Contemporary · Europe · Disaster
2017
Grenfell Tower fire
June 14, 2017
A small kitchen fire in a 24-story public housing block in west London raced up flammable cladding and engulfed the building before dawn. Seventy-two people died. The inquiry that followed laid bare an entire ecosystem of cost-cutting, regulatory failure, and indifference to the lives of the poor in one of the world's richest cities.