LONDON — A damning report on a deadly London high-rise fire said Wednesday that decades of failures by government, regulators and industry turned Grenfell Tower into a “death trap” where 72 people lost their lives.
While the report may give survivors some of the answers they have long sought, they face a wait to see whether anyone responsible will be prosecuted. Police will examine the inquiry’s conclusions before deciding on charges. The report was highly critical of companies that made the building’s cladding. It said they engaged in “systematic dishonesty,” manipulating safety tests and misrepresenting the results to claim the material was safe.
The inquiry has held more than 300 public hearings and examined around 1,600 witness statements. An initial report published in 2019, looking at what happened the night of the fire, criticized the fire department for telling residents to stay in their apartments and await rescue. The advice was changed almost two hours after the fire broke out, too late for many on the upper floors to escape.
In the wake of the fire, the U.K. government banned metal composite cladding panels for all new buildings and ordered similar combustible cladding to be removed from hundreds of tower blocks across the country. But it’s an expensive job and the work hasn’t been carried out on some apartment buildings because of wrangling over who should pay.
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