In 2014, Wehrle sent his colleagues a test result showing that PE panels had the lowest fire safety rating and said they could no longer be used in certain coating systems.
However, two months later, Deborah French, Arconic’s UK sales director, sent the old BBA certificate to the coating subcontractors working in Grenfell, suggesting that the PE panels were safe. Asked if he had “sat down” on the new information, French said at the consultation, “Yes, I don’t remember what action I took at that time.”
Celotex, which provided most of Grenfell’s insulation, had initially struggled to get its equipment to pass fire safety tests. A 2013 email found an employee wondering, “Do we think our product should realistically not be used behind most siding panels because it would burn in the event of a fire?”
Jamie Hayes, a former Celotex technical services officer, told the consultation that he devised a plan to increase the chances of RS500 insulation boards passing fire tests in 2014 by adding fire-resistant boards to a test platform. He denied, however, knowing that Celotex would hide this detail in its official report and subsequent marketing material.
It was, he said, “a failure of the moral fiber” that prevented him from challenging the company when he finally realized.
Kingspan, who provided some of the insulation for the project, found that its Kooltherm K15 product exploded into a “furious hell” when tested in 2007.
When a facade engineering company, Wintech, asked if Kingspan’s insulation was suitable for high-rise buildings, Philip Heath, a technical manager, wrote in an email to his colleagues: “Wintech can do- they will hurt themselves and if they are not careful, they will sue — [off] they.”
In a creepy text exchange, Arpan Chalmers, Kingspan’s technical project leader, joked with a colleague about the K15 being marketed as safe when fire tests failed. “All we do is stretch here,” he read in a message.
Five years later and Anderson is still in mourning. “You still feel anger, discomfort, especially sadness. It doesn’t diminish because you know it shouldn’t have happened. We couldn’t close,” he says.
Anderson, 49, a mother of two young children, was working for a charity just over two miles from Grenfell on June 13th. An uncle called her saying her father’s blog was on fire. She turned on the television, called a helpline, and her husband picked her up and took her to the scene. Anderson stood about 100 feet from the tower, next to the police cordon, and watched as she struggled, knowing that her father was on the top floor of an apartment where he had lived for more than 30 years. .
“It was really chaotic. We were there for hours, just trying to get information, but it was impossible,” Anderson says, as tears ran down his face.
The family put up posters asking for information about Moses’ whereabouts. The cheerful and always smiling 63-year-old, born in Trinidad but for whom the UK had been at home since 1969, was a well-known local figure. Family and friends frantically called hospitals and community centers. “He was saying‘ he’ll be fine ’and‘ he’ll be rescued, ’” Anderson says.
It was about 12 days before police confirmed that her father was still missing and she should fear the worst. It was in August that he received official confirmation of his death. His was the last of the funerals.
In the investigation, Ray Bernard was described as a “current Moses.” “My father kept those kids quiet while they sought refuge in his flat. It was just his nature. He had this personality of being left without and giving of himself to everyone else,” says Anderson.
Biruk Haftom, 12, and her mother Berkti Haftom, 29, who was 10 weeks pregnant, had fled the 18th-floor apartment and sought refuge with Moses. They both died.
The boy’s father, Hayelom Abriha Woldegabir, 50, had been living in Italy; the couple had separated but remained friends. He remains inconsolable. “It’s very hard to find the words to express how you feel, let alone think about the horrible way they died,” he says. “Even if something hot touches my skin, it feels horrible, let alone being on fire and dying in a fire. I can’t feel anything. I don’t feel any happiness.”
Like other bad families, Abriha is angry because those responsible have yet to be punished. “If you don’t get justice, you can’t find peace inside,” he added.
More than 180 “dedicated investigators” are working on the Grenfell investigation with 9,000 witness statements and 130 million documents to examine.
Moore-Bick has to write an investigation report and only once Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service have been completed will they begin the process of filing charges, far removed from the convictions the victims are demanding. Forty people have now been interviewed under police precaution.
This week, Deputy Commissioner Stuart Cundy, the police officer overseeing the investigation, the largest out of any terrorist investigation, said he “acknowledged the frustrations of some about the significant length of this complex criminal investigation.” .
For families, it seems like justice is still a long way off.