Tragedy set to become deadliest post-war inferno

WITH 58 people missing and presumed dead following the Grenfell Tower fire, the tragedy could become the most deadly blaze in the country since the Second World War.

Here are a list of other major disasters in the UK:

The Bradford City stadium fire in 1985 killed 56 fans and injured more than 250 others. The Bantams were taking on Lincoln City at a Third Division game when one of the stands went up in flames. The official inquiry into the tragedy on May 11, 1985, headed by Sir Oliver Popplewell, concluded the blaze was an accident and was probably started by a spectator dropping a cigarette into rubbish that had accumulated under an old timber stand.

Arson was to blame for the Denmark Place fire in London which killed 37 people in August 1980. The fire, considered to be one of the country’s worst mass murders, saw two bars set alight when petrol was poured through a letterbox and a flaming piece of paper used to ignite the fuel.

Thirty-one people died at the King’s Cross Underground Station when fire broke out at the interchange in November 1987. The fire started on a wooden escalator. An official report on the fire led to resignations of senior management in both London Underground and London Regional Transport and to the introduction of new fire safety regulations.

Three women and three children died when a fire engulfed the Lakanal House tower block in Camberwell, London, in 2009 after an electrical fault with a television. Southwark Council was later fined £270,000 after being prosecuted for safety failings.

Up to 53 people died when a discarded cigarette started a deadly inferno at the Summerland leisure centre, in Douglas on the Isle of Man, on August 2, 1973.