Litany of failure led to Grenfell fire
The Grenfell tower fire was Britain’s worst national disaster since Hillsborough in 1989. It began shortly before 1am on June 14 with a fridge fire in a flat on the fourth floor of the 24-storey block. Against a backdrop of rumours and conspiracy theories, police have done painstaking work to establish who was in the building, who escaped and who died or is missing and presumed dead. They are confident the figure will not vary much from the present, best calculation, toll of 80.
What has emerged in the four weeks since the fire, however, is that the disaster was preventable. A long chain, with multiple weak links, led to the tragic events at Grenfell Tower.
Regulatory failure
There are volumes of building regulations that are supposed to control the supply, use and inspection of building materials on construction projects.
Between 2014 and last year, Grenfell Tower underwent a refurbishment that included new heating and hot water systems, remodelled staircases, new windows and the attachment of an external thermal insulation system.
That system was made up of commonly used materials – rigid foam insulation board, separated by an air vent from rainscreen aluminium cladding. The insulation and the cladding are both combustible and the vent between them creates a chimney effect in the event of a fire. Ministers have said some materials did not comply with the building regulations but that could be hard to prove in a court.
Britain’s building regulations have not been reviewed for a decade despite warnings they have not kept pace with changing construction techniques. In 2009 six people died in a fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell, south London. Five years later a coroner told the government the fire should lead to a review of regulations. Frances Kirkham said the document governing fire safety was ‘‘most difficult to use’’ and called for it to be written in more intelligible language.
Cost cutting
The refurbishment of Grenfell Tower was subject to constant pressure on costs. Despite having £300 million (NZ$532m) in reserves, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea demanded costs be pushed down. The original contractor, Leadbitter, was dropped when its £11.2m proposal was deemed too expensive. It was replaced by Rydon, which faced further costcutting demands after the contract was negotiated. Emails obtained by The Times showed the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation demanding ‘‘good costs’’. That message was followed by a decision to replace fireproof zinc-coated cladding panels with aluminium panels with a polyethylene core to make a saving of £293,000.
Another saving of £5000 was made by opting for the polyethylene panel rather than a slightly more expensive but more fire retardant one.
Cladding
Harley Curtain Wall, an East Sussex firm, was subcontracted by Rydon to carry out the cladding work at Grenfell. In the middle of the project it went into administration. Its debts included £479,000 owed to CEP Architectural Facades for cladding panels, including the Reynobond PE panels used on Grenfell Tower.
One fire expert said the polyethylene core of the panels was, in essence, ‘‘solid petrol’’ and laboratory tests on similar panels from across the country have shown the material to be flammable. An administrator’s report on Harley said its financial crisis was ‘‘affecting the management’s ability to focus on trading matters’’. Nevertheless, the owner of the firm, Ray Bailey, was able to write off its debts, change the name to Harley Facades and immediately return to work at Grenfell Tower.
Harley was supplied with and fitted cladding panels which, according to the manufacturer Arconic, should not have been used on buildings higher than 10 metres. Grenfell Tower is about 70m.
Another question troubling investigators is whether cavity fire barriers, which should be fitted to cladding systems to stop flames spreading, were correctly installed. The council’s building control manager signed a completion certificate on July 7 last year stating he was satisfied ‘‘the building work complied with the relevant provisions’’.
‘Stay put’ advice
The policy of telling people in Grenfell to stay put during the blaze is being examined as part of the criminal investigation. The Metropolitan Police team is listening to all 999 calls and detectives have found them hugely distressing.
The advice to stay put also explains why fire alarms did not sound in the building. The alarm system was connected to a remote monitoring station which had the task of distinguishing between real and false alerts before telling the fire brigade. A key reason for not sounding an alarm is to avoid a panicked mass evacuation.
Fire safety experts maintain that ‘‘stay put’’ is the right advice for people in high rise buildings. If constructed properly, the say, the flats and compartments within a block are designed to physically contain a blaze and keeping the stairwells clear allows firefighters to gain access quickly. But the fire brigade will be asked why it did not change that advice sooner when it realised the blaze was out of control.
Firefighting resources
Dany Cotton, the London fire commissioner, has met Sadiq Khan, the mayor, to discuss gaps in resources. Khan has approached the government for more support for the fire service.
The tallest ladder available to firefighters had a reach of 32m. London had to ask the Surrey fire service for its 42m aerial platform, the tallest firefighting appliance in the country.
The Fire Brigades Union says it believes that years of austerity, which meant a 28 per cent funding cut and a 14 per cent fall in firefighter numbers between 2010 and 2016, had an effect.
Cotton said she expected criticism in the public inquiry but believed that only ‘‘a miracle’’ would have helped the fight against the blaze. She added: ‘‘I don’t think anything available to us as firefighters anywhere in the world would particularly have made a difference’’.
The official response
Volunteers, churches, mosques and organisations such as the Red Cross responded to the needs of hundreds of people left homeless but nothing official seemed to swing into action in the days after Grenfell. The vacuum created disbelief that turned to anger on the streets, with councillors besieged in their officers by an angry crowd while a hapless Prime Minister Theresa May fled a meeting with blaze survivors.
Nicholas Paget-Brown, leader of Kensington and Chelsea council, barred the press from the first council meeting after the fire, then cancelled the session when his ban was overturned by the courts. He quit along with his deputy, Rock Feilding-Mellen, the man in charge of the refurbishment of Grenfell.
– The Times