More than seven years after the incident, a damning report into the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London was released on Wednesday. The 72 deaths were “all preventable,” said inquiry chairman Martin Moore-Bick, as he delivered the report’s findings. “The simple truth is that those who lived in the tower were seriously betrayed for years … by those who were responsible for the safety of the building and its occupants,” insisted the retired former judge.
The fire broke out on June 14, 2017, and took less than 30 minutes to spread throughout the 24-storey tower block, occupied by generally modest families, in west London. Seventy-two people died, making it the worst residential fire in Britain since World War II.
‘Systematic dishonesty’
The inquiry report presented on Wednesday said the fire was “the culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies with senior positions in the construction industry”. It also highlighted “systematic dishonesty” by building materials companies. They adopted “deliberate strategies … to manipulate the testing process, distort data and mislead the market”, the report charged.
The firefighters of the London Fire Brigade also faced heavy criticism, with senior officers described as “complacent”. They failed to learn the lessons of a previous fire in 2009, which “should have alerted” the service “to the shortcomings of its capacity to tackle fires in high-rise buildings”. The government will ensure that this “can never happen again”, Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised, apologising “on behalf of the British state”.
The cladding problem
The inquiry was looking into how a fire that started small could spread so quickly. Entire families were trapped in the flames. Residents who called emergency services were told to stay in their flats and wait for help. This advice was widely criticised and has since been revised.
The first phase of the inquiry, published in October 2019, concluded that the cladding was the “main cause” of the fire’s spread. The second, which began in January 2022, focused on technical issues such as the effectiveness of safety tests for building materials.
The disaster left many people living in buildings with similar cladding fearing a repeat tragedy. The UK Conservative government announced in 2022 that developers would be required to contribute more to the cost of removing the cladding. But the issue is far from over. In late August in Dagenham, east London, more than 80 people had to be evacuated in the middle of the night after waking up to smoke and flames in a building where work to remove “non-compliant” cladding had been partially completed. According to London Fire Commissioner Andy Roe, there are still around 1,300 buildings in the city where urgent “remedial” work needs to be carried out.
Criminal prosecution?
One of the victims’ groups, Grenfell United, has called for assurances that the recommendations of the inquiry will be implemented. It says that if the recommendations made following an inquiry into a 2009 fire in a London apartment building had been implemented, the outcome of the Grenfell fire “could have been very different”. On Tuesday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer apologised “on behalf of the State” to the victims of the fire.
Bereaved parents and survivors, for their part, have said they hope the inquiry will bring them the “truth we deserve”. For some, it means a prison sentence for those who “made decisions that put profit above people’s safety”. London police have warned that they will not be able to produce their report until the end of 2025. Prosecutors will then need a year to decide whether to bring criminal charges.
This article is originally published on .ledauphine.com
