The Lakanal House Fire

When you find yourself in a situation where you need to call the emergency services for help, you completely trust the guidance from the voice on the other end of the phone. When a fire started by a faulty television in a high-rise block of flats in South London, dozen of 999 calls were made. This building operated a stay put policy, which was the correct advice given by the call handlers. The stay-put policy relies entirely on the building's ability to contain a fire within a single flat where it started.

However, decades of poorly managed maintenance work, a lack of sprinkler system, and the building literally being covered in combustible cladding made this policy not only completely ineffective, but it was deadly. Six people, including a three-week-old baby, would lose their lives as they stayed put too long to make an escape. This is the Lacanau House Fire.

So today's case, if you are in the UK, when you hear combustible cladding, you automatically think of Grenfell. If you are further afield and you haven't heard of the Grenfell Tower, it's an absolute horror story, which I will talk about briefly later on. But if any lessons had been learned and if any proper action had been taken in the aftermath of today's tragic case, it's likely Grenfell would never have happened at all. Right, so let's get started. So Lacanor House, so this is a 14-story residential tower block in Camberwell, South London.

It was built in 1959 as part of the post-war social housing expansion. So bombing raids during World War II destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, leaving a severe housing shortage. Post-war governments pushed housing developers to build state-funded housing, and to speed up construction, they opted for prefabricated materials used to make small houses known as prefabs, as well as constructing high-density tower blocks. So between 1945 and 1980, over 4 million social homes were built in the UK.

And for the working class, these homes were an upgrade to their living conditions. So Lacknell House is built and it's quite a cool structure. So I'm going to see if I can explain this. So it's designed in what is known as a scissor system. So this is where flats cross over each other and interlock. So you enter your flat and walk up a short flight of stairs, and this would be the living room area and the kitchen area. So the window in the living room, you're looking out one side of the flat. So you've walked up a short flight of stairs straight into the living room.

To the left is the entrance to the kitchen, and then you go up another flight of stairs next to the kitchen, and this leads up to the bathroom, and then you go up another flight of steps, and this will lead to the bedrooms and the balcony. And the balcony looks out at the opposite of the building to the living room window, if you see what I mean. So you're sort of walking in a straight line, but you're going upstairs. So your flat is the entire length of the building. So one window is one end of the building, and the other one, the other window is the other end of the building, if that makes sense.

So the flats, so another flat would do the same, the same thing, but it's going in the opposite direction. So they're like crossing over each other. And then where you've gone up the flights of stairs, the flat crossing over you would have gone down flights of stairs, you see, so they sort of interlock. I don't know if that I don't know if that makes any sense, but um what I'll do, I'll put pictures of it on um Instagram because I found diagrams of how it works, and it is when once you see it, you can kind of see how it's working.

Um, I hope that makes sense. I know it didn't. It's quite hard to explain. Um, but yeah, I'll I'll put some pictures and diagrams up of the flats so you can see um how they look. So the interlocking flats they shared an entrance. So one entrance would go to the two doors, and then the flats would cross over each other. So because there's one entrance to two flats, this would reduce the need for corridor space on every floor. So this saved a huge amount of space, making the flats larger, and the huge windows on each side of the flat provide a great source of natural light.

Now, of course, there are downsides, so the layout of Lacno House was quite complicated to follow. The postmen and the emergency services even found it quite hard to locate flats by numbers, and the numbers, say house number 15, would not necessarily be in between 14 and 16 because the flats go up and down, so the numbers don't line up. Um, I don't feel like I'm explaining this very well. It's quite complicated. So the flats had to be accessed by a short staircase, and to access the other rooms in the flat, this would require the use of another staircase.

This would make it completely unsuitable for wheelchair users, elderly residents, or people with mobility issues. When Lacnor House was built in 1959, it met all the fire safety standards. It was viewed as a modern high-quality social housing development that incorporated the fire prevention logic of its time. The building's core design relied heavily on the sealed concrete walls and floors that would provide at least one hour of fire resistance to contain a blaze long enough for firefighters to arrive and put the fire out.

