ON JUNE 14 2017, in the early hours of the morning, an ordinary kitchen fire was the catalyst for a social catastrophe of an unprecedented scale. 

The effects of this extraordinary occurence upon the communities living in close proximity to the Grenfell fire disaster will not be fully understood for decades to come. 

This event took place in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea where some of the world’s wealthiest and Britain’s poorest coexist in an atmostphere of mistrust, mutual contempt and suspicion. 

Some say that the incident occurred because of the borough’s deeply entrenched inequality, others argue that it was accidental. 

On the surface, it would appear that a perfect storm of carelessness, incompetence, ignorance and greed created the conditions for this calamity to happen in a hitherto forgotten part of Kensington and Chelsea.

But beneath the surface lies an uncomfortable truth of what it means to be poor, to be economically and socially disadvantaged, and to struggle to survive in Britain today.

The worst post-war fire in Britain is now proven to have been avoidable, predictable and preventable. 

In 2010, Kensington and Chelsea Council produced a masterplan for the North Kensington area which included demolition of social housing tower blocks and an ambitious regeneration plan. 

There wasn’t enough money available to realise the plan (there is never enough money), and in any case, there was public fury at the suggestion of razing so many social housing units to the ground. Instead, a decision was made to refurbish using a flammable cladding system. 

The plastic cladding made the brutalist 1970s tower look like a luxury high-rise. 

But behind its facade, a lack of advanced sprinkler systems, 24-hour concierge or functional smoke ventilation units turned Grenfell into a death trap.

The building, some 23 storeys, 33m in height, housed over 350 men, women and children from every corner of the globe, stacked like dominoes.

Grenfell Tower rapidly became a scene of devastation when a run-of-the-mill fridge fire ignited the bright and shiny new cladding when flames licked through an open window on a warm summer evening.

Extraordinary admissions emerging during the £150 million public inquiry expose how corners were knowingly cut by almost every organisation whose hands touched the tower without any consideration as to the consequences.

Five years later, the Grenfell fire disaster has not become the catalyst for change that the bereaved, survivors, relatives and wider community demanded of their council, their government and the country in the days, weeks, months and years since that night, in the early hours of the morning when flames and an acrid, fatal smoke engulfed the building within minutes.

The first death was recorded at 1.20am, just 30 minutes after a panicked resident placed the first of many 999 calls to emergency services begging “Come quick!”

The speed and ferocity of the blaze claimed the lives of at least 72 lives as families, friends, loveds ones and communities watched in horror and disbelief as the inferno cremated the bustling “village in the sky” that was Grenfell. 

The fire raged for 24 hours, leaving only dust and the blackened shell of what is now a vertical graveyard in the heart of London. 

Elizabeth Stravoravdavis has lived in North Kensington for decades. Like her neighbours and friends, Elizabeth was at home on the night of the fire and witnessed the tragedy taking place on her doorstep.

She says: “Everyone lost someone. Not only did our children witness their friends being burned alive, but they witnessed their parents consumed by the quest for justice, a solution to the devastation caused by the fire that extended well beyond the epicentre of west London.”

“It was such an intense and overwhelming feeling of grief. The shock of it. So grief was the first thing. Then frustration. What can you do to fix this? What do we do now?”

Anger and rage took hold at the paucity of the council and government’s recovery response in the aftermath of the fire.

Elizabeth says: “Different people react in different ways. You turn your anger into something positive or you can let it destroy you.”

In the days and nights, and years that have followed, Elizabeth spoke to the young people often found wandering the area searching for answers, unable to sleep. 

She said: “It’s obvious that they don’t believe anything they hear. They don’t trust the authorities. They don’t have any faith in the authorities. When you have no faith, you have no hope.”

Elizabeth has experience in working in disaster areas. She was in Haiti working as a legal interpreter for the relief operation in 2010 when an earthquake killed 220,000 and injured 300,000. 

Her role included co-ordinating transfers of injured personnel and Haitians to hospitals around the world. 

She said that despite the magnitude of the situation in Haiti, “there was a tremendous will to make things work. It was bizarre loooking at the Red Crescent working side by side with Catholic priests. Everyone pulled together. It was like watching ants at work. It was incredible.”

But at Grenfell, in contrast, she observed  a total absence of any co-ordination from the authorities on the night of the fire, or in its aftermath.

Last month, Nicholas Holgate, former chief executive of the Kensington and Chelsea Council, admitted that he did not act on reports dating from 2014, warning that the council lacked the emergency infrastructure, was reliant on non-existent volunteers to fill essential roles in emergency centres, and had not appointed anyone to fulfil the pivotal position of humanitarian assistance lead officer to manage the kind of relief and recovery programme required after a major incident.

While this undoubtably meets the conditions of incompetent, the evidence points instead to an explanation of this seeming ineptitude as rooted in a dangerous and alarmingly dysfuntional culture within Britain’s corporate and public realms.

