Grenfell Tower

A fire started in a fridge-freezer in a fourth-floor kitchen just before one in the morning. The fire brigade had it out in the flat within half an hour.

It had already gone out of the window and into the cladding. The panels fitted to the outside of the tower in a recent refurbishment had a polyethylene core - effectively solid fuel - and the fire ran up twenty-four storeys in minutes and then around and down.

Residents had been told for years to stay put in a fire. The advice held for nearly two hours while the building burned, and the people who followed it in the upper flats could not later get out. It was withdrawn at twenty to three.

Seventy-two people were killed. The youngest was stillborn that night. Whole families died together in single flats.

Neighbours went up the stairs. Some brought people down and went back.

The residents' association had written publicly, eight months earlier, that only a catastrophic event would expose how the building was being managed.