Grenfell Tower Fire (2017)

Wed Jun 14, 2017

Image

Image: The Grenfell Tower Fire, 4:33 am on June 14th, 2017. Photo by Natalie Oxford [Wikipedia]

On this day in 2017, the deadliest UK residential fire since WWII began in Grenfell Tower, West London. 72 people, including children as young as six months old, were killed. As of 2022, no one has been charged for the residents’ deaths. More than 70 others were injured and 223 people escaped.

The high rise apartment complex, managed by Kensington and Chelsea TMO (KCTMO) was home to working class residents, many of them immigrants. Grenfell Tower was 24 stories tall and 120 flats in total.

In the years leading up to the fire, residents and neighborhood groups made multiple complaints about the unsafe state of the complex. In 2016, Grenfell Action Group (GAG) warned that people might be trapped in the building if a fire broke out. Later that year, they stated “only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of [KCTMO]…They can’t say that they haven’t been warned!”

Two women living in Grenfell Tower, Mariem Elgwahry and Nadia Choucair, were threatened with legal action by KCTMO after they campaigned for improved fire safety. Both later died in the fire, at the ages of 27 and 33, respectively.

Early on June 14th, 2017, the Grenfell Tower Fire began with a malfunctioning freezer on the fourth floor. Because the building did not meet safety regulations, fire spread rapidly up the building’s exterior, bringing fire and smoke to all residential floors.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing some people jumping to their deaths. Some of these deaths were classed as suicides despite being a direct consequence of the fire. Frequent explosions from gas lines (which residents claimed were unsafely exposed just months earlier) in the building were reported.

A public inquiry, ordered by then Prime Minister Theresa May, is ongoing as of June 14th, 2022. Despite a 2017 statement from British police stating that they had “reasonable grounds” to suspect corporate manslaughter “may have been committed”, no criminal charges have been filed.

While justice for Grenfell Tower residents has been delayed, the British government has found the means to charge at least twenty-one people with fraud relating to damage claims regarding the fire.

Edward Daffam, a member of GAG, has stated: “They didn’t give a stuff about us. We were the carcass and they were the vultures. North Kensington was like a goldmine, only they didn’t have to dig for the gold. All they had to do was to marginalise the people who were living here, and that’s what they were doing.”