The fire started with an electrical fault in a refrigerator on the fourth floor. Older refrigerators are more prone to failure due to overheating but lack safety measures. The ignition source was a cladding made of Reynobond aluminium panels with a highly flammable polyethylene core, manufactured by the company Arconic, to which they had added highly flammable foam insulation, manufactured by Celotex and Kingspan.
The wall of flames spread up the walls of the building, poking its tongue through the windows and filling the corridors and stairwells with hot, poisonous gases from the combustion. In the first hour and a half it occupied 20 floors. Half an hour later it had risen another ten. By then, the emergency services were still asking residents to stay inside their homes. More than 200 people disobeyed and managed to get out, before the column forked, reaching the centre of the east and north facades. In less than four hours, the flames had engulfed the perimeter of the building. The firefighters stopped climbing.
Sir Martin Moore-Bick, chairman of the inquiry committee that presented its report on Wednesday, said the Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people in June 2017 had been the result of “decades of failure” by central government. He said not all parties bore the same degree of responsibility. But all had contributed, “in most cases through incompetence, but in a few through dishonesty and greed”. Arconic and Celotex knew the material was highly dangerous and did not meet European safety standards. Both were able to “deliberately manipulate the testing process, misrepresent data and mislead the market” about the safety of their products because, between 2010 and 2015, David Cameron’s government waged war on regulation to cut costs and encourage construction.
The reviews were neither frequent nor thorough. The renovation had been ordered and barely supervised by the local administration of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Grenfell was a social housing building in one of London’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, and its aim was to make it more tolerable to look at, prioritising cost over safety. The tenant protection office was at war with them. The fire brigade struggled with protocol, organisation and communication during and after the fire. Sir Moore-Bick emphasised the courage of the local community, whose support for the victims in the hours after the fire “only highlighted the shortcomings of the official response”.
Claude Wehrle, head of Arconic’s sales team, told the BBC that the deaths of 72 people was a tragedy but that he was not “the person making decisions about the sale of Reynobond PE cladding”. The investigation includes emails from him explaining to the team that the product is dangerous and does not comply with European regulations and that they should keep that information”very confidential”. It also includes emails to other customers explaining how safe it is.
It’s hard not to think about that scene from Fight Club In this case, Edward Norton explains how he, as a claims investigator for a car company, calculates the need to recall a car model that has been responsible for an accident. In this case, the average cost of claims for death, injury or damage from the Grenfell Tower disaster has been zero for Arconic, Celotex and Kingspan. Their dishonesty and greed have been very profitable. They have nothing to change.
