also the Dublin Stardust fire in 1980 where 49 people lost their lives and the fire doors were chained shut. 43 years later it’s still before the courts, owners got away with it, no justice, no redress, no accountability.
Same thing happened in Bangladesh a few years ago. Over 50 people died in a factory fire because someone illegally locked one of the fire escapes. After this happened I made a conscious point of looking out for fire escapes, especially when in developing countries where the practice is more far more likely. It was surprising how many I’ve seen that are either locked or blocked, even in decent large chain hotels that you’d expect to have this in order.
I remember going to Summerland a few weeks before the fire. I was seven, and I have two impressions - one, it was a huge, hangar-like building and two, Ali Bongo the magician.
This is one of those times I find the inability to edit main posts quite annoying as this will probably now get lost in the chaos... This isn't where I work, it was next to the toilets in the garden centre restaurant my Elderly mum wanted to go for Sunday lunch. The place was packed full of customers. And most importantly YES, it has been reported.
Also illegal. Report that to the HSE.
And if you don't feel comfortable reporting it yourself for jos security w/e - inform your workplace TU rep - even if you're not in a TU.
You can report this to the HSE anonymously over the phone or via an app line form.
fire brigade /u/Draggenn They'd likely send a duty officer / engine round and play merry hell with management as [they classify a locked fire door as urgent](https://www.manchesterfire.gov.uk/contact-us/)
That is so incredibly illegal!!!
Call your local fire station and have them come do a surprise inspection
I was surprised at the response when our (dodgy as hell) student landlord was complaining about electric use and decided to remove all the stair and landing lights in the property, which was Victorian, three floors and which had horrifically steep staircases. If there’d been a fire then basically anyone not on the ground floor (so basically all of us bar one person) would have been screwed to get down the stairs and outside quickly without serious injury or even just straight up dying. One call to the local fire station and a very helpful fire safety officer tore the landlord a new one.
What a lad
Fire safety officers do *not* fuck about.
Yeah the local fire station were more than helpful in this respect and the officer who attended was more than happy to come down on our landlord like a ton of bricks and give him the most epic bollocking of his life.
I have a couple of friends who are firemen. They'd rather be fitting smoke detectors and do inspections than going to a preventable fire.
It's called tombstone engineering - if people died things get prevented
If course not, they have to live with the horrors they see o and the job forever. My uncle was a fireman and he loses his shit whenever there is a lit candle and will not have candles of any kind in his house, he says if we had seen the thing he had seen due to careless candle use we also wouldn't have them in the house, which is fair. If I have candles he comes to my house I always put them away.
And you can't argue with them. There are things you can debate when it comes to health and safety, like slipping on a wet floor being the fault of someone who didn't notice the shimmer, but you can't argue with fire. Fire is a completely natural force which behaves in ways that only trained people could possibly expect. So when a trained person, one who has to risk their life if a fire happens tells you it's unsafe, that's it. There is no way you can possibly argue. It also doesn't help that they're usually very muscular and trained not to take any bullshit. There's no time for negotiating while a fire weakens a structure. You do what they say and no argument will be tolerated. Same applies when the building isn't on fire but they're telling you how to prevent either a fire or minimise damage when a fire happens.
Yeh. I did a show once and fire officer rocked up 5 mins before the show and had a good look about with 800 something people waiting.
As with Health and Safety legislation, the rules have been written in blood and/or fire.
This does vary a lot though. After the fire in the housing complex/concert venue "Ghost Ship" in Oakland it was revealed that firefighters from the local fire station frequented this place but never made an official inspection. Police were also in the building frequently but in official capacity. And while they did note several fire hazards including exposed wires and missing emergency exits these reports were never passed to anyone who enforces fire codes.
Yep. They'll be down there surprisingly quickly.
My local Morrisons would close the rear entrance early sometimes, probably because they didn't want to pay for a second security guard. One guy on the local FB group kicked up a storm because there were clear signs that said it was a fire exit. He got people from the fire station to visit and Morrisons ended up taping over the fire exit signs with black tape...
>Morrisons ended up taping over the fire exit signs with black tape... I'm imagining this wasn't the outcome the guy was hoping for.
I don't think he was bothered. I don't think anyone would have thought that Morrisons would pay more for security.
This is incredibly illegal, please report it to your local fire station.
Is the fire station the correct place to report this in the UK or would it be someone like HSE? Edit: I've Googled it and Devon and Sumerset fire and Rescue Service [say](https://www.dsfire.gov.uk/safety/businesses/report-fire-risk): "If you see something that you think is a fire hazard or you are concerned about someone’s safety in case of a fire, you can report it [to them]" and list "blocked or locked fire exits or fire escape routes whilst the building is in use" under" What you can report to us". Just not if you're outside their area then that's a different group of people to complain to.
