A short history of the Dalmarnock building

In 2006, the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering were involved in a series of large fire tests in a tower block in the Dalmarnock area of Glasgow. For details click here.

Did you know…?

A short history of the Dalmarnock building block before and after the Fire Tests.

The area of Dalmarnock was once heavily industrialised¹. Sir William Arrol & Co. had its extensive engineering works there from 1873. From its beginnings in boiler making, the firm later became renowned for its achievements in the field of Structural engineering. Amongst the many bridges constructed throughout Britain by this firm, were the Forth Railway Bridge and Forth Road Bridge, the Humber Bridge and London's Tower Bridge. The company was eventually taken over by Clarke Chapman in 1969 and the Dalmarnock Works closed in 1986.

During the Second World War, the east side of Summerfield Street was bombed. Consequently, as part of the GEAR (Glasgow East Area Renewal) which took place during the '60s and '70s, most of the Victorian red-sandstone tenements from the neighbouring area were demolished, some were renovated, and a new housing scheme was built. The latter consisted of four 23 storey tower blocks and ‘H-block’ maisonettes.

The quartet of 23 storey tower blocks on the Millerfield estate in the south eastern corner of Dalmarnock, Glasgow, was formed by: 4², 40³ and 50⁴ Millerfield Road together with 131⁵ Allan Street. Approved in Phase 1 of the Summerfield project in 1962, construction was carried out by Laidlaw using the Prometo method. The design was by local architects, Parry & Hughes. The buildings were completed in 1964 and contained 132 flats each. Although initially popular with residents for being a vast improvement on the slums that predated post war development, lack of investment and maintenance made the block unpopular and the building housed fewer and fewer tenants.

In a massive regeneration effort to turn Dalmarnock into a potential Commonwealth 2014 Games village, the 4 tower blocks together with twelve maisonettes were demolished in different phases. On Sunday the 3rd of February 2002 at 11 AM, both 40 and 50 Millerfield Road blocks were demolished. They were the first high-rise demolition since a woman was tragically killed in 1993 as she watched the ill-planned implosion of Queen Elizabeth Square. The operation cost Glasgow City Council £1.2m to hire Yorkshire-based Controlled Demolition Group Ltd. Despite doing their best to keep the blow down secret, a small crowd had gathered to watch, but this time none of them were injured.

In January 2005, the decision was made by the Glasgow Housing Association to demolish 131 Allan Street. This came after the two other blocks in the scheme had been demolished 3 years before. All residents were rehoused by August 2006, with East End Community Homes doing their best to accommodate them all within the Dalmarnock/Bridgeton area, although the building was well below capacity. After almost a year preparation, the tower block was blown down in just 5 seconds by Safedem of Dundee and John F. Hunt using 85kg of explosives on the 5th of July 2005.

4 Millerfield Place was the one used for the Dalmarnock Fire Tests⁵ and the last to be demolished. Complications with preparing the building for demolition prevented it from being imploded in late-February 2007 as planned. There’s a version saying that “this was possibly as a result of an experiment into high rise fires conducted by the University of Edinburgh in 2006 affecting the structure's stability”. At 11 AM on the 9th of September 2007, this last block was finally demolished, leaving the entire Millerfield estate empty and awaiting new development which is ongoing by now.

The following is an interesting comment from a former tenant of one of these flats⁶: “I was there when the third multi-story was demolished, same as I was there when the first two came down, it was so sad for all of our families who have moved out of the area and the ones who still live in Dalmarnock as most of them spent their childhood days going to Springfield School in Allen St, if they didn't live in the flats they had friends and family who did. Dalmarnock was always a great place to live, I raised my family in the 70/80s. What a community we were in those days, I am always proud to say my son's came from Sunnybank St. Dalmarnock, getting back to the high flats, I remember in the winter months taking my lads to primary school in Allen St and taking the shortcut through the Millerfield flats, the wind was so strong it would blow us off our feet. I know Dalmarnock is going to be a brilliant place for the Commonwealth village, fingers crossed, let all the athletes come here and see what friendship is all about.”

So as we can see after this short story, there’s a curious succession of events specifically related to the high-rise used for the tests: the area was originally part of a structural engineering firm – notably the one that built both Forth Bridges – then came the very well known Dalmarnock Fire Tests, and finally ending its days being demolished on a 9/11. Recapitulating: structural engineering + Forth Bridge (there’s a photo of the beautiful railway bridge decorating Prof. Torero’s office) + fire tests + 9/11… strange coincidence...? J

By Agustin Majdalani

Demolition videos (131 Allan Street and 4 Millerfield Place):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=-HzNwoWwEfQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeObBJjB8Xs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HzNwoWwEfQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BteoagqYYFI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VunUSR5znd8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB4g5rZtL4c&feature=related

Demolition photos:

http://www.gha.org.uk/content/mediaassets/Millerfieldgallery/millerfield/index.htm

Prof Torero interviewed by Beacons for Public Engagement

Edinburgh Beltane interviewed Prof Jose Torero on his views about public engagement and research in fire safety. Read the inreview here.

