My response to Grenfell fire not good enough: May

london — British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday that her initial response to the Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 71 people in London a year ago, was not good enough because it had given the wrong impression that she didn’t care.

The 24-storey social housing block in west London, home to a close-knit, ethnically diverse community, was engulfed by flames in the middle of the night of June 14, 2017, in Britain’s deadliest fire on domestic premises since World War Two.

The tragedy, which unfolded within one of London’s richest boroughs, immediately prompted a wave of soul-searching about social inequalities, neglect of immigrant communities and poor safety standards in housing.

The day after the disaster, May briefly visited the site, thanking firefighters for their work and holding a short meeting with the team in charge of the response.

“It has long been clear that the initial response was not good enough. I include myself in that,” May wrote in a column in the Evening Standard, a London newspaper, days before the first anniversary of the tragedy.

But her failure to meet any of the traumatised survivors searching for missing loved ones angered the local community and came to symbolise what many people felt was a history of contempt from the authorities. —