Both corporate and public bodies put profit above people, wealth over welfare, and regarded the disadvantaged with a contempt that could pass for hatred were it not for its indifference.

Elizabeth says: “There was not a will to help. It was a tick-box operation where they wanted to be seen to be helping but they weren’t actually doing anything.”

The inquiry heard how the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea initially refused to invoke the London-wide disaster relief status to access outside assistance until stories emerged in the media of the incompetent response.

It was not the actual suffering and chaos on the streets of North Kensington on the morning after the fire that prompted the council’s change of heart. It was the images of this pandemonium being broadcast around the world that forced the council’s hand.

Elizabeth recalled: “It was RBKC who were sabotaging the relief operations. The reasons they were doing that, I believe, is because they were working on damage limitation and salvaging their image. The less information that got out, the better for them to control the narrative.”

Richard Millett QC asked Holgate: “Was it the case that, in fact, by finally agreeing to trigger London Gold [a collective mechanism that would have mobilised support from all 33 local authorities in the capital] at 5pm on the evening of the 15th, you were reluctantly responding to external pressure due to growing concerns about the council’s inability to lead on the response effort?” 

“Yes,” replied Holgate.

For decades, the area — one of the poorest in Britain — has felt under siege as the Conservative council and international capital consider it ripe for regeneration.

In February 2016, a petition appeared on the RBKC website that described social housing in the borough as “incredibly run down, dirty and abandoned.” 

The petition suggested that the Silchester Estate is both not integrated into the wider community and that it is also a hotbed of criminal activity. 

It called for the demolition of the run-down towers of North Kensington and for them to be replaced with “decent” housing and presumably new residents.

After the fire, the body bags from the offending building were held in makeshift mortuaries hastily constructed in the leisure centre at the foot of the building. 

Elizabeth recalls: “On the double, they sorted out the leisure centre. That was my gym. I didn’t go back. I couldnt do yoga or aerobics facing the tower. It was right there in front of you. Myself and other people couldn’t bring ourselves to go back. The demographics changed. The new families moving in didn’t know about the history, or what happened. The leisure centre became gentrified and very quickly, it was business as usual.”

There is an acute sense of abandonment. Worse, the divide that has grown up over the years, is perceived as a malevolent, aggressive force threatening the lives of the residents who cling to their tenancies.  

The possibility that they might slip through London’s housing net if and when they recieve a notice to quit induces fear and panic. 

Elizabeth has been campaigning against the plans for 15 years. She remembers being in temporary accommodation in the Grenfell area with her two babies. Even then there was talk of demolition and regeneration. 

It’s a long time to wait on an eviction notice.

In North Kensington, regeneration is perceived as a social cleansing movement, ever-encroaching on land and property designated for the disadvantaged. 

The majority of bereaved and survivors moved away from the area in the aftermath of the fire. First to hotels in South Kensington and Hammersmith. 

Few properties were available for rehousing the survivors, and gradually they were spirited away to other areas of London and beyond, persuaded by the discomfort of living in a hotel room for months, and in some cases, years because of a lack of social housing.

Elizabeth says that “it’s a constant fight to secure things that should be basic human rights only because the super rich keep expanding and expanding into what should be safeguarded for people who are working class.”

The relationship between the communities and the council has not improved despite considerable investment into the area. 

Elizabeth says: “RBKC have been behaving as an estate agent. They have not behaved as civil servants paid to safeguard people like myself who are on a low income, might have disabilities, might have fled domestic violence, ill-health, all these disavantages stacked up against them. 

“Instead of safeguarding social housing tenants, they are squeezing them out. They are now changing the tenancy agreements making it very difficult for people to keep secure tenancies.”

The gradual process by which regeneration and major developments achieve their long-term ambitions is complex and relentless.  

Elizabeth says: “The way I see it, it’s a massive land grab. Because they can. We’re losing community venues and centres. We lost them bit by bit, losing territory, losing land designated for the disadvantaged. 

“Take the space under Westway, designated for the community. Gradually, bit by bit we lost it. The Citizens Advice Bureau is a Pret a Manger, with a prep school next door. We’re very much aware. We’re still fighting to save the library.”

Today, Grenfell Tower stands — for now — shrouded in a ghostly plastic wrapping, whistling in the wind, its future uncertain. 

The building is now under the control of the Ministry of Homes, Communities and Local Government, which says no decisions have been made.

Some 3,500 new homes are approved for North Kensington in the latest stage of the regeneration proposals. Less than half will be social housing units. 

With each new step in the march towards regeneration, fewer and fewer homes are available for low-income households.

By the time the regeneration of North Kensington is concluded, only a small percentage of people will remain who will remember the fire.

The rest will have been slowly pushed out, into the margins, out of sight and out of mind. 

But we will remember. Grenfell. Forever in our hearts.