The charred remains of a fuse box thought to be the seat of a blaze which killed 14 elderly residents at an Uddingston care home has been shown to a fatal
accident inquiry.
The blackened remains of the electrical distribution box, which had been fitted to the inside wall of a storage cupboard at Rosepark Care Home, was presented as evidence at The Fatal Accident Inquiry in Motherwell.
Dr Stephen Joel, a metallurgist for the Health and Safety Executive, had been tasked with carrying out electrical fault tests and fire simulations on various parts of the damaged fuse box in May 2004, four months after the fatal blaze.
Dr Joel was attemptting to determine whether problems within the equipment could have caused the fire. His report found there were a number of broken strands of copper wiring where the electrical cabling passed in and out of the fuse box, and that there was “significant arc erosion” in the upper section of the fuse box.
Asked to explain what “arcing” meant, Dr Joel, 53, described it as being “like a miniature lightning strike” within the fuse box. He went on: “Arcing in this case is the unintentional passage of electrical current from a positive conductor at a high potential – voltage or current – to another conductor at a lower potential, or ‘grounded’.
“The resulting transfer of electrical energy results in the production of intense heat and light in the form of a spark – or an ‘arc’.”
Dr Joel described finding microscopic evidence of molten globules of copper having cooled on the ends of the severed strands of wire, consistent with arcing.
While he concluded in his report that he “found nothing to indicate categorically whether the damage occurred before or after the fire”, he went on to say that laboratory experiments did indicate that “damage of this severity could be caused by the electrical currents involved”.
The blaze is thought
to have originated in a linen cupboard on the ground floor of Rosepark, which also contained a fuse box.
The inquiry has previously heard that fire safety regulations warned against keeping flammable items such as blankets and sheets near a heat source, but that the care home had lacked storage space.
Dr Joel also told the inquiry that he found it “strange” that there was no sign of any protective plastic grommets around the cable entry holes of the fuse box, although he said that it was impossible to tell whether these had simply melted away during the fire.
The risk of “arcing” was greater, he said, where wires were left exposed. The inquiry, in Motherwell, continues.
