Apps, who has covered the inquiry daily, alternates these narrative chapters with a forensic examination of how building regulations and corporate safety standards have been watered down since Margaret Thatcher’s deregulation bonanza.

Tenants’ complaints about shoddy workmanship and defective fire doors were ignored by high-handed officials, while a tenants’ blog – Playing with Fire – that in 2016 predicted “an incident that results in serious loss of life” was seen as “scaremongering”, with one of the authors sent a letter from council lawyers accusing it of being “defamatory”. Perhaps the most powerful takeaway is the critical importance of what we do to the lives of people who will use our buildings. It would be impossible to read the accounts of the night of the fire without reflecting on what and who we consider when we design. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Residents’ concerns about the 2015 refurbishment were purposefully ignored, despite a residents’ blog warning of a “future major disaster”. In an official culture of cost-cutting and eliminating as much red tape as possible, this sort of attitude was par for the course, and meant that the use of ACM cladding, which contained petroleum-derived plastic, went ahead in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower.The second stage of the public inquiry into the blaze won’t release its final report until next year and prosecutions, if any, won’t start until after then. PDF / EPUB File Name: Show_Me_the_Bodies_How_We_Let_Grenfell_Happen_-_Peter_Apps.pdf, Show_Me_the_Bodies_How_We_Let_Grenfell_Happen_-_Peter_Apps.epub

Two reporters from the Observer shared the Orwell prize for exposing Britain’s social evils. Mark Townsend won for his investigation revealing that dozens of asylum-seeking children staying at hotels run by the Home Office had been kidnapped by criminal gangs, while Shanti Das won for her investigation into exploitation of immigrant workers in the UK care system. But then cost pressures on jobs for contractors meant that this was allowed, mirroring many other buildings nationwide. The disabled residents that died had no individual plans to aid their escape, so were forced to “stay put”. The controversial stay put policy, which was kept on Grenfell for over an hour and a half despite the out of control fire, is still in place. Costed: PiP brings you up to date with roofing and skylight ... Costed: PiP brings you up to date with roofing and skylight prices In his Observer review of Apps’ winning book, Rowan Moore wrote: “Never before, in years of reviewing books about buildings, has one brought me to tears. This one did, with the story of a Grenfell resident struggling to escape with his young daughters and heavily pregnant wife.”From Roman mosaics and Tudor tiles to Antarctic snow and gri... From Roman mosaics and Tudor tiles to Antarctic snow and grit: the specialists that are key to our work Author has done a fantastic job of outlining accounts of some that made it out and others that didnt, while interspersed throughout are facts that were already in public domain prior to grenfell, along with others that were kept under wraps by various parties, but primarily the cladding suppliers of the products which weren't safe for use on such a tower under the conditions used. And with only ourselves and South Korea allowing these items on, surely it would have occurred to somebody that it's not a great idea.

Regulation codes, refurbishment cost savings, the total sum of buildings wrapped in flammable cladding. Over the course of a four-year inquiry, now finally in its closing stages, survivors and the bereaved have learned a new language of figures and acronyms relating to 30 years of neglect: three decades of political and corporate choices that took more London lives in any single event since the Blitz. In Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen, by the housing journalist Peter Apps, one number stands out early on: “seven minutes”. This is the time it would have taken, according to an expert witness at the inquiry, for all 293 residents of the tower to open their front doors, walk down the stairs and escape. If the London Fire Brigade had instructed them to do so within an hour of the fire starting at 12.54am – from a fridge-freezer on the fourth floor – they would have survived. The judges said that “Crewe stays brilliantly faithful to the language, the outlook and the conventions of 1890s London even as he shows, and investigates, the distance between then and now”. It was impossible to choose between the harrowing quotes from this book, but here is one, that bought angry tears to my eyes: A magnificent book that deftly combines vivid, compelling accounts of the victims of the fire with forensic (but no less engaging) detail on the decades of politics and policy which led up to it. Expect to find yourself crying over details of building regulations you never knew existed – and over the fact that so many of us let shifts in such regulations go unnoticed, to such devastating impact. Show Me the Bodies has the values of The Orwell Prize at its core: it is beautiful writing about a devastating subject that we should all understand.Grenfell was not an accident, but a foretold and carefully planned tragedy, built up for decades. It was prepared through a series of decisions and political or economic games, aiming to maximize profit, thus setting the value of human life below the importance of financial interest. Peter Apps provides a multilateral understanding of the events leading up to the Grenfell disaster, through the revelation of the multitude of factors that led up to it. Social murder is the unnatural death that occurs due to social, political, or economic oppression. A crime commited through active decisions made by political, social and business leaders that leads to the deaths of others. Instead, flames escaped through a gap between the wall and a poorly fitted window and ignited the cladding. People are already circling on this. Heavy timber and cross-laminated timber do not burn like plastics; they char and take hours, not minutes to catch. The buildings made of it are usually sprinklered. It is not the same thing, but I guarantee that the concrete and masonry people are already composing their advertisements." The book’s title, Show Me the Bodies, is taken from remarks said to have been made by Brian Martin, the civil servant responsible for fire safety guidance at the privatised national research laboratory, BRE, to justify not tightening up regulations in response to a series of devastating fires at home and abroad, including Lakanal House in Southwark in 2009 in which six people had perished.