4 Takeaways From the U.K. Grenfell Tower Fire Report

More than seven years after 72 people were killed and dozens more injured when a devastating fire tore through Grenfell Tower, an official inquiry on Wednesday blamed “decades of failures” by the government, dishonesty by companies and a flawed response from London’s fire service.

For survivors of the fire and the families of the victims, it has been a painful, yearslong wait for answers about the root causes of the fire, and why a form of cladding that was illegal in numerous countries had been wrapped around Grenfell Tower. The report found that the “path to disaster” stretched back decades, and the tragedy was preventable.

“The simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable,” Martin Moore-Bick, the chairman of the inquiry, said in a briefing on Wednesday, “and those that lived in the tower were badly failed.”

Still, while the report lays out those failures in stark detail, no one has been held criminally responsible, and London’s Metropolitan Police said that while charges were expected, none would be filed before 2026.

Here is what to know about Wednesday’s report.

Cost-cutting during Grenfell’s refurbishment disregarded safety.

Throughout the inquiry, there was an enduring theme: the drive to cut costs during a refurbishment of Grenfell Tower that began in 2015 was placed time and time again above the safety of the people living in the 24-story tower, which mostly contained public housing units.

Combustible cladding material and insulation that was used to cover the building was the major cause of the rapid spread of the blaze. Despite the materials being banned elsewhere in the world, a push by building management and the local authority to keep costs down, and the incompetence of various decision makers, led to the material being chosen.