People in tower blocks don't matter to politicians until they're dead

People in tower blocks don't matter to politicians until they're dead

In the UK tower blocks are traditionally a place where governments put people who don't matter. They pile up the poor, and then ignore them because they probably don't vote and will probably never get out of the carefully-designed ghetto they've been installed in.

Now the 24-storey Grenfell Tower has burned itself on our retinas, we all have a chance to study it. A council block with hundreds of people living in it, heaped upon one another while they love and argue and raise or grieve their children, just like everyone else.

Last night those people woke up to the smell of burning plastic and a conflagration that in less than an hour had turned their homes into a 67-metre torch.

In the darkness and early dawn at least six of them perished, a figure likely to rise as firefighters pick through the smoking ruins to find those who succumbed to the fumes and flames. There are already reports of people jumping to escape being trapped.

Of one woman seen throwing a baby from the 10th floor that was miraculously caught by someone on the ground. Of rescue centres being given more tea donations than they know what to do with.

And of firefighters injured by falling, burning debris as they rushed to save other people (Photo: EPA)

And there are claims too that the tower was a fire waiting to happen, that there was just one fire exit that was frequently blocked with rubbish, of faulty wiring, and the authorities had to be nagged to take care of the people who lived there.

At time of writing the tower is still smouldering, the missing and the dead still being sought. It will be weeks before it becomes clear what happened, and months before blame can be calmly apportioned.

But any one of us can tell the underlying cause for whatever went wrong - it was that people in tower blocks don't matter.

Many of the locals who were first to help were Muslims awake because of Ramadan (Photo: London News Pictures Ltd)

Grenfell was built in 1974. It's next to the Tube line and an A40 flyover, and surrounded by low-rise apartment blocks.

In common with most estates of that era it isn't criss-crossed with roads because they were thought by town planners to encourage crime. It has footpaths instead, and one road in and out.

Any criminals now know exactly when the police leave and arrive, and that they'll have to be on foot.

And this morning residents of Grenfell reported the fire engines had difficulty even getting to it. Vehicular access is an architectural luxury when most residents can't afford cars.

There was also only one exit for the building itself. Doors, it seems, are also extra.

(Photo: EPA)

An £9m refurbishment was carried out 18 months ago and part of it installed aluminium cladding on the exterior of the tower to smarten it up.

It consists of two thin sheets of aluminium with foam in between. It's lightweight, low-maintenance, lets dust wash off naturally and can be used as extra insulation.

It's also cheap.

Some companies produce cladding that is fire-resistant. Some installers ensure there are fire breaks between the panels so that, should they burn, it cannot spread.

And in the UK there are strict building regulations which should ensure everything is safe, and the company carrying out the renovation say it was all signed off properly.

But worldwide, sub-standard aluminium cladding has been blamed for causing skyscraper fires to spread rapidly, turning dozens of offices and hotels into towering infernos.

(Photo: PA)

Grand Designs expert Kevin McCloud said: "Every single building site in this country has to be approved and go through some extremely rigorous testing thats to do with longevity, structural performance and also fire resistance.
"To see a material in 50 minutes across an entire building take flame like this and allow the flame to move so quickly, well this material is quite dangerous and clearly doesn’t perform."

Aluminium panels are all over buildings in Dubai, which has seen eight skyscrapers go up in smoke as a result, including a luxury hotel on New Year's Eve 2016.

One expert described the fires as "like a wildfire going up the sides of the building".

Reports from Dubai said at the time: "When installed uninterrupted row after row, more flammable types of cladding provide a straight line of kindling up the side of a tower."

(Photo: AFP)

There was a similar fire linked to cladding at a 27-storey Shanghai high rise in 2010 which killed 58. An apartment fire last year in a high-rise block in Baku, Azerbaijan, killed 17.

In 2009 the 44-storey Beijing Cultural Center went up in flames after nearby fireworks ignited its cladding.

In Dubai building regs were weak and have been tightened up several times, because such fires kill wealthy international visitors and put off tourists. You don't get many of them at places like Grenfell Tower.

Lakanal House in Camberwell, where a fire killed six in 2009 (Photo: A)

In 2009 I was one of dozens reporters sent to Camberwell where a fire in one flat spread rapidly to the ones above. Unusually it also spread downwards, and it killed three women and three children, one of them a baby just 20 days old.

Inquests and a court case discovered Southwark Council hadn't had a fire inspection at the block for three years - although it had done so on offices for its own staff - and it had been renovated with highly flammable panels around the windows.

In February this year the council pleaded guilty to four charges relating to the fire, and saw its fine reduced from £400,000 to £270,000 as a result of the guilty plea.

The court also heard it had spent £62m on fire risk assessment projects since. Until this morning, Lakanal House was the worst tower block fire Britain had ever seen.

Until this morning (Photo: PA)

After Lakanal there were calls for a public inquiry and changes to the rules. A review in 2013 called for a full review of building regulations and sprinkler systems to be installed in 4,000 towers across the UK.

A succession of Tory housing ministers have been "considering" it ever since.

Instead we have the latest in a long line of fatal fires, residents who smelled burning plastic, panels linked to blazes that spread up, down and along with devastating speed, and firefighters baffled by a lack of fire exits, sprinklers, and accountability.

The cause and the kindling are yet to be determined. But it's clear that tower blocks are designed to keep people in one place, and their lives are only as valuable as the cheapest thing the authorities are forced to do.

Opportunity - fresh chances - have never been something incorporated into the landscape of these places in quite the same way as the lack of them. They don't get given a way out.

Things happen to the people that live in tower blocks, while the people that live in them rarely get a chance to make things happen themselves. Until they die. And the world turns to look. Via Source: mirror