Edinburgh Beltane - Beacons for Public Engagement are funded by the UK higher education funding councils, Research Councils UK, and the Wellcome Trust

Blind vs Open fire modelling

I always wanted to start a debate on this topic and now think that a better way is using the blog.

Three years after The Dalmarnock Fire Tests, the 'a priori' vs. 'a posteriori' debate in is still not too popular in the fire modelling community. The debate seems to be mostly taking place in personal communications and during the peer reviewing of papers. Unfortunately, not much is happening publicly or at the reach of the fire community as a whole.

Figure 1: Dalmarnock Fire Test One as seen from the outside, 18.5 min into the fire. (from [ Abecassis-Empis et al, Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 2008]).

The problem is the following (summary). When making comparisons of modelling results to experimental measurements, there are two general approaches that can be followed: a priori (aka blind) and a posteriori (aka open). In a priori simulations, the modeller knows only a description of the initial scenario. The modeller has no access to the experimental measurements of the event and thus will be providing a true forecast of the quantities of interest. In a posteriori simulations, before the simulation is run the modeller knows the initial scenario and also how the fire developed (ie via the experimental measurements). Most fire model validations in fire engineering has been conducted a posteriori.

Only comparison of a priori and a posteriori simulations of the same event allows to investigate the possible effect that maybe has been introduced by prior knowledge of how the event developed. The importance of this effect in fire safety engineering is currently an advanced research topic and under study by different research groups.

The 2006 Dalmarnock Fire Tests conducted in a high-rise building were used to look into the problem. An international study of fire modelling was conducted prior to Dalmarnock Fire Test One. The philosophy behind the tests was to provide measurements in a realistic fire scenario with very high instrumentation density (more than 450 sensors were installed in a 3.50 by 4.75 2.45 m compartment). Each of the seven participating teams independently simulated the test scenario a priori using a common detailed description. Comparison of the modelling results shows a large scatter and considerable disparity among the predictions and between predictions and experimental measurements. These results tend to shock, please and anger the audience in equal parts. See Figure 2 below.

Figure 2: Evolution of the global heat release rate within the compartment. Comparison of predictions and experimental measurements. (from [Rein et al, Fire Safety Journal 2009]).

An exception to the relative silence of the fire community are the two magazine articles of Dr Alan Beard from Heriot-Watt University. These can be accessed here:

• Reliability of computer models in fire safety design, April 2008 in the magazine Industrial Fire Journal.
• Role Models, Aug 2009 in the magazine Fire Risk Management

First note that I disagree with blanket statements like "a predicted result from a model cannot be assumed to be accurate; ie to reflect the real world". Our work also shows that fire simulations provides fire features that may be good enough to be applied towards engineering problems if a robust and conservative methodology is defined. A prerequisite for this methodology is that it can use predictions with crude levels of accuracy and that it applies appropriate safety factors. But Dr Beard has an important point in that 'real world' fire engineering applications are most frequently applied to simulate events which real behaviour had not been (and will never be) measured. These simulations are a priori simulation, not a posteriori. However, most fire model validations in fire engineering has been conducted a posteriori. I certainly agree with Dr Beard on this one; we need more a priori comparisons of fire modelling and address full model validation. What is the effect of prior knowledge of the fire development? Would the validations provide the same conclusions if conducted a priori? The problem is not unique to fire engineering and any discipline dealing with complex simulations tools should be facing this question. I do not know how other disciplines cope with it.

The differences between a priori and a posteriori modelling become patent when comparing the round-robin results with the work conducted after the Dalmarnock data was publicly disseminated. Subsequent studies (Jahn et al. 2007, Jahn et al. 2008 and Lazaro et al. 2008) show that it is possible to conduct a posteriori fire simulations that reproduce the general fire behaviour to a satisfactory level. This was achieved due to the availability experimental data of the real behaviour for reference, allowing for iterations until an adequate input file was found.

I would like to finish with the same final words I use when presenting the results in conferences and seminars. We, the authors of the Dalmarnock round-robin, are professionals of, and supporters of, fire modelling. We want fire modelling to improve and be developed further. Our daily work goes in that direction.


I am interested in hearing your comments.
.Guillermo Rein.




NOTE #1: All the relevant information, book and papers about The Dalmarnock Fire Tests are accessible in open access here.

NOTE #2: There are two points about Dalmarnock that need to be emphasised since are often misunderstood. These are:

• The aim of our a priori work was to forecast the test results as accurately as possible, and not to conduct an engineering design with adequate conservative assumptions or safety factors.
• Experimental variability was one of our greatest concerns and that is why the scenario was designed for maximum test reproducibility. The Dalmarnock Fire Test One was benchmarked against a second test to establish the potential experimental variability. Results show that the scatter of the a priori simulations is much larger than the experimental error and the experimental variability together.

NOTE#3: No matter how useful and interesting the results from blind simulations are, only three blind round-robins on fire modelling can be found in the historical records of the discipline. The other two are the 1999 CIB and the 2008 French PROMESIS project. All three round-robins overwhelming agree on the results, but the Dalmarnock one was the first to be publicly communicated and the one providing, by far, the largest instrumentation density.

NOTE #4: I initiated a related discussion on this topic in April 2008 in the FDS forum. See here.