116 | October• 2018
construction and lived with his partner,
Rosemary, and their four-year-old
daughter in a two-bedroom apart-
ment on the 14th floor.
Ta labi awoke at 1. 30a m, d i st u rbed
by shouts from below. He supposed
itwasaparty.Thenightbefore,he’d
beenwokenbyagatheringonafloor
below. It was summer and gather-
ingsranlate.Talabilookedforthe
disturbancefromhisbedroomwin-
dowandsawnothing.Hisfour-year-
old daughter had climbed into her
parents’ bed while they slept, and
Talabi lay back beside her and tried
to fall asleep.
There was no audible communal
firealarminGrenfellTower.The
building had no sprinklers. (The lawThebuildinghadrecentlybeen
refurbished, its bolted-on satellite
dishes stripped from the outside
wallsandreplacedbyneatsquares
of insulating panelling, so that the
building’s 1970s concrete core – for
50 years plainly and brownly ex-
posed–wasconcealedbehindthe
bluish silver of new cladding. It was
thecladdingthatwasonfire.
Around350peoplelivedinthe
tower, in one-and-two bedroom
apartmentsstacked24storeyshigh.
At least 320 people were inside.
Wall of Smoke
Most residents, like Oluwaseun
Talabi, were asleep. Talabi, a
muscular 30 year old, worked in
Residents, some roused from sleep, wait near emergency response vehiclesPHOTO: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES