Grenfell uncovered: An ongoing fight for justice

By Elina Daryani

On a warm spring evening in 2017, a 24-storey tower block in West London was engulfed by a devastating fire, claiming the lives of 72 residents. Despite happening over eight years ago, those affected by the tragedy are still waiting for justice. 

In the harrowing new Netflix documentary, Grenfell: Uncovered, Olaide Sadiq powerfully conveys the mistreatment of the residents, as well as the gross negligence carried out by the local authorities and corporations involved in the fire. Through emotive first-hand accounts from the survivors, viewers are left with a formidable sense of anger and betrayal. ‘How could this have been allowed to happen here?’ asked the sister of Ray Bernard, who lived on the twenty-third floor.

With disasters like Grenfell, there is usually a desire to find a single scapegoat. People want someone or something to direct their outrage towards. However, the tragedy of this case is met with the complexity of not having a single person or organisation to blame. Instead, the fire was a result of a plethora of systemic failures within various institutions.

In 2015, the Kensington and Chelsea council began a refurbishment project on Grenfell tower. Their goal was simple: to make the tower block look less like an ‘ugly cousin’ to the surrounding buildings at the lowest cost possible. The construction company, Rydon, carried out most of the refurbishment, installing ACM cladding to the building’s exterior. 

The stories of lost lives interwoven with evidence of gross misconduct, reflects how the Grenfell community were seriously failed. Homes and hearts have been left forever broken as a result of problems that could have been easily avoided.

ACM is a composite material, containing polymers, which are highly flammable. Despite running product tests that revealed the immense risk of using this form of panel – especially in high-rise buildings – the American corporation, Arconic, distributed around 3,000 square metres of ACM cladding panels to be used on Grenfell’s refurbishment. Instead of containing a potential fire, ACM panels allow it to spread rapidly, whilst producing toxic fumes from the plastic.  

At Grenfell, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) advised a ‘Stay put’ policy, telling residents to stay in their flats until firefighters arrived. This relies on the assumption that the building was properly constructed, however it proved to be fatally ineffective, as the fire spread across 20 storeys in less than 20 minutes. What makes this even more distressing, is the LFB’s failure to learn from the past, such as the Laknal House fire in 2009, which also spread rapidly due to combustible cladding. 

Most crucially though, the severe governmental failure here lies within the austerity years. In 2010, David Cameron introduced the ‘one in, one out policy’, encouraging severe deregulation. If a minister wanted to introduce a new regulation, they had to scrap an existing one first. In a bid to grow the economy and reduce the budget deficit, Cameron treated regulation as a faff, not a necessity. This allowed Rydon, Arconic, and the other corporations involved to install a highly flammable and deadly material that would destroy the home of an entire community.

The stories of lost lives interwoven with evidence of gross misconduct, reflects how the Grenfell community were seriously failed. Homes and hearts have been left forever broken as a result of problems that could have been easily avoided. By spending just £5,000 more on a safer cladding alternative or updating the UK’s fire safety regulations, it is highly unlikely that this fatal fire would have ever spread - a chilling reality to come to terms with. 

One would hope that at the very least, Grenfell could offer us a valuable lesson in accountability and the importance of learning from the past, however since the seven-year government inquiry, no arrests have been made and thousands of high-storey buildings with combustible cladding still exist in the UK. 

Although this documentary compellingly denounces the actors and institutions responsible for the Grenfell disaster, until they face legal consequences, the fight for justice continues.

Image: Wikipedia Commons