Grenfell report: Fire service’s ‘serious shortcomings’ contributed to deaths
Systemic failures within the London Fire Brigade (LFB) contributed to more deaths in the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy, a report published this week will say.
Although firefighters have been praised for courage, the report by inquiry chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick has slammed the LFB for “serious shortcomings” in how it approached the blaze in which 72 people were killed.
The BBC has seen sections of the 1000-page report into the tower block fire on 14 June 2017, ahead of Wednesday’s publication.
It found many “institutional” failures that meant the LFB’s planning and preparation for the incident was “gravely inadequate”.
“Supervisors were under the most enormous pressure, but the LFB had not provided its senior control room staff with appropriate training on how to manage a large-scale incident with a large number of FSG [Fire Survival Guidance] calls,” Moore-Bick said.
He also concluded that mistakes made during a 2009 fire in Camberwell, south London – in which three women and three children were killed -“were repeated”.
But the head of the Fire Brigades Union argued the inquiry was “back to front” and the focus should be on why the building was dangerous in the first place.
Matt Wrack told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that decisions were made on the night “in the context of a building that [had] completely failed”.
Referring to the flammable cladding, he said: “People will be baffled [as to] why people haven’t already been prosecuted for doing that to a building, which led to the deaths of 72 people, and yet the actions of individual firefighters on the night of a fire are being subject to such scrutiny.”
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