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NEWS

floor flat occupied by Behailu Kebede, anEthiopian-born taxi driver. When hebanged on Maryann Adam’s door acrossthe hall, the fire was “small in thekitchen”, said Adam. No fire alarm hadsounded.

The first 999 call was made at 12.54amand only six minutes later firemen wereon the scene. Yet the flames rapidly grewout of control, spreading to the building’s

exterior and turning its recently refur-bished facade to ashes.

Exactly how that minor domestic blazeturned into an inferno that consumed theentire building — with its lethally combus-tible outer cladding, its gas pipes andhighly toxic materials in everything fromPVC window frames to supposedly flame-retardant furniture — will be scrutinisedby the public inquiry announced by Ther-esa May, who last week endured one ofthe most punishing weeks in modernpolitical history.

Seemingly unable to put a step right inleading the government’s response to thetragedy, the prime minister awoke yester-day to brutal complaints of “Tory failure”and “Maybot malfunction” — and thosewere just the headlines from pro-Con-servative newspapers. When she visitedthe scene in west London on Friday, onthe street she heard shouts of “coward”and “shame on you”.

Katrina Frazer, 39, a former Grenfellresident who still lives nearby, added:“She’s come here for a photo opportu-nity, not to help us through this hardtime. We watched our family and friendsburn and she has nothing to say. I cameout [of my home] at 1.30am and saw theflames, I asked a child if he was OK and hesaid he could see fire in the apartment hisfriend lived in. We watched smoke engulfthat apartment and there was nothing wecould do. [May] won’t hear us and see us— this is a prime example of how peoplein social housing get treated. We need toshout our opinions to make her see thatshe needs to talk.”

As public anger was fanned by eachrevelation of missed warnings andshoddy construction, even theannouncement of a £5m governmentfund for victims failed to relieve theincreasingly volatile mood. Criticspromptly compared the new figure withthe £369m the government recently allo-cated for renovations of Buckingham Pal-ace.

WARNINGS IGNOREDThe news was not uniformly bad: manyBritons reacted to the disaster with out-standing generosity and concern. Moneyflooded in to funds set up for the victims;so many clothes and other goods weredonated that volunteers had to turn giftsaway. There were heroes who dashedtowards danger in the hope of helpingsurvivors; people helped pass out flyerswith pictures of the missing and offeredvictims food and temporary homes.

Yet not even a visit to the scene by theQueen, displaying a sense of humanityconspicuously absent in May, could dimthe sense of unease that Britain hasreached some kind of turning point, itspast no longer a guide to its future.

The missed warnings, regulatory tor-por and financial pressures that pre-ceded last week’s inferno stretch backnearly two decades. It is at times a com-plex and circuitous trail but one that mayultimately have doomed so many of theoccupants of Grenfell Tower.

It was 18 years ago that a group of MPs— then members of the Commons envi-ronment, transport and regional affairscommittee — investigated the risk posedby external cladding on tower blocks.The inquiry was partly triggered by a fireat a tower block in Scotland — GarnockCourt in Ayrshire — which was describedby witnesses as going up “like a match”,although only one person died.

Four years after the all-party groupfirst demanded changes, those regula-tions remain under review and recom-mendations have not been implemented.It is estimated that about 4,000 towerblocks in Britain do not have sprinklersfitted in them. Gavin Barwell, now Ther-esa May’s chief of staff, was housing min-ister for a year before the general electionand was among those accused of failing toact on calls for an overhaul of the regula-tions.

At Grenfell Tower, occupants wereacutely aware of the risks of living in theblock, which had no sprinklers and justone inner staircase as an escape route.They had long urged the managementcompany — Kensington and Chelsea Ten-ant Management Organisation (KCTMO)— to improve the building’s safety.

In November, a residents’ organisa-tion, the Grenfell Action Group, warnedon its blog that it believed “only a cata-strophic event will expose the ineptitudeand incompetence of our landlord” andend “the dangerous living conditions andneglect of health and safety legislationthat they inflict upon their tenants andleaseholders”.

Judith Blakeman, a Labour councillorwho lives near the tower, claimed thebuilding’s managers had stopped listen-ing to warnings because there were somany. She said: “There have been ongo-ing problems since 2013, when therewere massive power surges to the towerand all the electrical appliances wentbust. Most recently, the leaseholders’association asked [KCTMO] to providefunds so they could commission anassessment of the building. It was turneddown.”

A POISONOUS COCOONThe residents were particularly con-cerned that exposed gas pipes had beeninstalled in the block’s only stairwell aspart of the refurbishment programme.

“Typically stairwells will act like achimney and carry flames and smoke upbetween floors,” noted David Scays-brook, a consultant forensic scientistwho specialises in fire investigation. “Ifthere are gaps like holes for gas pipes orother pipes, they allow fire through. Youonly need a tiny gap for the fire to spread— it first enlarges the hole and then rushesthrough.”

One Grenfell resident was quoted in anemail to KCTMO summarising safety con-cerns: “I’m absolutely shocked by thedodgy work and the risk to the building.I walked up the communal stairs tonightand I’m surprised that there is not evenprotection. If there was a gas leak on oneof those pipes and someone was smokingthat would be the end of the building.”

Long before last week’s inferno, resi-dents complained that there had notbeen a fire drill in the block for five years.An inspection had found fire extinguish-ers with the word “condemned” writtenon them and emergency access roadswere often blocked by vehicles.

