Lakanal House: Prelude to the Grenfell Tower inferno—Part 1
By
Paul Armstrong
16 September 2017
The following is the first of a two part series on the coroner’s inquest into the 2009 tower block fire at Lakanal House in southeast London, which killed six people. Central and local government ignored the recommendations from the coroner, centred on implementing basic fire safety measures in high-rise buildings. This callous disregard for the safety of the public was a central factor in the Grenfell Tower inferno in west London.
Prior to the Grenfell Tower inferno of June 14 that killed at least 80 residents, the UK’s worst ever tower block fire was at Lakanal House in southeast London. That fire, in July 2009, claimed six lives—three of them children.
Yet recommendations from a coroner’s inquest handed down in 2013 were ignored by the Conservative government, local council authorities and the London Fire Brigade (LFB). The fire at Lakanal House, owned and managed by the Labour-controlled Southwark Council, was a direct prelude to the Grenfell Tower inferno. Many of the same fire safety breaches identified by the coronial inquest, along with problems in fire-fighting efforts by the LFB, re-emerged on a more terrifying scale just eight years later.
Sparked by an electrical fault in a television set in a ninth-floor flat, the Lakanal House blaze spread rapidly throughout the 14-storey tower block of 98 maisonettes built in 1958.
Three women and three children were killed. 31-year-old Catherine Hickman died from smoke inhalation and burns in her flat on the 11th floor. 26-year-old Dayana Francisquini, her six-year-old daughter Thais, and three-year-old son Felipe were found huddled together in the bathroom of flat 81, along with…