Emergency valves to turn off gas at Grenfell Tower may have been buried by refurbishment
Valves installed in Grenfell Tower to turn off the gas during an emergency could not be found during the fire and may have been built over during the refurbishment, the inquiry has heard.
Giving evidence today, James Harrison, head of London operations at Cadent Gas at the time of the fire, said that two pipeline isolation valves (PIVs), which are essential to prevent gas from entering the block, could not be found on the day of the fire or subsequently.
He believed that these could have been built over during landscaping work during the tower’s refurbishment in 2015.
On the night of the fire and following, gas engineers from Cadent, the company that transported gas to Grenfell Tower, spent a number of hours trying to stop the gas supply into the building which was believed to fuelling the lingering flames within the tower.
It was not until just before midnight on 15 June that all of the main sources of gas were completely cut off.
In an opening statement from the bereaved and survivors for the third module of phase two of the inquiry, lawyers said the time taken to isolate the gas on the day of the fire was “woefully prolonged” and that as soon as the gas was isolated, the fire “went out like a light”.
The statements pointed specifically at the fact that no surface box could be found at the expected location of the PIVs.
Within the block, there were three internal major gas supply lines going into the building: the landlord’s supply, the “residential supply one” pipeline and the “residential supply two” pipeline.
At the time of the fire, work was being carried out to replace and repair parts of the residential supply two gas line, while the landlord’s supply and the residential supply one pipeline were still in use.
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On the day of the fire, the PIVs could not be identified on the residential supply one pipe or the landlord’s supply, which made it more difficult for engineers to isolate the gas supply to the tower.
In the end, Cadent operatives with the help of the fire service had to excavate three exterior gas lines serving the block’s supply line and close them down through a technique known as bagging off, which involves inserting bags into the pipes and inflating them to form a seal.
PIVs should be installed on all high-rise buildings and be easily accessible, usually through a valve chamber. However, the valve chambers at Grenfell Tower could not be found on the day of the fire and still cannot be found, despite it being more than four years after the tragedy.
When asked why the PIVs for the two lines cannot be found, Mr Harrison said he believed that work on the tower and surrounding area in 2015 could have resulted in the PIVs being built over.
He said: “I believe we can’t see the PIVs because they are either covered over as part of the landscaping work or as part of the concrete plinth.”
He added: “I’ve visited the tower and I’ve seen the plinth and I believe the PIV is underneath it, whether there has been landscaping and remediation work on the footpath and the plinth is on top of that, so in effect both are covering the plinth, I don’t know.”
According to the evidence given today, a survey in 2008 of the residential supply one pipeline had identified a PIV. Mr Harrison said that he expected the landlord’s supply also had a PIV at the time.
However, in a subsequent survey in 2016 following the refurbishment of the Grenfell Tower, the person carrying out the survey could not identify the presence of any PIVS.
When asked why the person inspecting in 2016 could not find the PIVs, Mr Harrison said that while he could not be sure, it was his opinion that they were lost after the 2015 building work.
The evidence today also revealed that Cadent’s emergency team had received an unprompted email from a sub-contractor giving crucial information about the gas supply to the building.
At 8am on the morning of the fire, Simon Boygle, who worked for a sub-contractor that had previously worked on the gas supply at Grenfell tower, sent through details on the gas supply, including where the building’s deep boiler room was and specifications of the gas pipelines.
When asked by inquiry counsel Emma Hynes whether he thought it was fortuitous that the emergency team could get its information from the unprompted email, Mr Harrison said: “I guess you could say it was fortuitous.”
Ms Hynes then asked whether he accepted that Cadent’s network mapping should have been up-to-date and they should not have had to rely on Mr Boygle’s email, Mr Harrison said: “I don’t whether that email from Mr Boygle was also in a stack of information about the main riser in Grenfell Tower was waiting to be updated but it just hadn’t been finalised on the system that our engineers had seen.”
The inquiry continues.
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