The experts sounded their warnings in plain English in graphic terms to ensure that the officials understood that they were warning of dangers that could kill hundreds of people in a single fire.
Arnold Turling said the Grenfell blaze was "entirely avoidable" and that a gap between the panels acted as a 'wind tunnel', fanning the flames, and allowing the fire to spread to upper levels.
Mr Turling, a member of the Association of Specialist Fire Protection, said: "Any burning material falls down the gaps and the fire spreads up very rapidly -- it acts as its own chimney."
As weak as the building requirements were for cladding once Thatcher emasculated them, initial testing results are that the cladding at Grenfell and many of its counterpart tower blocks failed to meet even the UK's rudimentary standards. The United States, for example, banned cladding with combustible materials for any taller residential building.
At the time of the June 16 Telegraph story the media assumed that the Grenfell cladding complied with the far weaker UK standard. Inspectors have now examined Grenfell's cladding and reported that it did not even meet the UK's inadequate standards. Worse, Prime Minister May's government has reported that the first cladding samples tested from 75 tower blocks had a 100% failure rate. We should take that report with caution, for experts are questioning whether the government's (unknown) test methods are reliable.
The lack of a sprinkler system and a single stairwell for evacuation again show the inadequacy of UK building standards compared to other modern nations. Those deficiencies were made worse by a lack of fire breaks, (reportedly) missing fire-resistant doors, and the failure to conduct required inspections.
Every UK leader from Thatcher to May is a part of this problem. The fact that the Tories emasculated vital building safety rules is consistent with their Party's ideology. Blair came to power after Thatcher and was the leader of the Labor Party. His Party's ideology had long supported effective safety rules. Blair, however, proudly led what he called "New Labor" -- a Party that embraced Thatcher's anti-regulatory zeal with its own special passion. In 2005, Blair infamously gave two minor variants of a major speech condemning regulation and what he claimed was a developing refusal of the British to risk their health and lives -- and the health and lives of their children. Blair was particularly belligerent at the British who felt that they should receive compensation when others injured them. Blair warned that it was essential that the government stop reacting to people being maimed and killed by trying to prevent future injuries from the same defects. Blair -- the head of the Labor Party -- demanded that laborers put up quietly with unsafe workplaces so that not-so-Great Britain could compete with dangerous sweatshops in places like Bangladesh.
I have written before about Blair's speech attacking regulation, risk aversion, and victims of torts daring to seek compensation because Blairj's speech also contained a delusional passage in which Blair claims that the UK financial regulators are vicious and harming UK's ability to win the financial regulatory race to the bottom. I also wrote to explain how the UK's top financial regulator's response to Blair's speech proved that UK financial regulation was a non sequitur. It consisted of "light touch" regulation, which meant non-regulation. The City of London was as he spoke engaged in an epidemic of "control fraud" and predation of unprecedented scale. Blair went on to decry a fictional war by the regulators against honest bankers.
My first article focusing on Blair's speech explained and criticized his broader attack on health and safety regulation. I will not repeat those points here. I write simply to note that the victims of Grenfell were condemned to death by an ideology and a rejection of science and the value of human life that captured the Tories, Lib-Dems, and "New Labor." Corbyn is famously flawed, but tens of millions of the British are coming to understand that Blair and Gordon represented a betrayal of the Labor Party and laborers -- where they work and sleep. They see that the Tories and the Lib-Dems are unreconstructed and that the Labor Party leaders eager to replace Corbyn are primarily unreconstructed Blairites. In these circumstances, it is no wonder that Corbyn has gained so much support from younger voters.
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