The Grenfell Tower Fire

In the early hours of 14th June 2017, a quiet London neighbourhood was shaken by a tragedy that would forever alter its landscape and scar the community.

The Borough of Kensington & Chelsea is a hugely diverse area of the English capital, with some of the most expensive homes in London but also areas of poverty. Like much of the city, it’s home to a wide variety of nationalities and countless languages, with much of the low-income immigrant population residing in locations that don’t exactly come to mind when you think of Kensington, Chelsea, and neighbouring Notting Hill.

One such location was the Grenfell Tower block, which looms over North Kensington. This 24-storey building was home to around 600 people—though exact numbers were unclear as many apartments housed multi-generational families or undocumented residents.

Just before 1 am this summer night, an electrical fault in a fridge caused a spark that eventually led to catastrophe. The Grenfell Tower fire erupted with a ferocity that stunned onlookers and left residents scrambling for their lives. This wasn’t just a devastating event but a moment that symbolised broader issues such as social inequality, regulatory failures, and urban safety.

As flames leapt up the sides of the high-rise, Londoners watched in horror. Sixty hours later, the fire was finally brought under control. Seventy people had died, and shocking stories of what happened during the Grenfell Tower tragedy were now emerging.

London & Housing

Major cities around the world are often much alike. The rich can afford beautiful palatial properties with the highest safety standards, while the poor—and let’s be very honest here—often get the scraps.

London has seen a rapid evolution over the past few decades. With words like gentrification appearing everywhere you look, you’d be excused for thinking that the city is now a vast array of stylish coffee shops with almond lattes, trendy butchers selling sausages at eye-watering high prices, and quaint markets where you can buy overpriced art because, well, what else are you going to do on a Sunday morning?

However, the reality is very different. London has genuine areas of poverty that would shock tourists who stay snuggly within the predefined Zone 1. Branch out from the world-famous sites that litter Central London, and you’ll arrive in places that provide a very different interpretation of what London is.

Grenfell Tower was home to a diverse community, many of whom were low-income residents living in social housing. While it was technically in an area of wealth, it was a lump of a tower built to the north of the Borough, as far from the glitzy streets of Chelsea as you could get. You see, social housing is fine as long as you can’t see it from the penthouse.

The fire brought to the forefront the often-neglected plight of social housing tenants in London. Years of austerity measures, budget cuts, and prioritising private developments over affordable housing have led to a severe shortage of safe and adequate social housing. Residents of Grenfell had repeatedly raised concerns about the building’s safety prior to the fire, but their warnings went unheeded.

The Fire Begins

At approximately 12:54 am, a fire broke out in the kitchen of Flat 16 on the fourth floor of Grenfell Tower. The initial ignition point was a Hotpoint FF175BP fridge-freezer, which malfunctioned and sparked a small blaze. The flat occupant, Behailu Kebede, immediately alerted his neighbours and called emergency services. However, despite Mr. Kebede’s quick response, the fire rapidly spread from the refrigerator to the kitchen’s other flammable materials, quickly engulfing the entire apartment.

At this point, the fire should have remained relatively manageable, but a perfect storm of bad luck, ineptitude and poor management meant that a disaster was now rapidly unfolding.

What transformed a manageable kitchen fire into a catastrophic blaze was the building’s exterior cladding and insulation. Grenfell Tower underwent a major refurbishment between 2014 and 2016, during which new cladding was installed to improve its appearance and energy efficiency. The cladding system consisted of aluminium composite material (ACM) panels with a polyethene core, and behind these panels was a layer of highly combustible foam insulation.

As the fire escaped through the kitchen window of Flat 16, it ignited the cladding on the exterior of the building. The polyethylene-filled ACM panels and foam insulation acted as a conduit, allowing the flames to race up the building’s exterior with terrifying speed. The cladding’s design included gaps that created a chimney effect, further accelerating the fire’s spread vertically and horizontally across the building.

Stay Put Policy

Fire causes an innate terror within humans. Our first thought is to flee and get as much distance between us and the inferno as possible, but that wasn’t the official message that night.

Like every other tower block in the city, Grenfell had a stay-put policy in the event of a fire. This policy advises residents to remain in their flats and assumes that compartmentalization and fire-resistant construction will contain the blaze.

The stay-put policy is in place because modern high-rise buildings are designed to contain fires within individual apartments. The theory is that fire-resistant walls, floors, and doors will prevent the spread of fire and smoke for a sufficient period, allowing firefighters to control the blaze and safely evacuate residents if necessary. This approach is intended to avoid mass panic and dangerous stampedes down narrow stairwells.

Under ideal conditions, the stay-put policy can be very effective. It allows firefighters to operate without obstruction in stairways and corridors, minimises the risk of smoke inhalation for residents, and prevents overcrowding of escape routes. In buildings where the policy works as intended, residents are safer staying in their well-constructed flats than attempting to evacuate through potentially smoke-filled common areas. However, during the Grenfell Tower tragedy, it didn’t work.

While many residents began evacuating as soon as they realised Grenfell was on fire, once the fire department arrived, the official line was to stay in your home and allow the firefighters to regain control of the blaze.

