The fire occurred in Grenfell Tower, Kensington, North London, on the 14 June 2017 with London Fire Brigade recording a call at 00:54 and being in attendance 6 minutes later.

The 24 storey building (23 stories above ground) was public housing apartments with some other non-residential accommodation.

200+ firefighters with 40+ appliances attended and carried out multiple rescues of 60+ persons.

Conditions were described as extremely arduous with heavy smoke and heat restricting attempts to proceed upwards in the single staircase building.

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The leading cause of fire fatalities is the inhalation of smoke rather than the fire itself. Fire rated smoke curtains are an excellent way of controlling smoke.

Fire and smoke-rated curtains block smoke from entering hospital rooms by deploying automatically during a fire. Also adding smoke curtains in front of elevators are critical because elevator shafts cause a natural chimney effect, drawing smoke to other floors of the hospital. Therefore a smoke curtain with a 2 hr fire rated elevator door will help create an impenetrable solution.

Helping more patients get the care they need and remain in the hospital instead of being evacuated due to smoke on floors where there is no fire and making the building safer, is one of the key factors of installing fire and smoke rated curtains.

Schools are usually designed to have large, open areas like gymnasiums and cafeterias, which makes protecting the school space difficult. Using fire curtains schools can easily create a safe area within large, open rooms that will create safe passages out of the building for occupants without exposure to fire, smoke, or heat.

Although fire curtains can be placed in a number of different areas, there is a few places within a school that are perfect for durable fire curtains.

The ability to integrate smoke & fire curtains into a school’s fire or smoke alarm system is a huge advantage. Our curtains deploy as soon as smoke sensors are triggered, enabling immediate protection of students and staff, without the chance of human error for releasing the fire curtains manually.

The curtains will still deploy, even during a power outage, due to the backup battery power.

Fire or smoke curtains are some of the most effective means of compartmentalizing an open space.

The buildings we live and work in all represent a kind of compromise. We want them to be attractive, comfortable, cost-effective, and energy efficient, but we also want them to be safe. Sometimes those objectives can come into conflict.

Faculty members in WPI’s world-renowned Department of Fire Protection Engineering are recognized experts on a wide range of issues related to fire safety in the built environment. Their research and scholarship has focused on such topics as the fire characteristics of the materials we use to make buildings, the practices we follow to design them, the creation of codes and regulations that guide building fire safety, and the actual performance of buildings in fires.

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