THE residents of the Glasgow district of Dalmarnock had no reason to fear the outbreak of a fire in a high-rise block yesterday: the blaze had been staged for a television experiment.
According to a professor of fire safety and engineering based at Edinburgh University, lives could be saved if high-rises are fitted with sensors able to relay information about the nature of any fire that breaks out.
It is being claimed that had such sensors been fitted to the Twin Towers in New York, information sent by the sensors would have warned against sending fire crews higher into the buildings, because it would have been known they were about to collapse, following a terrorist attack.
The independent TV production company, Lion Television Scotland, is making a programme for the BBC science strand, Horizon, to be broadcast around the anniversary of 9/11.
The company had already pitched the idea of the programme before it was aware that a high-rise block in Dalmarnock had been emptied of its residents, ahead of a proposed demolition.
Yesterday, the second, third and fourth floors were set alight. More experiments continue today.
