The Grenfell tower is a residential tower located in West London, Great Britain. The tower is twenty-four stories tall and has one-hundred and twenty-seven apartments within it. The building recently finished its new renovation in May 2016. The new renovation included an upgraded communal heating system, new windows, and new exterior cladding. The renovations costed 8.6 million pounds which is equivalent to around 11.39 million dollars. The construction was done by Rydon Construction, a highly regarded construction company that has been in business for over thirty-eight years.
On Wednesday, 14 June 2017, there was a tragic fire that engulfed almost the entire building in flames. The fire started on the fourth floor because of a Hotpoint fridge freezer malfunctioned and started the blaze. The flames climbed the entire tower in the matter of a couple hours. The reason for the fire’s ability to grow so quickly was because of the new renovations that were finished a little more than a year before. The cladding used on the sides of the building was an aluminum type that is more flammable and burns much faster than other types of cladding like zinc cladding. The reasoning behind using this more flammable cladding was because the aluminum cladding was 300,000 pounds cheaper than the originally proposed zinc cladding. Another important note is that the cladding did not have a fire barrier to inhibit the fire from going from story to story as easily.
In most buildings, the cladding has a gap between itself and the building to serve as insulation. However, this gap gave the chimney effect to the flames allowing it to rise quicker. The chimney effect is the phenomenon where heat contained in a tall but narrow space. The air becomes less dense because of the heat and then rises to the top of the contained space. The cheaper, more flammable cladding combined with a chimney effect caused by the gap between the cladding and the building made the fire grow at a rate where two-hundred firefighters stood no chance in containing it before it took the whole building. The fire took the lives of seventy-two people in the matter of hours all because the safety of the building was not the first priority.
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Throughout this semester there are many topics that can be related to this moral and ethical mistake. The most important mistake made in this tragedy is the engineers on this project did not follow the first rule on almost all codes of ethics. “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public in the performance of their professional duties.”(Code) The engineers that decided to use the cheaper cladding would never have done that if they would went by the codes. The cladding used on the building failed the preliminary inspections but it was still used. Even though the owner of the company was the one who made the choice to go with the cheaper cladding, the engineers should have reasoned with them.
The factual evidence was that the aluminum cladding on the building was not of good quality. However, it was chosen because the price of it was much cheaper than the zinc cladding. It was also known that the aluminum cladding was more flammable than the zinc cladding. These facts present a strong case against the decision that was made. One way to judge this decision is to do a risk-benefit analysis. The person who would benefit would be the owner of the Grenfell tower because the cost was lower. The ones who would take the risk is the people living inside the tower. If the people living inside the building were not given a lower payment for their rent then the risk-benefit analysis would show that this was an unfair choice that is unethical.
The conceptual issues would be questioning the idea as a crime. Is the choice to use the more dangerous cladding a case of misconduct or is it a situation where it was a more honest mistake. After doing more research there is an actual case being put together for this case being a corporate manslaughter. So for this conceptual issue it seem that the choice of cladding might be a wrongdoing that breaks ethical codes.
The people who chose to save money instead of use the necessary cladding are morally wrong. One way to understand this is to use the line drawing technique. It could be said that a line could be drawn at putting somebody’s life in danger over a sum of money. It could also be said that a line could be drawn at breaking fire codes on the type of cladding used. It is not hard to see that the people in charge of the Grenfell tower failed to meet this moral dilemma. In conclusion, the Grenfell tower owners and engineers responsible for the use of cheaper cladding, have chosen an unethical option that took many lives. By not using their ethical codes or just moral common sense, they might have at least ruined their careers or worst their lives with criminal charges and the guilt of the people who died in that tower.