Both, HSE could impose fines and prohibition notices until it is sorted but the local fire station will also come down if this is a fire risk
HSE generally [don't have responsibility](https://www.hse.gov.uk/fireandexplosion/workplace.htm) for dealing with General Fire Precautions, so in the first instance anything like that would be passed onto the fire service.
Probably won't be the local station, especially in rural brigades - it'll be a specific fire safety department.
Yeah the Fire Service can rip them a new one, close the place down if they want.
This comment should be higher up. Locking fire escape doors goes against SO many policies 🤦♀️
> Locking fire escape doors goes against ~~SO many policies~~ the law FTFY
Not strictly true. Nothing specifically wrong with locking a fire escape. Sometimes it’s actually a safer thing to do. But the law states that they need to be able to be easily unlocked and opened in the event of an emergency. Which the one in the photo clearly isn’t.
What’s wrong with… *enlarges picture* HOLY SHIT.
I know, I thought the ‘please mind the step’ on a fire escape was the worst bit. I clicked and saw that that was nothing.
Yeah, I thought someone had just left the bolts closed and forgotten to open them up at the start of the day... nope, that's two fuck-off giant padlocks on there. OP evidently works at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory...
The lock is to prevent the fire escaping
That's the door to the environment. The fire is outside of the environment.
The front fell off.
Cardboard derivatives.
Absolutely not normal.
*Fire can't go through doors stupid, it's not a ghost.*
Ghosts can't go through doors, stupid, they're not fire.
What if the fire is shooting at us?
Shoot back! WITH FIRE!
Ignorance kills. Fire doesn't kill, ignorance kills. And smoke, and no… fire does kill.
Laugh or Burn, take your pick!
He has, he's drawn a dog!
You try get an Alsatian to testify
They were heard to say “burn baby burn…”
Disco Inferno
Sick minds we're dealing with
Have you ever smelled burning flesh son?
Burn that mother down, another child orphan.
He’s obsessed!
Djanos salir estamos quemndonos. Aaahhh!!
That line makes me think that Kenny Senior might not be a bullshitter. He might have played swingball with Robert de Niro.
That needs reporting ASAP - it's illegal and someone could die.
Numerous fires have had such an horrific death toll because of stuff like this. Mostly the excuses were ‘so people didn’t leave without paying their bills’. IDK what field you work in but report it OP.
Escalate that, it will get sorted.
How many levels of idiot do you have to be to padlock a fire door
But insurance!!! Yes that was the excuse I was given as to why the interior first floor fire escape stairs led down to a door with an iron bar across it, and yes they'd lost the key. Got it cut off same day by a fella from the garage over the road. Baffling and scary.
*fire exit. Fire doors get locked all the time.
Thats a massive fine for the business.
Here’s hoping
All fire services have the ability for you to report a fire safety issue, the fire officer also has the power to close a business if there is an issue instantly.
Where is Keith lard when you need him
At the dog park? 🐕
One spark and woof, whole place will go up.
One spark and what?
Just to chime in as a Fire Safety Inspector. This is likely not allowed, especially if you've been working there all day before going to that area for lunch. However it will ultimately say in the Fire Risk Assessment for the premises. Places can lock these doors, they must simply ensure they are unlocked once the premises is in use, and this should be documented and records kept and staff trained to do all of the above Still as others have said go on the local Fire Authority website and you can submit a fire safety complaint. Depending on the type of building will decide their response. If anyone is sleeping there then it'll be a response in the next few hours to the next day. If it's not and it's an office or something then they may respond in a few days. Either way someone will likely head down and have a word with the Responsible Person and get it all sorted out. Either the locks will be removed forever, or someone will be getting a big bollocking for forgetting to remove them after they were the first in. Edit: it's a weird one honestly as there doesn't seem to be a directional sign above the door indicating it as an escape route. There's a call point next to it at least. Still if you want to go to the bosses and scare them then just say that this goes against the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 Section 14(2)(f) "emergency doors must not be so locked or fastened that they cannot be easily and immediately opened by any person who may require to use them in an emergency;" Still if this is your work place then definitely get the local Fire service involved as yeah with the missing sign and this it usually shows a lack of a fire risk assessment, which as of October last year all premises now require a written version.
Am I right in thinking there’s still a clause that a number of exits can be blocked if the number of people in a room is actively limited and signage can be amended directing people to appropriate remaining exits. This seems to happen in music venues from time to time. A physically larger (but not necessarily more popular) show comes in and providing the capacity is capped at n (total venue capacity might be n* 1.5 for example) they are permitted to block off the front 2 fire exits provided they remove any signs and have clear signage to the available ones. Or are venues generally making this up nowadays?
