Grenfell safety alert ‘6 years before fire’
Building firm boss ‘said cladding was not suitable’
A MANAGER at the company that made the flammable cladding on Grenfell Tower warned it was dangerous six years before the devastating fire, an inquiry heard yesterday.
Claude Wehrle wrote emails to colleagues at US firm Arconic describing the panels as ‘not suitable for use on building facades’, it was said.
The executive allegedly wrote that the cladding performed badly in fire safety tests and ‘should have been discontinued over ten years ago’.
In the emails, Mr Wehrle called for his colleagues to start using fire-resistant cladding ‘as a matter of urgency’, but admitted his opinion was ‘anti-commercial’.
The astonishing claim that Arconic was aware of the dangers drew gasps from survivors and the bereaved during the opening day of the second phase of the public inquiry into the 2017 disaster that claimed 72 lives.
This stage of the inquiry will examine the refurbishment of the tower – including the decision to install flammable cladding and insulation. It is expected to take 18 months.
Every private company involved in the disastrous refurbishment project has refused to admit any responsibility for the tragedy, the hearing was told. They were accused by Richard Millett QC, counsel to the inquiry, of indulging in a ‘merry-go round of buck-passing’.
‘In every case what happened was, as each of them will have it, someone else’s fault,’ he said. All core participants who played a material part in Grenfell Tower have laid out a detailed case that it relied on others and how in no way was the work it did either substandard or non-compliant.
‘Those who escaped from that burning building with their lives or lost loved ones and all that they possess in that fire are owed at the very least an honest and complete account from those witnesses who are in a position to explain why it happened.’
The inquiry in Paddington,
‘Merry-go-round of buck-passing’
West London, was told that Mr Wehrle raised concerns about the cladding in internal emails in June and July 2011.
And in a 2015 email, the certification manager said Arconic’s Reynobond polyethylene panels were ‘dangerous on facades and everything should be transferred to fire retardant as a matter of urgency’.
The inquiry also heard that Celotex, which made the combustible insulation which sat behind the cladding panels, expressed concern about its product in November 2013.
An official emailed colleagues, saying: ‘Do we take the view that our product realistically shouldn’t be used behind most cladding because in the event of a fire it would burn?’ The inquiry continues.