Star comment: Review of fire safety is needed

The blaze which destroyed it is a nightmare made real, and the tragic events will send a shiver down the spines of all people who live in high rise blocks of flats.

Unless and until we know differently, we have to assume that this tower block, which had been the subject of an extensive and expensive refurbishment, complied with fire safety regulations.

And if it did, then there is something very wrong with those regulations and high rise blocks which share similarities with Grenfell Tower are all potential death traps.

This has been a human tragedy on an appalling scale, and the stories of eyewitnesses and those who managed to escape the smoke and flames are harrowing.

There have been many spontaneous offers of help, including here in Shropshire, by people who have been deeply moved.

Advice for tower block residents when there is a fire is to stay put and await rescue as the design of the building will contain the fire.

In the aftermath of what happened in London, in which the fire spread with astonishing speed throughout almost the entire building, that advice may prove academic, because residents are unlikely to have the confidence to follow it. In future the first thought of residents will be to evacuate the burning building, taking their chances with the suffocating smoke and flames.

In tandem with the heartbreaking task of recovering those who did not make it, goes the paramount need to find out why and how this could happen in the 21st century.

There has been much speculation about the role of the cladding on the building. For those who remember it, it has overtones of the 1973 Summerland disaster. This showpiece leisure complex on the Isle of Man burned down with the flames spreading quickly and molten debris from the acrylic roof cascading onto those below. Fifty died.

The bravery of the fire crews at Grenfell Tower has been much praised. They faced an impossible task, with equipment unable to reach beyond a few floors, and smoke and flames blocking their internal route to upper floors.

Shropshire has only a handful of high rise flats, and nothing of the vertical scale of those in London. Yet look to the east on a clear day and you can see high rise flats on the horizon in the West Midlands.

Grenfell Tower has to be the spur to an urgent and thoroughgoing review of fire safety and in particular to identify any buildings which have the same disastrous flaws.