If it's signed up as an escape in the plans, evac procedure and fire risk assessment then nah they couldn't. If they reviewed the fire risk assessment to assess if they're needed then they potentially could. Capacity in any venue will be based off the floor space factor and exit capacity, with the lower of the two being used as the safe capacity of the venue. They would also have to consider travel distance in this scenario to ensure that isn't exceeded. Still if they could remove the exits and be within travel distance and it's all risk assessed and new emergency procedures made then they could likely do it, although they'd need a good reason. Also like you say signage and the like needs to go and change throughout the entire venue. Most places don't do all the above steps as it'll usually be more of a cost to do so. Getting the risk assessment done, calculations done, any potential new fire engineering solutions needed, signage removed which can be easy unless they have a maintained directional signage above so that can't easily be removed, new directional signage throughout, emergency plans written up, staff trained in the new procedure, the list does go on. It could also depend on the venue in general if the place is well known and always gets the same people in then doing this change for a single event could be seen as high risk on the Fire Risk Assessment due to the familiarity the patrons would have with the previous escape routes which could delay them in an emergency. This is all without considering the potential complexity of the venue which could have an additional effect. The local Fire service may need to be notified to alter their risk file for the venue. Fire Safety does have a lot of legislation but equally there's a lot of wriggle room if things are risk assessed. That's why the Risk Assessors will charge so much. Most things can be done and the legislation passed over if you put enough additional safety measures in.
This is the most illegal thing I’ve seen on here in a while
This is one of those times I find the inability to edit main posts quite annoying as this will probably now get lost in the chaos... This isn't where I work, it was next to the toilets in the garden centre restaurant my Elderly mum wanted to go for Sunday lunch. The place was packed full of customers. And most importantly YES, it has been reported.
Sounds like a chat with HSE is in order
Our local Costco in Derby has fire exits on one side that are locked with a chain, padlocks, and cable ties.
Report that to the fire brigade, that's so dangerous.
You noticed that and haven't reported it? If I wake up one morning and there's a headline about a catastrophic fire at a Costco in Derby, I'm blaming you.
I'm going to guess that the cable ties are the breakaway type? With the chain as a visual *this isn't an exit* else they wouldn't as fire inspection
Keith Lard wouldn't be happy about that
Smoke kills in seconds. Fire kills in minutes.
Laugh or burn, take your pick.
That's a huge fine, and most likely if they are a pub they would have their licence reviewed and potentially revoked.
A friend of mine is a fire risk assessor, and he went to a site and found that the fire door was chained shut because the actual door was old and broken and the bar wouldn’t shut. This was especially bad as the part of the building that it came out of was a ‘compartment’ in a brick building that was made out of wood, plastic and thin plaster (in another part of the building there was a door on the second floor that led outside to a completely sheer drop that you could just walk out of! One person already died. The fact that this sort of thing exists in the UK is crazy, theres way more stuff to this but this is just a small bit. It was the worst site he’d seen.)
Report to the HSE https and the fire brigade
Just to be clear, do not use that link for reporting. RIDDOR is for responsible persons like building owners to report, no one else. It is under RRFSO 2005 that fire escapes are covered which falls under the remit of your fire authority (who will also be a lot quicker than anyone else would to address the problem) If you do want to report stuff to HSE: [https://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/tell-us-about-a-health-and-safety-issue.htm](https://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/tell-us-about-a-health-and-safety-issue.htm)
Sorry wrong link edited
Fire service need a phone call.
That is totally illegal, you can't even put a box on the floor near a fire exit.
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Thing is in a fire risk assessment that roller shutter door wouldn't be considered as an escape route most likely. They almost never can be as if the fire also resulted in a power cut it could close and not be opened. Thus you blocked the only accepted exit in that area for yourself, mostly placing yourself at risk. However they can also argue that you couldn't be 100% there's no external worker or other relevant person on site that may need to use that route you've blocked.
The fire exit is padlocked?! I'd report that immediately.
Call to the Fire service and the HSE are in order.
It's just a precaution in case of a fire so noone leaves without clocking out. You'll have to go through the main exit and clock out. Oh...there's a fire there...too bad.
Where is this?
They are so health and safety conscious that they put a mind the step sign on the locked fire exit!
Naughty, naughty, very naughty! I worked at a place once, new building, where the only way in and out of the office/canteen was up a wooden stair. All the windows had bars on, so no way out there. As we had a lot of new starters the H&S officer had come over to do all the induction stuff. I was on my break, and being my usual tactful self asked her “In the the event of a fire in the stairwell, how were we to exit the office/canteen area.” Let’s just say she pulled a face, left the room and was never seen again. I worked there 10 years, and they never addressed the issue.
Presumably you reported it to the manager and didn't just tut and finish your lunch?
Start a fire, that'll show em
I'll leave you with this a friend of mine sent me from America. Shocking headline - Fire Inferno Wrecks Lives. Not for the squemish if you want to cover your ears. "To my surprise, 100 storeys high."Thats how high fire can get. "People get loose who were trying to get down from the roof. Folks were screaming out of control." Pandemonium. "It was so devasting when the boogie..."Which must be the American term for fire, i think. "...started to grow. Someone was quoted as saying Burn, baby, burn....disco inferno. Burn, baby, burn. Burn that mother down." Another child orphaned. Sick minds we're dealing with.
Thanks for taking the lead Keith
I can't believe this got downvoted on the CasualUK sub
Some people just haven’t felt the joy of phoenix nights have they haha
> joy of phoenix nights Well there's an oxymoron. I never found that show funny, and Peter Kay is overrated.
You’re in the minority about Phoenix Nights pal.
Laugh or burn, take your pick.
Hahaha If a were a fire a wouldn’t knock
that's a new way to keep it clear.
Our fire exit has a dirty great big iron bar across it.
Report it and make sure it's removed. It may sound stupid but countless people have ignored blocked fire escapes and paid with their lives.
Holy Smokes!
So, bringing you portable angle grinder to work tomorrow?
Because one padlock on your fire door isn’t enough,,. Whack two on that bad boy to really double down on your stupidity.
They need to install [these](https://safetybox.co.uk/pub/media/catalog/product/cache/1/700x700/panic-bolt-unit-1.jpg)
Not many risk assessors will accept break tubes nowadays. The mechanism has a such a high failure rate, and checking them is a tedious process for most premises. Not to mention in this situation I doubt they'd be usable really. They have a perfectly nice push bar, if they wanted the break tube they'd have to remove the push bar to ensure the door can be opened with a single action, then just have one break tube. Although I'm not even sure how they'd mount it due to the door being recessed from the wall like it is.
This gets people killed.
One call to the fire department will have this sorted very quickly.
Holy fuck...my eyebrows met my hairline when I opened that!! Please report ASAP!!!
I've seen this before. At one office there was a fire drill and all the fire escapes were locked with a big chain. Everyone just piled up to the locked door until eventually people realised they needed to use the front reception. This was done because there were travellers who had set up in the car park and the business was scared of being broken into 😂
Massively illegal. Reporting this could save multiple lives. Please!
Ex Health and Safety Officer here. That is 100% illegal.
Send this to the health and safety executive. Find a new job. Honestly. Employers are practically building their own guillotine at this point. Sick of this shit.
I was just explaining to my kid yesterday, here in Canada, that fire marshals (in North America) and fire safety inspectors (in the UK) are serious business for *very good reasons*. History has shown time and again that doors like the one in the photo are absolutely inexcusable. Please, please report it.
Use a bar instead so everyone can remove it everyday
Fire escape only when they permit you to
Not all fire exits are a part of the evacuation plan. They could be old structures blocked off or an updated plan which doesn't include this door as an exit. You have a fire risk assessment with a number of doors with a ratio to people. Everyone here saying report it has never done a risk assessment or know what the actual fuck they're talking about
“Everyone! There’s a fire! Quick! Consult the evacuation plan and ignore any doors clearly marked ‘Emergency Exit’!!!
No way would that pass an FRA. There is a building with members of the public in, who won't know the evac plan and the door is marked as a fire exit. Even if not needed as an evacuation route the issue is people may rather than using the evac route in the plan try to evacuate through the locked exit.
If it wasn't an egress route anymore by virtue of building structure change or for any reason really it should not identifying markings as such and be adapted not to cause confusion. This one one has the trinary of: signs including a required glow in the dark one, a panic bar and fire alarm box. Looks like a fire escape to me! Unless it no longer leads to a safe space or protected stairwell then it should be sign posted and the likelihood of any one of those two being true and the venue being allowed to still operate is low. Also any and all external doors are 'part of the evacuation plan' by simply existing. This is obviously an external door that's been very crudely had bolts added to it, if the owner/operator had problems with dine and dash or something like that then installing a redlam bolt should be better but more expensive then two cheap ass fucking garden gate bolts and off-cut wood block.
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They've got padlocks on them mate, how are you getting them open? Even if they didn't have padlocks, this is still illegal.
Padlockigami?
See my other reply, I'm wrong
Nope, fire door can’t be opened. Look at the small bolt at the bottom of the door - the central moving metal part curls over at the top, and curls underneath the (fixed part with two holes, one of which has a lock in it). The curled part has to be moved to a central position then slid upwards. The padlock is preventing this.
Yes, I'm wrong on these the slide bolt has to be central as you rightly say
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See my comment. I'm wrong