Northern Ireland’s fire and rescue service has insisted that a fire alarm system in a block of flats did operate when a serious fire broke out on Wednesday night.
Residents of Coolmoyne House on the Seymour Hill estate in Dunmurry, Belfast, claimed they could not hear fire alarms when the blaze broke out in a flat on the ninth floor around tea time.
Two people are in a stable condition in hospital as a result of the fire, which is believed to have been caused by a toaster blowing up. Local residents and a member of the Northern Ireland assembly for the area had reported that witnesses in the flats said the fire alarms failed to go off when the blaze started.
But fire service group commander Geoff Somerville stressed that the safety systems in the flats complex did work. He said that following the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy in June his officers had reviewed the safety of the building and that it had passed safety tests for its 2,000 residents.
Somerville said the smoke alarms were not supposed to go off in unaffected flats in order not to confuse his firefighters getting to the source of a blaze.
He continued: “That is the correct configuration because only when smoke enters another flat should other residents be evacuated. The fire should not spread beyond that flat. The incident last night developed as we would expect.
“Memories of Grenfell are very raw but it was unprecedented. There is a risk, as there is with any fire. The resident was able to self-evacuate and the fire service was able to take four people away to safety.
“Residents need to be aware that if there is no smoke in their flat they are not at risk. Once their fire alarm activates then they need to evacuate.”
The public body that runs the flats – the Housing Executive – said on Thursday it needed to “instil confidence” among the 2,000 residents that the complex will be safe to return to.