No one who witnessed the live television feed of Grenfell Tower ablaze, the utter despair of families waiting for news of their loved ones – both at the time and even now, a month on – could be unaffected by what they have seen. So many, including myself, have been moved to tears.
I cannot begin to imagine the heartache, pain and contrasting emotions that these families have endured and will continue to endure for the rest of their own lives. I can only empathise and, like everyone else, hope and trust that we will never see such an event again.
Sadly, whilst immediate steps have been taken to remove the cladding from tower blocks, in an effort to prevent a repeat of the all-consuming spread of the fire, what guarantees do we have that it will not be repeated?
So much will depend on the ongoing investigation, its thoroughness and the evidence that it produces.
Already, the scale of the investigation is astounding:-
- The largest non-terrorist probe conducted by Scotland Yard
- 250 specialist investigators engaged
- 60 companies contacted
- 20 terabytes of CCTV obtained (equivalent to 5000 feature length films!)
- 4 terabytes of data (equivalent of 2 million pages of A4)
- 140 witness statements taken to date – with “the scale of the witness numbers means that it will be months just to do the interviews”
- “all aspects” of fire safety is being reviewed, including the structure, materials added to it, evacuation procedures, refurbishments, management … and, hopefully, an answer to the question “why did the blaze spread so fast?”
Much of the information, however, is conflicting.
Whilst it was thought that there was just a single type of cladding used in the £8.7M refurbishment it now appears from TV footage that other types of cladding were used – a spokesman for this other cladding product has commented “This is not a combination we would ever recommend. It would be hard to understand how a route to compliance could be achieved using a mixture of insulation products”.
Others are commenting that “The insulation was more flammable than the cladding”.
There have been several reports that there were numerous warnings given to the authorities, by the residents and fire service, regarding the fire risks at Grenfell Tower whereas others are saying that all such concerns were correctly dealt with.
There has been and will continue to be various theories and explanations before the full picture is in focus and it would be wrong for me to proffer my own views at this stage.
There is much emotion attached to all of this. Indeed, Met Commander Stuart Cundy, refusing to rule out manslaughter charges for those responsible, has said:-
“You can’t listen to the families and listen to the 999 calls and not want to hold people to account for a fire that should not have happened”.
My sincere hope, in all of this, is that whatever the scope of the investigation and subsequent inquiry, whoever is at its head, how far the terms of reference actually go, who did what, when or failed to act – let us have complete openness and transparency. We cannot have a repeat of the events following Hillsborough nor fail to learn from undoubted mistakes that have been made.
That would be unforgiveable.