Shelagh Fogarty 1pm - 4pm
This Amazing Invention Could Have Saved So Many Lives In Grenfell Tower
28 September 2017, 13:41
A British designer has invented an escape chute for high-rise towers that could have evacuated everyone in Grenfell Tower in 20 minutes.
Eric Hooper, 72, said watching live coverage of the devastating fire that killed at least 80 people left him "frustrated as hell".
He said fitting the escape tube on the 21-floor residential block could have saved countless lives when it was ravaged by the inferno in June.
It is a box that can be fitted to any high-rise building and allows a quick and easy access down to the ground.
Activating a mechanism at each entry point unfolds a multi-layered chutes which children and the elderly can use to vertically slide down to lower floors.
The designer from Stockwell, London, said: "All the time I was thinking that a simple chute system would have evacuated all the entrapped victims.
"Whichever systems was installed at Grenfell it would have evacuated at the rate of 20 to 25 evacuees per minute.
"For the price of a cup of coffee per day per person in the building they could have paid for a system in a year.
"I know for a fact that had this device been on Grenfell it could have saved I don't know how many lives... I wonder why they never went down the stairs."