Grenfell Tower gas pipes left exposed, despite fire safety expert's orders

Dozens of exposed gas pipes in Grenfell Tower that caused residents to fear for their safety were left bare despite a council safety expert ordering them to be protected by fire-retardant boxing.

The National Grid agreed to protect the pipes serving individual flats, which had been installed over the winter, but had only added a third of the boxing by the time the deadly blaze killed at least 79 people.

In March, three months before the blaze, residents told the London fire brigade (LFB) that people living in the 24-storey tower were so scared by the pipes “that they are having a panic attack”.

They requested an urgent safety report to show the building is “safe from fire hazard”, according to correspondence seen by the Guardian.

A fire safety consultant for Kensington and Chelsea council, which owns the tower, had approved the location of new gas risers and pipes in landings and stairways, but only if they were clad in “fire-rated” boxing, according to an email to leaseholders from Sacha Jevans, director of operations at the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation.

Jevans said that the National Grid assured the council on 27 March that the pipes would be protected, but two-thirds of the lateral pipes were still exposed when the disaster happened on 14 June.

The works were originally undertaken by the National Grid’s gas distribution arm following a leak. In March, the firm was sold to investors, including the Qatari government, and renamed Cadent Gas.

Cadent said the “work was still ongoing to box in the lateral pipes [horizontal pipes to flats]” when the fire occurred.

Residents had been worried about the installation of the pipes for months. In an email to Kensington and Chelsea at least three months before the disaster, Tunde Awoderu, vice-chair of Grenfell Tower Leaseholders’ Association, wrote: “This exposed gas pipe throughout the building has put our life in danger and we don’t feel secure in the building any more.

“If there was a gas leak on one of those pipes and someone was smoking that would be the end of the building … we demand that the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation must … give assurance that the building is secure by tonight before everybody goes to bed. We wait to hear from you and the leadership of the KCTMO, not in due course but NOW.”

Laura Johnson, Kensington and Chelsea’s director of housing, complained to the local Labour ward councillor Judith Blakeman in an email on 22 May that “National Grid have been and continue to be a law unto themselves and, despite repeated requests from the TMO to act in a more consultative and collaborative manner with the landlord, this has not taken place”.

Scotland Yard has identified the source of the fire as a faulty Hotpoint fridge-freezer and the focus of the government’s response is to investigate the role of the tower’s flammable cladding.

But police investigating how the fire spread have said they will go further. Det Supt Fiona McCormack said on Friday that officers “will examine the construction of the building, including the refurbishment” and added: “This investigation will be exhaustive and, as we learn more, the scope and scale may well grow.”

Neither Scotland Yard nor LFB would comment on the specifics of what is being examined. However, one survivor, Mickey Paramasivan, 37, told reporters immediately after the blaze: “There were explosions everywhere you looked, lots of bangs, blue gas coming out everywhere you looked.”

LFB also said the day after the blaze that it had not been able to put out the flames until firefighters had isolated a ruptured gas main in the block.

Kensington and Chelsea council declined to comment on the warnings about the gas pipes from the leaseholders group. A spokeswoman said: “The council is committed to cooperating fully with the public inquiry and of course the criminal investigation.

“We do not think it is right to make comments relevant to the inquiry or subject to the investigation until this issue has been discussed with the police and the solicitors to the public inquiry, once they have been appointed.

“The council does not want to prejudice the fair conduct of the public inquiry in any way.”

A spokeswoman for Cadent said: “The riser in the stairwell had been boxed in when the fire occurred and work was still ongoing to box in the lateral pipes [horizontal pipes to flats].”

The spokeswoman said the boxing in was carried out in line with industry specifications. She said the pipes were made from welded steel and designed with fire resistance in mind.

“The cause of this fire is not yet known and investigations are still at a very early stage,” she said.

“We will fully assist the relevant parties with those investigations. This includes liaising with the [government’s] Health and Safety Executive [HSE], who are not treating this as a gas-related safety incident.”

The HSE declined to comment and referred inquiries to Scotland Yard.