LonDON — A fire tore through a 24-story West London
apartment building early Wednesday, killing at least 17 people and
injuring more than 70. The cause is still under investigation.
How did the fire start?
The
fire was first reported at 12:54 a.m. The site was Grenfell Tower in
North Kensington, built in 1974, which housed at least 400 people in 120
apartments across 20 residential floors. Firefighters responded
within six minutes. The blaze began on the fourth floor and spread to
the top with a velocity and intensity that stunned the 250 firefighters
who responded. Pockets of fire were still blazing on Thursday morning,
more than 24 hours after the fire broke out.
Commissioner Dany Cotton of the London
Fire Brigade said it was too early to speculate on the cause. Early
news reports said that the fire may have been caused by the explosion
of an electrical appliance, but nothing has been /confirm/ied. The police have ruled out terrorism.
How did it spread so quickly?
That is a major question for investigators. Usually, high-rise buildings are designed to contain a fire in its unit of origin, and in contemporary buildings, alarm systems and sprinklers are the norm.
Grenfell Tower was recently fitted with exterior aluminum cladding.
Such cladding, which often consists
of aluminum sheets sandwiched over some kind of insulation, has been
seen as a factor in past blazes, including three major high-rise fires
in Dubai.
The
United States and Britain have relatively tough regulations on the
potential flammability of internal material used in cladding, but other
factors — such as how panels are made and installed — could come into
play.
Christopher
Miers, the managing director of Probyn-Miers, a forensic architecture
firm that examines buildings that are defective or fire damaged, said
the panels “are safe to use, but they need to be properly used and they
need to be well constructed and the building needs to be well managed.”
Matthew
Needham-Laing, an architect and engineering lawyer who specializes in
building defects, said the dark smoke that engulfed the building was a
telltale sign of burning cladding material.
“It
looks to me — and certainly a lot of people are saying the same thing —
it looks to me like a cladding fire,” he said.The material in the
cladding, he said, is “flame retardant, so it doesn’t catch fire as
easily, but the temperatures you’re talking about are often
900, 1,000 degrees centigrade, and in those conditions, any material
will generally burn, and they do, and the thick black smoke was sure to
be from that insulation.”
Firefighters resting near the site of the blaze. London Fire Brigade said officers were likely to remain there for 24 hours.Credit Matt Dunham/Associated Press
Who owns the building?
Grenfell
Tower is owned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, one of
32 boroughs that make up Greater London, along with the City, London’s
financial district. Day-to-day management is contracted out to the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organization.
In
May 2016, the building underwent a $12.8 million renovation, including
the cladding, double-glazed windows and a communal heating system.
Nicholas
Paget-Brown, the council’s leader, told the BBC that whether the
refurbishment was done appropriately “will need to be the subject of a
separate investigation.”
“We
need a thorough inquiry into why this fire started, why it spread so
quickly, and whether there was anything in place to slow down its
progress,” he added.
He said his immediate concern was finding housing for displaced residents.
Flames and smoke engulfing Grenfell Tower.
Did the building meet current standards?
After
six people died and more than 20 were injured in a 2009 fire in
Lakanal House, a tower block in Camberwell, in the southeast of London,
a parliamentary group called for a review of fire safety rules, and an
inquest advised the government to urge that sprinklers be installed in
high-rise buildings.
The
review has been dragging. Gavin Barwell, a housing minister until he
lost his seat in the general election last week and was then appointed
Prime Minister Theresa May’s chief of staff, has come under criticism
for the delay.
Grenfell Tower’s management company carried out an overhaul of the fire safety system only last year, considering
it a model for its many properties. In board meeting minutes last
year, it said it would use the same approach on “all major works
projects.”
The overhaul came after years of complaints by tenants, and after a deficiency notice was issued by the London Fire Brigade last year relating to another building.
What was the safety protocol, and was it followed?
The fire action protocol said that residents who were safely inside their apartments when there was a fire elsewhere should stay put, keeping doors and windows closed. The procedure is not uncommon for such towers in Britain.
A
2014 residents’ newsletter defended this policy on the grounds that
the building had been designed to meet “rigorous fire safety
standards.” It said apartments had recently been fitted with front
doors that could “withstand a fire for up to 30 minutes, which gives
plenty of time for the fire brigade to arrive.”
Paul Munakr, a seventh-floor resident, told the BBC that alarms in the building had not gone off, leading to initial confusion as to whether there was a fire.
But
David King, a building engineer, said that in his three-decade career,
he had never heard of residents in high-rise buildings being told to
stay put.
Two men hugging within the security cordon around Grenfell Tower.Credit Daniel Leal-Olivas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Had safety issues been raised?
The Grenfell Action Group, a residents’ group, said it had raised alarms for years about the management of the building.
In
a post last November, the action group said that, despite a fire at
another tower managed by the company, and power surges found to have
been caused by faulty wiring at Grenfell Tower in 2013, residents had
received no “proper safety instructions.” The group predicted that it
would take a “catastrophic event” to spur the management company to
action.
The group said the management company had responded to the concerns
by posting fire safety instructions — including the “stay put” policy —
at the building entrance and outside elevators on every floor.
A fire risk assessment for the tower conducted in November 2012, and cited by the Grenfell Action Group, said that fire extinguishers in the basement boiler room, the elevator monitor
room and the ground floor electrical room were out of date. “Some
located in the roof level areas had ‘condemned’ written on them in
large black writing with a last test date of 2009 or 2010,” the report
said. It was not clear if the extinguishers had since been updated.
How has management responded?
The
management company declined to comment on safety concerns, and
referred reporters to a statement on its website by its chief
executive, Robert Black, calling the fire “devastating” and expressing
heartbreak at the reports of injury and loss of life.
In a statement, the Rydon Group, the contractor
that refurbished Grenfell Tower last year, said its work “met all
required building control, fire regulation and health and safety
standards.”
“We
will cooperate with the relevant authorities and emergency services
and fully support their enquiries into the causes of this fire at the
appropriate time,” the company added.
Harley Facades Limited, which made the cladding, has not responded to requests for comment.
