7 yıl önce

Grenfell Tower public inquiry begins amidst community disappointment

Community members express discontent with the inquiry since it will not allow survivor testimonies or address aspects of social inequality in London which they believe contributed to the death toll.

AP/archives

The 24-storey social housing block, home to a poor, multi-ethnic community, was gutted on June 14 in an inferno that started in a fourth-floor apartment in the middle of the night and quickly engulfed the building.

A government-ordered inquiry into the London tower fire that killed at least 80 people opened with a minute of silence for the victims - and with its leader acknowledging that survivors feel a "great sense of anger and betrayal."

Retired judge Martin Moore-Bick said he hoped his investigation would "provide a small measure of solace" by discovering how such a disaster could occur in 21st-century London, and preventing it happening again.

The June 14 blaze began in a refrigerator in an apartment at Grenfell Tower before racing through the 24-story building.

One aspect of the investigation will be the role of combustible aluminum cladding installed during a refurbishment to the 1970s tower block. Emergency safety checks have uncovered scores of other buildings across Britain with similar cladding.

The fire was Britain's deadliest in more than a century, and provoked intense grief and anger. Many residents accuse officials in Kensington and Chelsea, one of London's richest boroughs, of ignoring their safety concerns because the publicly owned tower building was home to a largely immigrant and working-class population.

Moore-Bick said he was aware that "former residents of the tower and local people feel a great sense of anger and betrayal."

"That is entirely natural and understandable," he said. "But if the inquiry is to get to the truth of what happened, it must seek out all the evidence and examine it calmly and rationally."

Moore-Bick's inquiry will look at causes of the blaze, the response of local authorities and the country's high-rise building regulations.

But some survivors are critical because it will not investigate wider issues around social housing in Britain that many residents had wanted to include.

In a decision likely to anger locals, Moore-Bick said he would not appoint any survivors to the team of advisers that will help him assess evidence, because he said that would risk undermining the impartiality of the inquiry.

The lawmaker for the area, opposition Labour politician Emma Dent Coad, said the inquiry might provide "a technical assessment of what happened."

But she said it would not get to the heart of "the bigger questions ... all the 'why' questions that aren't being answered."

London police are conducting a separate criminal inquiry, and have said they will consider whether authorities committed corporate manslaughter.

TRT World's Sarah Morice has more on the story from London.