Years after Grenfell Tower tragedy, buildings still wrapped in “solid gasoline”

At around 5.30 p.m. on February 22, a fire broke out on the 8th floor of a high-rise building in Valencia, Spain. These videos were taken over the next 45 minutes. 5:37 p.m. In two hours, flames had engulfed the entire building, killing ten people. Reuters consulted more than half a dozen experts who said the blaze was fuelled by the use of flammable materials in the high-rise’s cladding. They said the fire showed that seven years after the deadly Grenfell Tower fire in London, which killed 72 people, its lessons had gone unlearned. Despite scores of deaths, building codes in many countries don’t require the removal of flammable polymers from cladding The energy crisis of the 1970’s pushed architects to insulate buildings to reduce heating costs. Ventilated facades — a cladding system that creates an air gap for ventilation between a building’s exterior wall and a thin layer of rainproof cladding — became a popular option to improve energy efficiency. But in the 1980s and 1990s, building codes in many countries didn’t consider the fire risk of cladding materials. Flammable polymers like polyethylene were available cheaply and were widely used in ACM panels. These panels — which no longer