Few would ever question the noble sacrifices that firefighters make every time they tackle a fire. That night, they were following official safety recommendations, but unquestionably, those recommendations led to scores of deaths.

Battling the Fire

Once the 999 call had gone out, it took just six minutes for fire engines to begin arriving at Grenfell, and seven minutes later, firefighters entered Flat 16. Upon arrival, firefighters encountered a rapidly escalating fire. What started as a kitchen fire quickly spread to the building’s exterior cladding and spread vertically with alarming speed, bypassing the internal compartmentalisation designed to contain fires within individual flats.

The initial fire in Flat 16 was soon under control, but the situation around Grenfell was deteriorating at an alarming rate as firefighters struggled in vain to stem the spread.

By 1:15 am, flames had reached the fifth and sixth floors, spreading at a terrifying rate and reaching the roof by 1:30 am.

Inside, the tower block quickly became overwhelmed by smoke pouring into the stairwells and lobbies due to improperly sealed fire doors. Firefighters escalated their response significantly, increasing the number of pumps from eight to twenty-five and mobilising additional rescue units and command vehicles. A small kitchen fire had become a tragedy of devastating proportions.

Trapped Residents and Heroic Rescues

As the fire raged, residents trapped inside Grenfell Tower made desperate calls to the fire service, reporting their locations. The London Fire Brigade’s command unit, positioned outside, collected these details and relayed them to the firefighters.

Inside, firefighters faced zero visibility, extreme heat, and thick smoke. Heroic efforts were made to rescue trapped residents, including children and those on higher floors. In one heartbreaking case, three firefighters attempted to rescue a 12-year-old girl from the 20th floor, only to find she had moved to the 23rd floor and tragically did not survive.

Many of those who had heeded the Stay Put Policy were now unable to escape with smoke clogging the hallways. Time and time again, firefighters battled their way up the stairs of Grenfell, eventually bringing 62 people out safely.

Major Incident

By 2:04 am, the fire had spread across the entire building, leading to the declaration of a major incident. The number of fire engines increased to forty, with over 250 firefighters on the scene. As the situation worsened, residents resorted to extreme measures, including tying bedsheets together to escape and signalling for help from windows. Falling debris and explosions from gas lines added to the chaos, while the Metropolitan Police Service managed the growing crowd of onlookers.

Even as dawn approached, firefighters continued their efforts to rescue trapped residents and combat the fire. At 4:14 am, the police instructed the crowd to contact anyone they knew inside the building, urging self-evacuation. The last two rescues occurred at 6:05 am and 8:07 am.

By 1:14 am on June 15th, the fire had been brought under control. However, the building’s skeleton continued to smoulder for days, and firefighters remained on site until the evening of June 16th.

Identification

Once the fire was under control, the immediate question was how many hadn’t escaped. While Grenfell was officially home to roughly 600 residents, only around half were thought to have been present at the time of the fire.

Through CCTV footage analysis, police concluded that out of the 293 people present in the building, 223 had managed to escape, but this investigation took five months to conclude. As Grenfell continued to smoulder on the 15th and 16th of June, official figures stated that just 12 people had died during the fire.

By the following week, police estimated that 80 people had died, a figure that was widely reported in the media for several months. Some victims were identified through 26 emergency calls made from inside 23 different flats.

On 19th September 2017, Metropolitan Police Commander Stuart Cundy suggested that the actual death toll could be lower than 80, as eight individuals were being investigated for making fraudulent financial claims for non-existent victims. Of these claims, five individuals were eventually convicted of fraud.

Identifying fatalities was particularly challenging due to the absence of a formal register of occupants and the presence of undocumented subtenants, migrants, and asylum seekers believed to have been living in the building.

Response & Inquest

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the Grenfell community and the broader public were in shock. Survivors, many of whom had lost family members, friends, and all their possessions, faced an uncertain future. The local community, however, rallied in an inspiring show of solidarity—volunteers across London and beyond provided food, clothing, and shelter to those displaced by the fire. Community centres, churches, and mosques opened their doors to offer support and refuge.

Despite the outpouring of grassroots support, the official response from local and national authorities was widely criticised as slow and inadequate. Many survivors were placed in temporary accommodations for prolonged periods, and there were significant delays in providing permanent housing. The perceived failure of the authorities to respond promptly and effectively exacerbated the trauma experienced by survivors and further eroded trust in the government.

The Grenfell Tower fire prompted multiple investigations and a public inquiry to uncover its causes and hold those responsible accountable. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry, launched in September 2017, sought to understand the events leading up to the fire, the immediate response, and the regulatory framework that allowed such a disaster.

Phase 1 of the inquiry focused on the night of the fire, detailing firefighters’ efforts, residents’ harrowing experiences, and the rapid spread of the blaze due to the flammable cladding. Phase 2, which began in 2019, examined the broader issues, including the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, the role of various organisations and contractors, and the adequacy of building regulations and fire safety standards.

The early inquiry revealed systemic failures at multiple levels, including poor-quality materials used in the building’s refurbishment, inadequate fire safety measures, and a lack of proper oversight and enforcement of safety regulations. These findings have led to widespread calls for accountability and significant changes to fire safety laws.

