A retired judge, Sir
Martin Moore-Bick, has been appointed to head the official inquiry into London’s
Grenfell Tower fire in which at least 79 people died, while the police say they
are investigating any criminal offences that may have been committed.
The deadliest ever fire
in a tower block (or blocks) was the result of the terrorist attack on New York’s
World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001, which cost more than 2,300 lives, but
the worst accidental fire was probably the one that raged through the 25-storey
Joelma office building in Sao Paulo, Brazil on 1
February 1974. (Grenfell Tower had 24 storeys.)
The
blaze happened just a few weeks after the disaster movie, The Towering
Inferno, was released, and it became known as ‘the real Towering
Inferno’. It was started by
an electrical fault on the 11th floor, and spread rapidly
thanks to the ready availability of combustible materials such as paper,
plastics and wooden walls and furniture.
When the blaze began, there were more
than 750 people in the building. More than 170 fled to the roof, but the heat
and smoke foiled a helicopter rescue, and about 40 were killed jumping down or
trying to get to firemen’s ladders out of reach below them. Altogether up to
189 people died.
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