Arconic, the company that made combustible cladding that spread the Grenfell Tower fire, has said more heat was released by the burning contents of victims’ flats, in a combative and unapologetic closing statement to the public inquiry.
In a final speech that sought to deflect responsibility for the 72 deaths, the company also said that if others involved in the 2014-16 refurbishment had properly read a safety certificate for its plastic-filled panels which said they were combustible very likely no one would have died and alleged his client had faced “an agenda throughout to subject them to condemnation”.
The inquiry has already found the 14 June 2017 blaze which killed 72 people at the west London council block was spread primarily by Arconic’s aluminium composite panels which burned like petrol. Lawyers for the bereaved and survivors have accused Arconic of bearing greatest responsibility for the speed of the fire’s growth and spread, being “reckless in pushing dangerous products” and “fraudulent in their sales tactics”.
But Stephen Hockman KC, lawyer for Arconic, accused other companies of blaming Arconic as “a very convenient way of avoiding their own responsibility” and said it was “unjust” and “profoundly disappointing” to claim Arconic had misled the market.
Hockman also said it had been established by expert witnesses that “at least half of the heat loading occurred as a result of the combustion of the apartment contents rather than the combustion of the components of the cladding system”.
On Monday, lawyers for the bereaved challenged organisations involved in the refurbishment to say sorry and warned to do otherwise would be “injustice heaped upon injustice”. Hockman didn’t do so but expressed “profound sympathies for all those directly affected” by the fire.
Earlier on Tuesday, the cladding contractor, Harley Facades, defended its role after lawyers for the bereaved concluded it knew the panels it was installing were highly combustible, that it was “grossly negligent” and its conduct “woefully inadequate” with its subcontractor designer failing to check whether the panels met building regulations.
Jonathan Laidlaw KC, appearing for Harley, admitted claims that companies were engaged in a merry-go-round of buck-passing “may be true”. He conceded there had been “failings” and “omissions”. But he said “the overwhelmingly dominant factor in the catastrophic spread of the fire was the use of these materials”.
Harley felt “frustration and indeed anger” about how the manufacturers behaved and he said the government failed to intervene to stop ACM when testing before the fire showed it burned like an “inferno”.
For Arconic, Hockman’s key defence against allegations it failed to warn users about the fire performance or made misleading statements was a certificate, obtained from the British Board of Agrément certification body, which “makes it crystal clear that the product was combustible”.
Manufacture and sale of its panels were “entirely lawful” at the time. Addressing criticism that when the cladding was bent into cassette shapes, as at Grenfell Tower, it didn’t achieve a key fire performance threshold, he said Arconic supplied it as a panel and it was shaped “by or on behalf of the purchaser”.
Hockman said: “The primary responsibility for any alleged misuse of the product must lie with those actually responsible for the design and construction of the architectural project”.
Arconic is a multi-billion dollar US-based multinational, but the subsidiary which supplied materials to Grenfell is based in France. Several key Arconic executives refused to be cross-examined at the inquiry, citing an archaic French law known as the “blocking statute”.
In 2015 Claude Wehrle, one of those who refused, sent an internal email warning the panels it was selling were “dangerous on facades and everything should be transferred to fire-resistant as a matter of urgency”.
Hockman said Wehrle had expressed views which were “overcautious”. He also said the non-disclosure of results of a 2005 test of panels in cassette form, as used at Grenfell, which burned 10 times more quickly than flat sheets, was a “non-issue” because there was a certificate which advised further testing of the fire resistance of any full cladding system.
And he claimed potentially fatal poisonous carbon monoxide released by Arconic’s burning cladding panels was not as dangerous to human life as the hydrogen cyanide gas released by burning foam insulation made by other firms.
Kingspan made a small amount of combustible insulation used on the tower, but has been accused by lawyers for the bereaved of being “reckless in pushing dangerous products”. The firm used its closing statement to insist there was no expert evidence to suggest the fire would have been any different if non combustible insulation had been used.
“A significant share of the responsibility for the tragedy of Grenfell Tower rests with Arconic as a manufacturer of the polyethylene ACM material,” said Geraint Webb KC, representing Kingspan. “Responsibility also rests with those responsible for the design, construction and approval of the refurbishment.”
Webb said the company “apologises for … shortcomings in relation to the testing and certification of K 15 prior to 2015.” But he said: “None of those shortcomings were causative of the fire, or the nature or speed of the spread of the fire in any way.”
The inquiry continues.