In response to the tragedy and the inquiry’s findings, numerous efforts have been made to reform fire safety regulations and improve housing conditions. The government has pledged to remove and replace dangerous cladding from high-rise buildings nationwide. However, progress has been slow, and thousands of residents continue to live in buildings with similar fire hazards, prompting ongoing concerns and calls for more decisive action.

Legislation such as the Building Safety Act 2022 was introduced to strengthen building safety regulations, improve accountability among developers and landlords, and enhance the powers of regulatory bodies. Additionally, the government established a new Building Safety Regulator to oversee the safety and standards of high-rise buildings.

A Night of Horror

Over seven years after that fateful night in June 2017, the charred remains of Grenfell still loom over North Kensington. Despite heartfelt banners that were hung from the roof in 2018—as a memorial, but undoubtedly also to hide the scarred remains within—the Tower remains a painful reminder of the tragedy.

Many want it demolished completely, but doing so in such a tightly packed area is not thought feasible. Others have stated that the shell itself is still sound and that a new tower block should be built around it, but good luck selling those apartments. More than £100 million has been spent on tower maintenance and reports, but precious little progress has been made. Grenfell has become an increasingly expensive, painful white elephant.

The Grenfell Tower fire has had a lasting impact on public consciousness and policy. It highlighted the deep inequalities in housing and the neglect of social housing tenants. The tragedy underscored the need for better communication, more robust safety measures, and greater transparency and accountability in housing management.

For the survivors and the bereaved, the journey toward justice and closure continues. Many have become vocal advocates for safer housing conditions and have played a crucial role in keeping the spotlight on the issues raised by the disaster. The Grenfell Tower fire has become a symbol of the need for systemic change to protect society’s most vulnerable members.

Recently, the Metropolitan Police said firm answers and accountability might not arrive until 2027, meaning a full decade of investigations. It seems absurd that anything could take that long, but with a report now thought to be in the thousands of pages and the legal prerequisite that everybody involved in potential prosecution be contacted and interviewed first, it’s a long process. However, it’s difficult not to believe that things might be moving a little quicker if the fire had been at a members club in swanky—and white—Mayfair.

It seems likely that eventually, individuals will be prosecuted for their crimes of negligence and corner-cutting, but this story isn’t just about individual mistakes. It’s also about a growing divide between the rich and poor—the haves and the have-nots—the safe and the not-so-safe. And that’s an inquiry the British government certainly doesn’t want to have any time soon.

Key Takeaways

• The Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017 highlighted deep social inequalities in London’s housing.
• Flammable cladding and insulation installed during a 2014-2016 refurbishment rapidly spread the fire.
• The official ‘stay put’ policy failed, leading to numerous deaths among residents.
• The tragedy exposed systemic failures in building regulations and fire safety measures.
• The Grenfell Tower fire underscored the need for better housing conditions and accountability.

Frequently Asked Questions

When and where did the Grenfell Tower fire occur?

The Grenfell Tower fire occurred in the early hours of 14th June 2017 in North Kensington, London.

What caused the Grenfell Tower fire?

The fire was caused by an electrical fault in a fridge in Flat 16 on the fourth floor of Grenfell Tower.

How many people died in the Grenfell Tower fire?

Seventy people died in the Grenfell Tower fire.

What was the stay-put policy, and why did it fail during the Grenfell Tower fire?

The stay-put policy advises residents to remain in their flats during a fire, assuming that compartmentalization and fire-resistant construction will contain the blaze. It failed during the Grenfell Tower fire because the building’s exterior cladding and insulation allowed the fire to spread rapidly.

What role did the building’s exterior cladding play in the fire’s spread?

The exterior cladding, made of aluminium composite material (ACM) panels with a polyethene core, and the foam insulation behind it acted as a conduit, allowing the flames to race up the building’s exterior with terrifying speed.

How did the community respond to the Grenfell Tower fire?

The local community rallied in an inspiring show of solidarity, with volunteers providing food, clothing, and shelter to those displaced by the fire. Community centres, churches, and mosques opened their doors to offer support and refuge.

What were the immediate criticisms of the official response to the Grenfell Tower fire?

The official response from local and national authorities was widely criticised as slow and inadequate, with significant delays in providing permanent housing and support to survivors.

What was the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, and what did it aim to achieve?

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry was launched to understand the events leading up to the fire, the immediate response, and the regulatory framework that allowed such a disaster. It aimed to uncover the causes of the fire and hold those responsible accountable.

What legislative changes were introduced in response to the Grenfell Tower fire?

The Building Safety Act 2022 was introduced to strengthen building safety regulations, improve accountability among developers and landlords, and enhance the powers of regulatory bodies. Additionally, a new Building Safety Regulator was established.

What is the current status of the Grenfell Tower site?

The charred remains of Grenfell Tower still loom over North Kensington. Despite efforts to memorialize the site and proposals for rebuilding, progress has been slow, and the tower remains a painful reminder of the tragedy.

Sources

• Original Into the Shadows video: The Grenfell Tower Fire
• Hero image source by Prioryman / openverse, by-sa.

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