When Tiago Alves completed his Masters at Imperial College last week, delivering a potentially ground-breaking physics dissertation of how to extend the world’s largest particle accelerator in Cern to study matter we don’t fully understand, it should have been a moment for celebration. But for Tiago, it was a diversion before returning to the real matter — “the fight for justice” — that has consumed his life since the tragic events in the early hours of June 14, 2017.
Tiago, then 20, was preparing for bed in the family’s 13th-floor flat, oblivious to a fire in a fridge nine floors below that was about to ignite the cladding encasing the 24-storey Grenfell Tower — and spread toclaim 72 lives.
Tiago survived because his father, arriving home late at night to find the building ablaze, defied firemen’s advice to “stay put” and ran in to get his son and daughter out.
Five years on and Tiago says after 400 days of testimony and 300,000 documents disclosed to the public inquiry, he and his fellow survivors feel angry, frustrated and bewildered that they are still waiting for justice.
“Five years on and not a single person has been charged, not a penny has been paid by a company at fault, the “stay put” policy is still official advice despite it being criticised at the public inquiry and the Government has failed to implement the key recommendations,” he said. “It’s incredible that 72 people died as a result of ineptitude and negligence and yet the people responsible are walking around scot-free.”
One recommendation was to make it mandatory for owners of high-rise flats to arrange personal emergency evacuation plans — known as “Peeps” — for disabled people, but the Government has eschewed it as “impractical and too costly”, despite 20 per cent fatalities at Grenfell being disabled. And more than four million people still live in high-rise flats with flammable cladding identified as dangerous as a result of Grenfell — but fewer than one per cent of these flats have been “made safe”.
Another survivor, Nicholas Burton, 54, who lived on the 19th floor and whose wife Pily died as a result of the blaze, said he suspected the Government “have used the public inquiry as a mechanism to drag things out and shut down the conversation”. “It’s exhausting. I feel as I have been five years underwater holding my breath,” he said. “Like many survivors, I have felt unwell at times and have had to take time off. We return to the fray, yet we have so little to show for it.”
The second phase of the public inquiry, looking at the cause of the fire and the aftermath, is due to finish in the summer, but it will then be 12 to 18 months before the report is published. Only then will police prosecutions begin. As far as Nicholas is concerned, “that will be the moment when justice begins. But it could be five more years before we see people who broke the law put behind bars.”
The head of the Kensington and Chelsea tenant managment organisation (TMO), responsible for the disastrous £8.6 million refurbishment completed a year before the fire, is one who many survivors want to see charged. They also hope the police go after cladding and insulation firms like Celotex and Kingspan and the architects and safety officers who brazenly signed off on products — while knowing how unsafe it actually was.
“There are many organisations responsible,” said Tiago. “Grenfell wasn’t a failure on one level, it was a failure on multiple levels with contractors, architects, safety officers, the TMO, local council, government and fire service all shouldering blame for prioritising profits over human life.”
Five years ago, when this newspaper set up the Evening Standard Grenfell Tower Fire Appeal (which raised £7.4 million for survivors and the bereaved), I was the first journalist invited to meet the Grenfell United leadership, who told me their aims were fourfold: “Keep the community together, rebuild our lives, honour the memory of the dead and seek justice”.
Have any been achieved? “None can be achieved until we get justice,” said Tiago. A similar view dominates the discourse on the fate of the tower itself. The Government say it needs to come down but survivors like Tiago and Nicholas say it should stay up until justice is done — “as a reminder the fight is not over. Five years, 10 years, however long it takes, there can be no closure, no moving on — until we get justice.”
