Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
You can’t hear 999 calls and not want to hold people to account
Met chief on Grenfell probe
THE Grenfell Tower fire probe could last years but the death toll is expected to remain at about 80, police revealed yesterday.
Met Commander Stuart Cundy also refused to rule out manslaughter charges for those responsible, adding: “You can’t listen to the families and listen to the 999 calls and not want to hold people to account for a fire that should not have happened.”
Scotland Yard said the probe was the largest it had ever conducted outside terrorism and involved 60 firms, millions of pages of documents and hundreds of witnesses.
About 350 people were known to have been resident at the tower in West London when the devastating blaze tore through it on June 14.
Of those, 255 survived and 14 were not at home, so it leaves a death toll of around 80, the Met said.
This is despite claims from some residents and politicians that the figure would be more like 100.
Det Chief Insp Matt Bonner said officers have contacted 60 companies and organisations, and seized over 20 terabytes of
CCTV — the equivalent to 5,000 feature length films. Four terabytes of data have also been obtained, which would be two million pages of A4 if printed out. Interviews have been conducted with more than 140 witnesses. One call from a desperate resident to an emergency operator lasted 55 minutes. So far experts have positively identified 32 victims, with 55 postmortem examinations having taken place. Police say that the damage caused by the inferno meant some remains may never be fully identified. Officers have taken advice from experts who recovered the dead after the September 11 attacks in the US.
Asked if the investigation could take years, Det Chief Insp Bonner replied: “The scale of the witness numbers means it will be months just to do the interviews.”
His team, which includes 250 specialist investigators, is looking into “all aspects” of fire safety in the building, including materials added to it, evacuation procedures, refurbishments, management and why the blaze spread so quickly.
It emerged last night another insulation material not previously identified was used in the tower’s cladding.
Footage shot by Channel 4 News shows Kingspan Kooltherm K15 visible in at least one section of the building cladding system.
The product complies with highrise fire tests but the product’s manufacturers, Kingspan, said it was used without its knowledge.
A Kingspan spokesman said: “This is not a combination we would ever recommend. It would be hard to understand how a route to compliance could be achieved using a mixture of insulation products.”
Met Police DS Fiona Mcormick has said: “The insulation was more flammable than the cladding.”