There was one main staircase that led up to all the floors, so essentially one staircase to evacuate, but Lackner House provided a secondary escape route for all the flats, either from the balconies or fire exit doors linking the flats. Each flat was fitted with a fire door, which could again provide a barrier from the flames for at least an hour. The stay put policy was actually the safest way to react to a fire in a high-rise building, providing the building was fire safe. Residents in a flat where the fire breaks out should evacuate immediately and contact emergency services.

Residents in all other flats are advised to remain in their homes with their doors and windows closed. The fire doors and the sealed concrete walls and ceilings will keep residents safe in their flats for at least an hour, which is more than enough time for the fibre grade to arrive and extinguish the fire. Now, if everyone ran out of their flats as soon as the fly started, it would cause hundreds of residents rushing to the narrow single stairwell all at once, which could cause stampedes, crushing, and actually block people getting out of the building and stop fire crew from getting in.

And with the opening and shutting of doors, this would give the fire oxygen, allowing it to spread. If residents are leaving, it makes it harder for the firefighters to know how many people are left in the building and who needs rescue in. So you can see how it works, can't you? If a fire breaks out in the kitchen of flat, say three and you're in flat 67, you're safely tucked away behind your fire door. There's no need for you to leave and potentially put yourself in harm's way or obstruct firefighters.

Now, as I've said, the policy only works when the building's compartmentation is fully intact. When Lackner House was built, it was. So in 1980, modifications were made to the communal a communal communal corridors and the building's ventilation system. This seriously compromised the building's fire safety. To conceal new pipework and wires, a long low timber fold ceiling was added to the corridor. This is flammable wood. When the new ceiling was fitted, contractors had to cut through the original concrete walls and floors, but they failed to properly seal the holes back up with fire-stopping materials which created unsealed gaps which fire and smoke could pass through.

So by not filling these gaps up properly, the fire-resistant walls and ceilings are useless. The building had a new heating system installed, and once again the holes made whilst installing the pipe work were not sealed. Over the decades, the building's interior had been decorated and the corridor walls had accumulated 13 coats of oil-based paint. Oil-based paint is flammable, creating a flammable wall. Even the fire doors were altered, and some of them didn't have the self-closing mechanism that are designed so the door will stay shut, sealing the flat behind it from the fire.

Now, in the year 2000, the government launched the Decent Homes Standard. This requires local authorities and social housing providers to upgrade social housing. Souncil, who managed Lacanelle House, decided to replace the aging drafty timber-framed windows and exterior panels with a more modern design. After nearly 50 years, the exterior of the building was looking worn and required ongoing maintenance, so an upgrade was definitely in need. During the 2006 and 2007 refurbishments, contractors fitted high-pressured laminate composite cladding panels directly under and above the windows and along the balcony areas.

These panels were weatherproof or waterproof, which eliminated the need for regular external painting or repairs that the council would regularly have to carry out on the original structure. The panels were made of wood fibre core, an outer layer, and a decorative layer that was coated with acrylic, polyurethane. Polyurethane is flammable, it ignites easily and burns rapidly. And as it heats up, it liquefies and drips, which means it can drip and ignite other materials it drips onto. Even though Lacnell House had undergone a major refurbishment, no fire safety checks were carried out.

In 2005, under the regulatory reform fire safety order, building owners were legally required to complete safety fire checks in all high-rise residential properties, but Southwark Council later admitted that despite training in 2008, they failed to perform any fire safety checks on Lacanor House. If they'd carried out the legal requirements to perform the safety checks correctly, they would have identified the flaws and deemed Lacknell House not to be safe and not safe enough to impose the stay put policy if a fire breaks out.

And tragically, this would all be revealed one afternoon in 2009. So on the 3rd of July at around 10 past four in the afternoon, a faulty television catches fire in the bedroom of flat 65 on the ninth floor. At 4.19, the first 999 call is placed to the London Fire Brigade. The occupant of flat 65 made her way out of the building. One minute later, the cladding panel on the exterior of the building above the bedroom window of flat 65 ignites and the panel burns through completely in less than five minutes, and the flames start to travel vertically up the outside of the building directly to the flat above.

At 421, Catherine Hickman, who lived in flat 79, called 999. She tells the call handler that there's a fire in the flat below hers and the smoke is starting to come in through her window. She asks whether she should leave. She asks the call handler what to do. And in line with the stay-put policy, she tells Catherine to stay inside her flat, close the doors and windows, and move to another room. Catherine is reassured by the call handler that the firefighters have arrived and they will come up to her.

