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Met Police reveals Grenfell cladding and insulation failed fire safety tests
The Metropolitan Police has revealed the cladding and insulation of Grenfell Tower have failed fire safety tests.
In a statement this morning, Detective Chief Superintendent Fiona McCormack said preliminary tests on the insulation showed it combusted soon after the test started. The initial tests of the cladding also failed the safety test.
Det Supt McCormack said the Met has shared its concerns over the outcome of those tests with the Department for Communities and Local Government and with councils.
The police have already started seizing “relevant material” from a “number of organisations”.
The investigation will seek to establish how the fire started and the speed and spread of the fire once it took hold of the building.
Two points of priority will be the speed and spread of the fire and the internal safety aspects of the building.
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Det Supt McCormack said the investigation is “one of the largest and most complex investigations the Met Police has ever undertaken”. There are more than 250 specialist investigators on the case, she said.
“We are examining with experts the aluminium cladding and the insulation behind the cladding – how the tiles were fixed to the building and how it was installed,” she said.
The fire started in a fridge freezer.
On the night of the fire the Met Police received more than 600 999 calls, some of them more than an hour long and “truly harrowing in their content”, Det Supt McCormack said.
She said working conditions at Grenfell Tower are “difficult and distressing” and there is a “terrible reality” that the police may not find or identify all those who died during the fire.
She has appealed for all those still unaccounted for to come forward.
