The horrific blaze in Grenfell Tower that claimed the lives of 72 people was most likely started by overheating within a Hotpoint fridge-freezer, a public inquiry has heard.
Electrical fire expert John Duncan Glover told the inquiry about the “poor crimp connection” which failed to keep the wires tightly gripped as they should have been. He added that spaces seen in CT scans showed wires had not been “properly crimped”.
“I found voids in all 80 cross-sections indicating the crimp was not nice and tight,” said Dr Glover, a principal engineer at Failure Electrical, a firm which investigates electrical failures.
In a report for the inquiry, he concluded that last year’s June 14 blaze probably began in the Hotpoint FF175BP in the kitchen of Flat 16. He added: “The overheating of the crimp starts the fire. It overheats, it glows, it ignites.”
On The Grenfell Tower Inquiry podcast…
Electrical expert Dr Duncan Glover told the inquiry how a small piece of wire, found in a room 27 days after the fire, led him to conclude that the fire started when the wiring in a fridge freezer overheated.https://t.co/ZFdghyE3BJ
— BBC Current Affairs (@BBC_CurrAff) November 28, 2018
A week after Grenfell fire, the Metropolitan Police had also stated that the fire most likely started in a fridge-freezer.
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