By 4 23, the cladding panels below Catherine's window ignite, and again they burn through in less than five minutes, and now the fire is in Catherine's flat. Catherine says to the call handler, there's smoke coming through the floorboards and it's turning orange everywhere. She asks if she should if she should leave again, but she is told to stay. The fire is now all around her. The stay put policy only works if the fire is contained to the flat it started in, but it hasn't been contained, has it?

It spread rapidly to the flat above. Not only that, the cladding panels and the window frames are melting and they're dripping flaming debris down to the window ledges below and igniting them, so secondary fires start in flat 53 on the seventh floor and flat 37 on the fifth floor. At 4.36, Catherine's situation has worsened rapidly. She tells the call handler, Oh my god, the flames are up the door, it's too hot and I can't breathe. The call operator tells her that the firefighters are there. But remember I said earlier about the confusion of the layout of the flats where the numbers don't line up?

The fire brigade can't find her. At 4.55, Catherine stops responding. At 5 pm, the fire breaks out of Catherine's flat onto the 11th floor access corridor. The false timber ceilings that have been put up to hide the wires and pipes quickly ignite, allowing the fire to spread rapidly along the corridor. And remember the layers upon layers of oil-based paint, or this begins to melt, peels off the wall and ignites on the floor, creating a floor-to-ceiling fire. It is truly the stuff of nightmares. As the fire is spreading horizontally now along the corridor, the thick black smoke starts to pour into flat 81.

The resident in flat 81, Helen Aduka, rang 999. She explained that she and her neighbour, Diana Francisquini, and their three young children are trapped in the flat and the fires outside their door. They are advised to stay inside, go to the bathroom, and use wet towels to help seal the bathroom door. So they do. Helen takes her three-week-old baby daughter, Michelle, and Diana takes her daughter, six-year-old Thais, and her son, a three-year-old Felipe, and the group flee to the bathroom at the middle of the flat.

There are no windows in here, and because it's in the crossover bit of the structure, so they go in there and they block the bottom of the door and they huddle together to wait for firefighters. But there had been pipe work carried out in the bathroom wall, and the gaps that had been created whilst carrying out the work had not been filled. So this allowed thick smoke and toxic carbon monoxide to creep directly into the bathroom where they were sheltering. At 5:30 pm, firefighters finally make it to flat 81.

They find the group in the bathroom and they are evacuated to waiting paramedics outside. But sadly, all five had succumbed to the toxic smoke inhalation. They had all died in that bathroom. 18 fire engines and over a hundred firefighters battled the fire at Lacknall House. The fire was finally extinguished around 6 pm that evening. Firefighters enter flat 79. Catherine's body was found in the hallway. She was clutching her keys, indicating that she'd finally tried to make a run for it. If Catherine, age 31, had evacuated when the smoke started coming into her window, she would have likely made it out.

The stay put advice was right, but after the fire had breached the first flat, she should have been told to leave. The fire was not contained. The fire had spread. People outside, they could see this. They could see the flight the fire was not contained. It was spreading up the building, so the stay put policy should have been abandoned. In the aftermath of the Lacanau House fire, there were inquests and reviews that exposed widespread failures in the building's management and fire safety. In 2013, the inquest into the circumstances that led to the six fatalities found failure of compartmentation, structure altercations, and the refurbishment severely compromised the building's safety barrier.

The combustible cladding that surrounded the building directly enabled the fire to spread so rapidly. South Council failed to spot and fix the fire hazards in the buildings. It found that the London Fire Brigade's control operators lacked training in when to abandon the stay put policy. In 2017, the council pleaded guilty to four counts of breaching the regulatory reform fire safety checks. They were fined 270,000 and ordered to pay 300,000 in legal fees, a total of 570,000. The surviving residents were permanently rehoused across London.

Lacknorm House remained vacant for years while major construction work was carried out. In early 2017, new residents began moving into the block. It continues to serve as social housing. The council spent a huge 62 million on fire safety and upgrades across its entire social housing property in the years that followed the fire. Now, following the fire and the six deaths, investigators and the London Fire Brigade warned central governments and housing providers about the danger of using combustible external panels, aka cladding on any other buildings.

