Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
ALARM BELL
Amina Mohamed, 46, who escaped from the tower’s eighth floor with her nephew Khaled Ahmed, 21, hopes the inquiry would change the rules on sprinklers. She said: “There needs to be action now so this never happens again. If they had acted before maybe it would have been different for Grenfell.”
After the tragedy the Mirror told how more than a million people were living in council-owned towers with no sprinkler systems.
A 2015 Inside Housing poll found just one in eight town halls had installed sprinklers in any flats in high-rises.
Campaigner Piers Thompson, who has helped with the Grenfell relief effort, said it was “outrageous” that only 2% of tower blocks had full sprinkler systems.
He said: “It’s unbelievable so many authorities have got such little care for the safety of their tenants.”
In June, when asked about last year’s refurbishment of the building, former Kensington and Chelsea Council leader Nicholas Paget-brown claimed it was residents who did not want sprinklers.
He said: “Many felt we needed to get on with the installation of new hot water systems, new boilers, and that trying to retrofit more would delay building and that sprinklers aren’t the answer.”
The public inquiry will examine its cause, the adequacy of high-rise regulations, the refurbishment and the actions of authorities before and after the tragedy. The Department for Communi-