The fire risk was worse than the ten-ants realised. The building had been fit-ted with aluminium panels as part of an£8.6m refurbishment last year, but acheaper, more flammable version hadbeen chosen over a more expensive fire-resistant cladding. The Times calculatedlast week that the choice saved theproject just £5,000.

The problem with the cheaper panelwas not only its vulnerability to fire. Its

A small selection of the notes written on a message board near the tower.

“My words on this wall can’t bring you back; but my actions from this day will try fight for the justice. Gone too soon through no fault of your own. Will never forget.”

“Justice will be served. RIP to all the beautiful, innocent souls lost on this tragic day.”

“This is a terrible tragedy, God bless the survivors. RIP Biruk [Haftom, 12-year-old boy], love you, gone but not forgotten.”

“Jessica [Urbano, aged 12] my princess, you should never have been there by yourself, my lovely Latina. I love you so much.”

“We are London. We are one.”

LOVE AND RAGE

It felt like summer in London yester-day, with the capital awakening to aflawless blue sky and the city’sworld-renowned landmarks — fromthe dome of St Paul’s Cathedral tothe towers of Westminster and thegardens of royal palaces — allbathed in glorious sunshine.

Yet a very different landmarkbecame part of the city’s heritage

last week, and no amount of sunshinecould brighten the blackened skeleton ofGrenfell Tower, the fire-ravaged councilblock that is suddenly casting a longshadow over British life.

As frantic families clung to fast-dwindling hopes of finding missing lovedones yesterday, the hulking ruin of a24-storey building once teeming withraucous life provided the haunting back-drop to an increasingly angry debateabout the state of Britain, the quality of itsgovernance and — not least — how a trag-edy so far-reaching could apparentlyhave been sparked by something as mun-dane as a broken fridge.

It was a harrowing, sorrowful disasterthat struck at the most basic of humaninstincts — the fear of fire that has shapedLondon’s spread for centuries, fromQueen Boadicea’s revolt of AD60, whenthe town of Londinium was razed to theground, through the medieval conflagra-tions of 1135 and 1212 to the Great Fire ofLondon, which started in a Pudding Lanebakery in 1666 and destroyed the homesof 70,000 people.

Sawsan Choucair was one of many rel-atives of Grenfell residents who wasawoken in the small hours of Wednesdaymorning by a phonecall from the burningtower block. Her sister, Nadia, lived withher husband, three young children andtheir grandmother on the 22nd floor.Choucair heard their cries over thephone, until the line went silent.

“Nadia loved the views,” she said lastweek, “but like everyone she was wor-ried it wasn’t safe there.” On Thursday,Choucair was still clinging to hope and

Slack rules, bad advice and toxic materials fanned a small fire into a national calamity

My child plays in the lifts and by the tower with other children who live there. They may never play together again

Water is sprayed at Grenfell Tower on Thursday as the fire still smoulders

The MPs’ inquiry concluded thatexternal cladding systems ought to be“entirely non-combustible”, or shouldpass stringent and improved fire safetytests. It was an important step, thoughsome experts warned at the time that theamended tests did not go far enough.

Concerns multiplied in July 2009,when six people died and 20 wereinjured in a fire at Lakanal House, a coun-cil-owned block in Camberwell, southLondon. The inquest, which went onuntil 2013, heard the blaze spread withinfive minutes, burning through externalpanels attached to the building’s facadeas part of a refurbishment programme.

Ronnie King, the honorary adminis-trative secretary of the all-party parlia-mentary fire safety and rescue group,recalled last week: “This fire spread in4½ minutes from where [it] started to thefloor above. We wanted to see sprinklersfitted in tower blocks and a review of theregulations of fire resistance of externalwalls.”

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GRENFELL TOWER DISASTER

searching care centres in the area for atrace of her family. At one point hermobile phone rang and her voice shookas she answered, hoping it might be goodnews. She hung up, downcast. “Justanother false alarm,” she said.

A Muslim mother who asked not to benamed fled from the building without herheadscarf. “I came out uncovered. Oth-ers were in pyjamas. I was only awakebecause I was breaking my fast duringRamadan, then I noticed the fire enginesand smoke.”

She was on the 14th floor but managedto get down the stairs with her child. Itwas not until later that she realised herneighbour was among the missing. “I feelguilty because I did not knock for him. Iknew I needed to get myself and my childout. It is a nightmare. I cannot sleep.”

The woman’s cousin and her youngchildren lived higher up in the block. “Weare losing hope that we will ever see themagain. My child plays in the lifts and out-side the tower with other children wholive there. They may never play togetheragain.”

Residents of the upper floors are con-sidered unlikely to have survived the poi-sonous smoke that filled all corners of thebuilding long before the flames arrived; itmay take months to identify exactly whodied, and where. The official death tollyesterday was 30, with dozens moreknown to be missing.

FLAMES AND SCREAMSOne fireman spoke of moving throughthe choking smoke, listening to screamscoming from “all directions”. Leon Whit-ley told a reporter: “You knew everyoneneeded help but you couldn’t see them.There was thick smoke everywhere. Atone point we were crawling on the floorbecause it made you dizzy if you stood.All you could do was hear . . . loud bangs,things dropping, people screaming.”

Initial eyewitness accounts suggest thefire started shortly before 1am in a fourth-

An inferno that shames us all

JAMES GOURLEY