Damning leaked report on Grenfell

The disastrous refurbishment of Grenfell Tower turned the block into a tinderbox death trap that killed 71 people, a report leaked to the Evening Standard has revealed.

Experts have found that had Britain’s worst fire happened before 2014 it is likely that no lives would have been lost.

The draft report from January, compiled to help Scotland Yard with its investigation, has found five major failures largely caused by shoddy building work at the 24-storey, 70m-high block.

The fire, which broke out when a fridge exploded on June 14, 2017, engulfed the building in minutes.

That was because ‘ gaps’ in the building’s new cladding and windows helped fan the flames. The report reveals that: Poorly cut insulation left gaps of up to 5cm meaning air could rush through the cladding and fan the flames;

There were gaps of up to 15cm after the new windows went in and none of the uPVC frames were capable of withstanding a fire for more than a few minutes;

Insulation used on the block was either ‘ flammable’ or ‘ highly flammable’ — as was the ‘core’ of the new cladding on the outside;

An ‘absence of door closers’ meant that many doors failed to close as people fled, allowing the fire and smoke to spread easily;

Firefighters could only get one fire engine to the base of Grenfell because of new landscaping.

The key conclusion is that the fire would not have spread beyond Flat 16 — and nobody would have died — if the building’s outside had not been re-clad.

This was made even worse because the insulation used in the refurbishment, carried out between 2014 and 2016, was flammable.

Only one in five of all fire door closers were working properly, meaning the smoke and flames spread through the core of the building at speed.

And firefighting facilities were poor, with no ‘ wet rising main’ pipe meaning fire fighting water could not be easily fired to all floors.

New landscaping at the base of Grenfell also made it impossible for more than one fire engine to park at the base of the tower.

It appears that the only real benefit of the botched new refurbishment was that it did stop the tower collapsing.

But that was only after it accelerated the fire that killed 71 and left hundreds homeless. — Daily Mail