A Glasgow tower block is being checked by firefighters every four hours due to concerns over Grenfell-style flammable cladding.
The potential danger was only brought to light last week, four months after the fire in London that claimed 80 lives and gutted the 24-storey building.
The Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 80 people in London, is thought to have spread through a specific cladding system, which acted as a wick, spreading the fire upward through the building.
After concerns were raised about the cladding, authorities scrambled to check hundreds of similar tower blocks around the country, which used aluminium composite material (ACM). The cladding was stripped from many buildings, as many samples failed to meet combustibility tests.
However, it was only last week that the local council informed hundreds of residents of the Harbour Development in Glasgow that their homes used limited ACM and that the owners of the property should seek “specialist fire advice.”
Contractors for the council took samples for testing last week and one resident was informed that the property has been identified as high risk, according to the Record.
“The cladding in my block and one other has no fire resistance at all,” the unnamed resident told the Record.
“We now have two 24-hour fire wardens, four-hourly visits from fire brigade and a huge amount of parking attendants ensuring that access is clear.”
The cladding in the tower burned with the same energy as 51 tonnes of pinewood according to research from the University of Leeds. The plastic core of the cladding would have burned as “quickly as petrol”, a Dr. Roth Phylaktou, an expert in fire investigation at the university, told the BBC.
Cladding has been ripped down from towers across the country, including Plymouth, Manchester, Liverpool, and Portsmouth.
Ryhl High School in Denbighshire was closed when cladding was identified as being made by the same company who produced that used on the Grenfell block.