Criticism of the response to the Grenfell Tower fire
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Criticism of the response to the Grenfell Tower fire primarily consisted of condemnation of issues with the emergency response provided by the London Fire Brigade (LFB) and fire safety regulation practices in the United Kingdom at the time. Broader political criticism was also directed at British society, including condemnation of the response by governmental bodies and UK politicians, including Prime Minister Theresa May,[1] and Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 2010 until 2015 who allowed Grenfell Tower to be renovated using materials of combustable cladding.[2][3] Other areas of criticism following the fire ranged from social divisions, deregulation issues, and poor transparency overall.
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Stay-put policy
Media reporting included criticism of the response of London Fire Brigade (LFB) and other agencies. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry concluded in October 2019 that mistakes in the response cost lives. Despite this, it also praised the "courage and devotion to duty" of ordinary firefighters.[4]
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 Public Fire Notice from nearby KCTMO tower indicating "Stay Put" policy[5] |
The fire safety policy for Grenfell Tower was that residents were advised to stay in their flats ("stay put") if a fire broke out in the building,[6] unless it was affecting their flat.[7] This is the standard policy for high rise buildings in the United Kingdom but not accepted practice in many other countries. It relies on the assumption that construction standards such as concrete and fire-resistant doors will allow firefighters to contain a fire within one flat. This was not possible at Grenfell Tower, as the fire spread rapidly via the exterior.[8] Due to this policy, the building was not designed to be fully evacuated. There was only a single narrow staircase, and no centrally activated system of fire alarms that could alert residents.[9]
In a July 2014 Grenfell Tower regeneration newsletter, the KCTMO instructed residents to stay in their flat in case of a fire ("Our longstanding 'stay put' policy stays in force until you are told otherwise") and stated that the front doors for each unit could survive a fire for up to 30 minutes.[10] The May 2016 newsletter had a similar message, adding that it was on the advice of the LFB:
The smoke detection systems have been upgraded and extended. The Fire Brigade has asked us to reinforce the message that, if there is a fire which is not inside your own home, you are generally safest to stay put in your home to begin with; the Fire Brigade will arrive very quickly if a fire is reported.[11]
The advice was repeated to residents who called the fire service.[6] The policy was withdrawn at 02:47, when control room staff were instead told to advise residents to evacuate if possible.[12][13] At 04:14, the police told onlookers to contact anyone still trapped in the building and tell them to attempt to evacuate immediately.[14]
Many survivors argued that they would have died had they followed the "stay put" advice.[8][6] Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, also criticised the policy: "Thankfully residents didn't take that advice but fled". He added, "These are some of the questions that have to be answered. We have lots of people in London living in tower blocks ... We can't have people's lives being put at risk because of bad advice or lack of maintenance."[15][16] In her report, Barbara Lane concluded that the principles required for the "stay put" policy to work failed once the fire started spreading across the exterior.[17]
Dany Cotton said Grenfell was unique in terms of volume and behaviour of fire. She said it was a matter for the inquiry, but defended the general "stay put" policy for most high-rise buildings by reasoning that if residents all evacuate at once, they could block firefighters from entering. Furthermore, smoke and fire could be spread within a building by residents opening doors.[20] In her later witness statement to the Inquiry, she said that as the building did not have a central fire alarm system, evacuating the building "would physically require someone to go and knock on every single door and tell people to come out."[21] Since the Grenfell Tower fire, LFB's policy of high-rise buildings with flammable cladding has been changed so that until the cladding is removed, landlords should install alarm systems or have patrols in place so that the building can be evacuated.[21][22]
The initial incident commander Watch Manager Michael Dowden told the Inquiry that he was preoccupied and uncomfortable dealing with "a very, very dynamic situation" that he was not prepared to deal with, and that he did not consider evacuating the building. He added that in hindsight, he did not believe it would have been possible, as there were not enough firefighters present to evacuate 20 floors. Station Manager Andrew Walton, who was incident commander for a short period after, said that as smoke was spreading to the stairwell and many lobbies, residents could not have escaped and he believed they were safer staying in unaffected flats.[23] Watch Manager Brien O'Keeffe suggested it could have been a "catastrophe" to tell residents to evacuate unaided once the stairwell was filled with smoke.[24] On the other hand, Assistant Commissioner Andrew Roe said that due to the complete failure of the building, he made a decision to change the policy soon after taking over as incident commander.[25]
