Yesterday, it was 12 months since the horrific fire at Grenfell Towers in London. 72 people died and many more were injured, and a public inquiry is ongoing to look at what caused the blaze and how it was handled. If anybody can be judged to be criminally accountable for the devastation, the inquiry is supposed to identify them. Prosecutions could result.
Now, the inquiry is hearing accounts of victims, as well as speaking to specialists and professionals who are involved. Soon, they will start speaking to people who could be held accountable for the fire. Was the advice from emergency services for people to stay in their flats during the fire a cause of their deaths? Was the cladding purely to blame and, if not, what else contributed to the disaster? What could and should the local council have done to prevent such a tragedy? How should they have responded afterwards?
Theresa May has been criticised for her lack of compassion and her avoidance of speaking to the local community in the aftermath of the fire, and the local council in Kensington and Chelsea is standing accused of handling the crisis poorly. It certainly looked from the outside that they were appalling. And when the Queen, who normally has the emotional intelligence of a squid, is hailed as an example of how to speak to survivors of a crisis, you know your Prime Minister has screwed it up badly.
It was one of Britain’s biggest ever tower block fires and made news around the world. The cladding that had been placed on the building – ostensibly to make the mass housing solution look palatable to its rich neighbours in London’s wealthiest area – caught fire far too quickly, and seems to have allowed the blaze to spread ridiculously quickly. This cladding has still not been banned. Nor has the government funded the fitting of sprinkler systems in other high-rise buildings.
The fact that this was a building full of immigrants, of Black and brown people, means that it is not taken as seriously as it should be. Those who don’t care about what happened would invariably have had a different reaction had it been full of rich white folk. But they were brown, they were poor, and they might have spoken with an accent. That makes them lesser, and makes a national disaster a bit less terrifying to some.
That is something to be ashamed of.
The Grenfell Tower fire was a symbol of the side of London that is hidden away from view. The tall block of flats wasn’t a Palace or a garden, the places tourists flock to. But it was a lived-in expanse of housing, and it was full of life.
One year on, 129 families have not been permanently rehoused and 70 families are still living in temporary accommodation, while more than 200 homes that were bought after the fire to house the survivors are standing empty. The 70 families in temporary accommodation are still living in hotels; some have been offered housing but it was unsuitable for their needs, some of it is lacking basic provision and some is not being ready to be lived in yet.
Of the 307 properties bought in the aftermath of the fire, only 81 are being lived in. The council was slow to respond during the tragedy, and it has shown a lacklustre approach to dealing with those who still need a permanent place to live as a result of it. Pressurising people to take unsuitable properties, such as those high up in other buildings where survivors of the fire feel unsafe, is at best thoughtless and, at worst, cruel. If I’d been on the 10th floor of Grenfell and only just survived, I would certainly be keen to be on ground level in my next home.
This was a preventable tragedy. We know of people who died because they refused to leave their families behind. We know of people who died because they could not get out. And the survivors are haunted by the ghosts of those they lost. The symbol of the charred tower is something that will not leave our national consciousness, and nor should it. We must remember and the public inquiry must hold the right people accountable.
There has been too much suffering for an inadequate response now.
The people of Grenfell Towers have been let down, and I felt ill when I heard yesterday that Parliament had been lit up in green, to symbolise solidarity with the survivors and those who lost their lives. What those people need is not some token green lighting but a decent investigation into what happened, decent mental health trauma support, and a safe, secure and suitable place to live.
Photo: PaulSHird/Creative Commons