Grenfell: Burning Justice To The Ground

The 14th of June marked 3 years since the Grenfell Tower block of flats, a 24-storey building, in North Kensington went up in flames costing the lives of 72 people and the homes of countless families. Grenfell was the deadliest structural fire in the UK’s history since the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster and the worst UK residential fire since World War Two. The fire was started by a malfunctioning fridge-freezer on the fourth floor, with the flames spreading rapidly up the building’s exterior — bringing fire and smoke to all residential floors. It was subsequently found that the rapidity of the flame was due to the building’s cladding, the external insulation and the air gap between which enabled the stack effect. Grenfell had a “stay-put” fire policy — the building design would contain a fire in a single flat for as long as it took the fire crew to respond, but this failed. The Tower burnt for 60 hours before it was put out with 250 London Fire Brigade firefighters and 70 fire engines. The most damning part of this already tragic event: it could have been easily prevented.

The Public Inquiry hearing opened on the 14th of September 2017. It found that Grenfell had been renovated before the fire, and the most significant part of this renovation was the addition of external cladding. This consisted of aluminium sheets bonded to a central of plastic (polyethylene) core. In his report…