The Inquiry later concluded that lives had been lost because the policy had not been lifted while the stairs were still passable. It found that the fire officers had not been trained to deal with a situation where they might have to evacuate a tower block.[4]
Fire brigade resources
Research by John Sweeney for BBC Newsnight described several issues that hampered the response of the LFB. There was insufficient mains water pressure for the hoses the fire service used and Thames Water had to be called to increase it.[26][27] Also, a high ladder did not arrive for 32 minutes, by which time the fire was out of control. Matt Wrack of the Fire Brigades Union said, "... having that on the first attendance might have made a difference because it allows you to operate a very powerful water tower from outside the building onto the building." Before the Grenfell fire, 70% of fire brigades would have automatically sent a high ladder to tower fires.[28]
An independent fire expert told the BBC having the ladder earlier could have stopped the fire getting out of control.[29] The LFB told Newsnight the first attendance procedure for tower fires has now been changed from four engines to five engines plus a high ladder unit. Firefighters said inside the building they lacked sufficient 'extended duration' breathing apparatus. They had difficulty getting vital radio messages through due to 'overuse of the system' and from the need to get the signal through layers of concrete. At the inquiry one firefighter described the radios as "useless."[30]
Another issue raised was the height of the aerial appliances. LFB's aerial appliances could reach 32 m (105 ft) high, whereas the tower was 67 m (220 ft) high. A 42 m (138 ft) firefighting platform was borrowed from Surrey, arriving only after the fire had been burning for several hours. Commissioner Dany Cotton said that the LFB had already been planning to buy higher ladders, and that the size of LFB's appliances has been limited by their need to fit on narrow London streets.[31] London mayor Sadiq Khan promised to supply new equipment that LFB needed promptly and stated he would not wait for the public inquiry.[32]
Dany Cotton later said having more firefighters may not have helped as there would not have physically been enough room for them in the building. The single stairwell also restricted access.[20]
Smoke
One of the major obstacles to the firefighters was that the tower's only stairwell filled with smoke within an hour of the fire breaking out. This made it very difficult for residents to escape unaided; Barbara Lane's report noted that the rate of evacuations slowed after 01:38, and again after 01:58.[33] Furthermore, firefighters were hindered by the near-zero visibility on the stairwell.[6] Crew Manager Aldo Diana said he was "surprised" by the amount of smoke in the stairwell, describing conditions as:
Basically you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. It was just thick black smoke. You didn't see anybody else. You literally had to bump into them.[34]
In section 19 of her report, Barbara Lane notes that smoke was reported in the lobbies of four floors as early as 01:18. By 01:58, the stairwell and seven lobbies were filled with smoke. She suggested that possible causes for this included inadequate fire doors, fire doors being propped open by hoses and problems with the ventilation system.[35]
In October 2018, LFB announced that it is to use specialist hoods to protect people from smoke and toxic fumes for up to 15 minutes. They were purchased from German company Drager at a cost of £90,000 for 650 hoods.[36]
Road access
Kensington and Chelsea Council was warned in 2010 that building a new secondary school very near Grenfell Tower could block access by emergency vehicles. A 2013 blog post by Grenfell Action Group stated, "There is barely adequate room to manoeuvre for fire engines responding to emergency calls, and any obstruction of this emergency access zone could have lethal consequences in the event of a serious fire or similar emergency in Grenfell Tower or the adjacent blocks." The council demolished a multi-storey car park to build the school. This added to congestion and parked cars in streets around Grenfell Tower that were already narrow and made it hard for fire engines to get to the fire.[37]
Lack of sprinklers
Like the vast majority of high-rise buildings in the UK, Grenfell Tower did not have sprinklers.[38] A BBC Breakfast investigation focusing on half of the UK's council- and housing association-owned tower blocks found that 2% of them had full sprinkler systems. Deaths were 87% lower when buildings with sprinklers caught fire. England, Wales and Scotland now require sprinklers to be installed in newly built tall buildings, since 2007, but there is no requirement to fit them in existing buildings.[39] Dany Cotton has called for sprinklers to be retrofitted in all social housing blocks.[40] David Siber, an advisor to the Fire Brigades Union, said that sprinklers could have prevented the fire from ever spreading beyond the kitchen where it started.[41] Geoff Wilkinson, the building regulations columnist for the Architects' Journal, said that once the fire starting spreading through cladding, sprinklers would have had little effect.[42]
A few days after the fire, the Conservative leader of the council Nicholas Paget-Brown was asked why sprinklers had not been installed in the tower during the recent renovation. Paget-Brown said that the Grenfell Tower residents did not have a collective view in favour of installing sprinklers during the recent renovations. He also said that if they had been installed, it would have delayed the refurbishment and been more disruptive.[43] ITV business editor Joel Hills stated that he had been told that the installation of sprinklers had not even been discussed.[44]
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