At the time of writing at least 79 people lost their lives in the fire at Grenfell Tower in Kensington. Given the nature of what happened, that number may well increase. At this point it is still hard to see past shock at what has taken place and sympathy for those affected. It is easy to understand their anger and their frustration that the immediate response to their distress was not more effective, as it clearly was not.
The immediate priorities now are to look after the victims of this terrible fire, identify its causes and do whatever we can to prevent it happening again, so it is worth setting out what is being done.
There are currently 600 people working on site and in the immediate area to help those affected, including officials from 6 government departments. It is clearly right that central government resources are used to supplement what the local authority has been able to do. Counselling is being made available and every family whose home was destroyed is receiving an immediate £5000 down payment from a much larger fund created to help with food, clothes and other things needed. £1 million has already been paid out to residents of the tower, and it is important to ensure everyone receiving this essential help is reassured that none of it needs to be paid back, that it will not affect legal rights or benefit entitlements, so people feel confident in buying what they need.
There are other needs too, beyond food, clothing and immediate accommodation, which needs to be and will be in the surrounding area. Some have lost essential documents for example, and there are officials on site replacing the driving licenses and passports people need.
The next issue is understanding what happened and why. There will be a judge-led enquiry, which will have the powers it needs to find out what went wrong and why, in addition to the immediate investigations taking place into the fire. Although it is too soon to draw conclusions, there is a police investigation underway too and where the evidence demands prosecutions, they should follow, whoever that evidence leads to.
Finally, what we learn about this fire must be used to prevent others. As I say, I do not think it is sensible, or helpful to those affected by what happened at Grenfell Tower, to speculate now on its causes. We must wait until we are confident of the causes before we act, but act we undoubtedly must when we know them. We do not yet know whether that will involve changes to fire regulations, greater fire prevention or suppression measures in this type of building, changes to building design or construction, or any other steps. We do however know that something went very badly wrong at Grenfell Tower that night, and it should not have. Grief and anger for now are understandable and we all feel them, but understanding what that something was is essential for the future.