This morning's fire at an apartment block in London has raised questions about whether appropriate safety measures were in place.
How safe are our apartments and houses here in Ireland, and are we doing enough to raise awareness of fire safety?
Mick Clifford of the Irish Examiner has been investigating the issue and said that, while we've been lucky so far not to have a high rate of fatalities, "There have been a number of fires in the last few years, and a feature of all of them is that the fire has spread extremely rapidly."
"All of this goes back to the fact that, during the boom, there was practically no regulation of fire safety features. At one stage, there were more people inspecting dog licenses than there were fire inspectors examining whether buildings had been built properly."
Kevin Hollingsworth, chartered building surveyor with the Society of Chartered Surveyors, gave his advice on what residents should do if they are worried about the safety of their homes: "They need to go to their property manager and voice those concerns."
In his work, Kevin has seen big problems with fire separation, which is the length of time a fire takes to spread.
"You should have an hour fire separation between each unit. In London that obviously didn't happen, and with a lot of the issues I've seen in Ireland, that fire separation is not there."
"We've written to government requesting that they do an audit of high risk buildings, because the first step in any problem is acknowledging the problem in the first place."