Now, you or I, when we have seen what happened with the cladding on Lacola House and how quickly it escalated the fire, we'd be thinking there is absolutely no way that type of cladding would ever be used again, right? Especially on multi-residential tower blocks. So who in their right mind would ever completely cover a high-rise with a material that is basically petrol? Well, unbelievably, local councils all over the country continued to use flammable cladding on high-rise residential buildings.

And ultimately, the lessons that should have been learned by the devastation at Lacanau House were buried by the government and exploited by corporate manufacturers. But Lacanel House was not the first time that cladding or similar material used on buildings warned us of its dangers. All the way back on the 25th of May 2071, the Summerland Leisure Centre opened its doors on the Isle of Man. So Summerland was huge. It was a climate-controlled entertainment and leisure complex. The idea was to design an indoor resort that provided tourists with artificial Mediterranean sunshine all year round, despite the unpredictable British weather.

It was basically a holiday village in a plastic dome that could fit up to 5,000 people. It had a large solarium area, a dance hall, a roller skating rink, amusement arcades, indoor fairground rides, bars, themed restaurants, and an underground disco. In the solarium, there was an artificial sunshine zone where you could get a tan even though you're inside. To create the illusion of being outside, Summerland's front and roof were wrapped in a highly flammable, lightweight, transparent, acrylic plastic sheeting called oroglass.

The lower tier of the building was cladded in colour galbesto, which is a steel sheeting coated in highly flammable bitumen and polyester resin. Just two years after opening, on the 2nd of August in 1973, three boys were smoking cigarettes near a small disused kiosk outside, and they accidentally set fire to the kiosk with a The kiosk started to burn and the fire actually burned through the wall and entered a 12-inch hollow air gap between the Galbesto cladding and the inner wall. The fire was travelling up the inner wall, but it was invisible because it was in the it was travelling up the air gap.

So the fire spread rapidly up the cladding. People inside were starting to smell smoke, and the smoke was spotted coming out of the ventilation shafts. But there was an announcement saying nobody panic, everything's fine. There's been a small fire outside in the kiosk, so essentially stay put.

So they've put the fire out at the kiosk, so they think the fire's gone out, but they don't know that the fire is climbing up the inside of the wall. But then the fire ignited the orerglass that surrounded the roof of the building, and suddenly Summerland erupted into flames. Once the light the fire spread across the roof of the complex, the whole roof of the complex in less than 10 minutes, the oraglass started to melt and started dripping flames down onto the terrified people trying to escape.

And then the roof collapsed. The fire had destroyed the internal fire alarm, so no alarm was sounded. The huge structure was completely gutted by just 30 minutes after the fire started. The whole structure collapsed. There were 3,000 people in Summerland that night. Fifty of them lost their lives, 11 of them were children. More than 80 people suffered serious injuries. One survivor spoke about how she had to run through the flames and that her hands had wept where they were melting. So the Summerland disaster was solely so catastrophic because of the flammable cladding.

And this should have been enough. This should have been the event that stopped the use of this cladding ever. I don't understand, but there were more warnings, and it happened all over the world. In Valencia in Spain, an entire 14-story apartment complex was consumed in under an hour, killing 10 people. The fire had spread so quickly because it had flammable cladding on it. And in Melbourne, Australia, a fire started on the eighth floor balcony and it raced up to the 21st floor in 11 minutes. Why?

Flammable cladding. We had the Knollsey Heights in Merseyside in 1991. There was no fatalities, largely due to the residents knocking on neighbours' doors and getting them out, and the quick response from the fire crews. All 130 residents were evacuated, but the fire spread from where it started at the base of the building to the entire interior of 11-story blocks in four minutes due to cladding. So why is it still being used? It's still on buildings today. Summerland, Lacknell House, and all of the other fires should have absolutely put a stop to this cladding being used.

And numerous fire safety experts and structural engineers warned that continuing to use this combustible cladding on high-rise residential blocks would inevitably lead to a catastrophic fire. And of course, they were right. I mentioned at the beginning of the episode Grenfell. Now Grenfell Tower is widely viewed as one of the darkest tragedies in modern British history. If you are from the UK, you will definitely know the story of Grenfell. You will likely know where you were when you heard about it as the whole horrific scene unfolded on our television screens in real time.

