They never stood a chance
Five experts deliver their verdict on blaze that left 72 dead
BASIC flaws with the cladding at Grenfell Tower and an extraordinary litany of fire safety failings caused the inferno that claimed 72 lives, it was revealed yesterday.
On the first day of formal evidence at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, a devastating report found the cladding was ‘substantially to blame’ for fuelling a blaze that leapt 19 floors in just 12 minutes.
Its flammable plastic core helped fuel the fire and produced toxic smoke that slowed firefighters, while its design contributed to the ‘catastrophic’ spread of the flames.
The report was just one of five presented to the inquiry yesterday, outlining an incredible catalogue of failures encompassing virtually every aspect of fire safety at the block in Kensington, west London.
Almost all elements of fire safety at the tower failed – from dangerous fire doors and windows to firefighters who inadvertently helped the flames to spread – leading to a ‘disproportionately high loss of life’.
A fire safety engineer said there was ‘a culture of non-compliance’ at the tower during its £9million refurbishment and its maintenance by a council-appointed body.
The failures allowed the fire to engulf the building at a rate never seen before.
But despite the terrifying speed of the fire’s spread, families in the high rise were told to ‘stay put’ and await rescue in a fire brigade policy that may have cost lives.
Experts told the inquiry the policy had ‘effectively failed’ within 30 minutes of the first 999 call. Despite this, it was not formally abandoned until almost two hours after the blaze broke out.
The public inquiry revealed shocking photographs showing the devastation at Flat 16, where the fire broke out on the fourth floor, and a recording of the first 999 call. The five expert reports revealed:
Cladding installed during the refurbishment contained a flammable plastic that gave the fire a ‘fuel source’
It did not comply with building regulations and no full-scale tests had been carried out before it was installed
Fire stops between each floor were not installed correctly, meaning nothing prevented the fire jumping between levels
Ineffective fire doors failed after just 20 minutes instead of an hour
Windows were not fire-resistant, and window frames were surrounded by combustible plastic
The building’s only stairwell filled with smoke after ventilation systems failed and doors were blocked open by firefighters’ hoses and – in one case – a dead body
Firefighters did not tackle the kitchen fire that sparked the blaze until four minutes after it had spread up the outside cladding
Water supply systems in the block, installed for firefighters’ hoses, could not meet demand
The ‘stay put’ policy began to fail 21 minutes after the first 999 call, but was kept for two hours.
The inquiry has heard heartbreaking evidence from families who lost relatives in the inferno.
The inquiry’s lead lawyer, Richard Millett QC, said survivors and the bereaved were left with ‘an abiding sense of injustice, betrayal and marginalisation, leading to an overwhelming question: Why?’.
He said the inquiry – the largest of its kind in British legal history – would ‘lay bare the truth’.
He said Grenfell Tower’s refurbishment had ‘created an intolerable fire hazard’ and called the cladding on the outside of the building ‘a catastrophic failure’.
Authorities believed any fire inside would be limited to the flat where it broke out, and were caught out by the ‘unprecedented’ speed and ferocity of the blaze.
Mr Millett made thinly veiled criticisms of the firms and public bodies involved in the tower’s construction, refurbishment and maintenance – all of which have been asked to provide written
‘Intolerable hazard’
statements. It was owned by Kensington and Chelsea council and run by its tenant management group.
In a statement, London Fire Brigade Commissioner Dany Cotton said: ‘I have never seen a building where the whole of it was on fire. Nobody has ever seen that.
‘It was incredible, it was so alien to anything I have ever seen.’ Firefighters arrived six minutes after the first 999 call at 12.54am, but did not enter the kitchen of Flat 16 until 1.14am or begin fighting the fire until 1.20am, by which time it had burned through the new windows’ flammable uPVC frames and lit the exterior cladding.
FROM the moment he was appointed as chairman of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, Sir Martin Moore-Bick has been under attack from the baying Left.
He was deemed ‘too white and too middle-class’ to understand the realities of life in a multicultural urban tower block, called an insensitive ‘technocrat’ who lacked compassion for the grieving families and branded an establishment stooge.
Less than 24 hours after he was selected, Corbynista MP Emma Dent Coad called for him to be removed and replaced by ‘someone we can trust’ – in other words someone who subscribes to her party’s anti-austerity agenda and blames ‘Tory cuts’ for the Grenfell deaths.
Yet through all the sound and fury, Sir Martin has stuck resolutely to his task. True, it’s early days but – despite the brickbats – he seems to be slowly gaining the respect of those affected by this grotesque tragedy.
Setting aside the first two weeks for victims and their families to tell their harrowing stories proved to be a shrewd move. No one could fail to be moved by those intensely personal memories and allowing them to be told at some length has had a remarkably cathartic effect.
It enabled the real forensic work of the inquiry – identifying how this catastrophe was allowed to happen, who was to blame and ensuring that it could never be repeated – to begin yesterday in relative calm, rather than in the atmosphere of a bear-pit.
The time has come for setting passions aside and sifting through the evidence with cold precision. As a former High Court judge, this has long been Sir Martin’s job. For the sake of the victims and their families, let’s hope he’ll now be allowed to get on and do it.