In the early hours of 14th June 2017, a fire began in a kitchen on the fourth floor of a twenty-four-storey block of flats in West London. A fire that should have been contained within the original compartment ripped up the outside of the building within minutes. Procedures and systems that had worked for decades failed resulting in the loss of seventy-two lives.

Yet this was not the first time a breakdown of compartmentation had caused a loss of life. Just eight years earlier, a fire at Lakanal House in South London had claimed the lives of six people. How then could this happen again? Nor was it just one failure as panels, inadequate fire-stopping, construction of the windows, failure of fire doors and the smoke ventilation system all contributed to the rapid fire spread.

This book gives a firefighter’s perspective of the deregulation that caused the tragedy and describes what firefighters were confronted with that June night in 2017. It places that deregulation chronologically alongside a career that spanned three decades including nine years in the training department of the London Fire Brigade.

It proposes the causes are far deeper and wider than many think. A systemic deterioration of standards in testing of materials, building control, maintenance, inspections, fire safety and enforcement.