So on October the 14th, 2017, a fire broke out on the fourth floor of the tower block. This was caused by an electrical vault in a fridge freezer inside flat 16. This was around 10 to 1 in the morning. Now firefighters arrived quickly and extinguished the kitchen fire, but the heat and flames escaped through a window and ignited the newly installed external cladding. The cladding on Grenfell was featured a highly polyathyane plastic core alongside a flammable insulation board. This allowed the fire to climb the outside of the building in minutes.

It had reached the top and ignited a crown that had been newly placed on top of the building ahead of the Olympics. The crown was made of the same material as the cladding. The fire spread across the roof and started descending down the remaining three walls of the building. Grenfell's stay-put policy remained in place until it was too late for residents to leave. When they were told to make a run for it, it was too late. 72 people died at Grenfell, including 18 children. So I'm not planning on doing an episode on the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

It has been covered a lot by other podcasts, so you can find it easily if you want to listen to it. Red Hand did do a good episode on it. But if you, of course, if you do want me to cover it, then message me on Instagram. And if enough people want me to cover it, then I will. So we've had so many warnings, deaths, and absolute tragedies about the danger of using this type of cladding. So why is it still being used? An inquiry into Gremfell concluded that there was a systematic dishonesty on the part of the cladding and insulation manufacturers.

A company called Iconic, who manufactured the cladding on Gremfell, evidence was found that Arconic had performed fire testing on the cladding and was found to react to fire in a very dangerous way. But they had simply hid the truth from the certification bodies so they could continue selling the product. But why would you want to sell dangerous cladding? The answer is money. This type of cladding provided massive financial profit for iconic. They literally prioritised sales and financial greed over public safely.

It's corporate greed. Now a company called I think it says Cellatex, it's C-E-L-O-T-E-X, so I think it's Celoratex, they produced insulation boards, which made up the majority of the insulation in the tower. But to get it on the high-rise market, they rigged the official safety testing by secretly adding a fire-resistant board, but only on the insulation that was being tested. So when it was tested, it appeared safe. But the fire-resisting boards weren't then added to the insulation that was used on Grenfell.

They marketed the insulation as suitable for tall buildings when they were fully aware that it was false. Like it's just unbelievable. Now the Lacknell House and the manufacturers who supplied the panels during their last renovation didn't lie about their product. So the panel was had a class three surface, which means that they are far too combustible for high-rise buildings. So the manufacturer was honest. So it was the council who used the panels on Lacknell House, even though the class three surface had deemed them unsafe.

But it was found that the council had not knowingly installed the unsafe panels. It was due to negligence. Now, to this day, no one has ever been prosecuted over what happened at Grenfell, despite the warnings being constantly ignored and the companies literally lying about the safety of their products. Arconic was sued by the victims and their families. They settled out of court for an unknown sum, but they're still in business. Now it took the horrific event at Grenfell for the government to finally listen.

In December 2018, 18 months after the fire, the UK government implemented a formal ban on using combustible materials on the external walls of high-rise residential buildings. But it wasn't until 2022 that the ban expanded to stop using the cladding on hospitals and student accommodation. So the flammable cladding was still being used and it was being used on hospitals. But despite the ban, thousands of residential buildings in the UK are still wrapped in this cladding. People are living in these properties right now.

How scary must that be? In 2022, the government released grants called the Building Safety Fund or the Cladding Safety Scheme. This is to help building owners pay for the cost of removing the cladding. But for the cladding to start even being removed, there needs to be complex structural studies, legal contracts, planning permission, and to ensure the replacement work is safe, the building safety regulator requires a detailed technical review before any construction can start. And all these things being carried out on thousands of buildings is what's calling the delay.

New buildings are being added to the unsafe list daily. It's all just such a mess. So is it only a matter of time before we see another one of these tragedies? If the government had listened to the warnings all the way back in 1973 at Summerland, could all of this have been avoided? Thanks for listening today, guys. Do let me know what you think of this episode and let me know if you'd like me to cover Grenfell or Summerland. I'm on Instagram at Unthinkable TrueCrime, and I like to end, as always, by saying in a world where you can be anything, be kind.

Take care.

The Story