No, the cladding did not “cause the building to go up like a matchstick.”
Self-evidently, the fire spread far too fast from a combination of factors:
Air gap behind cladding, creating a chimney effect
Lack of effective fire breaks
No sprinklers
Fire Brigade did not send tall appliance as a matter of course
The testing of different combinations of insulation and cladding is mostly a charade to divert attention from the four key failings (particularly #1, which is stupidly mandated by most BC departments).
I think this process might be palatable provided the properties to be bid on includes all the housing currently occupied by MPs who voted against tenant safety laws and the Borough officials who ignored the prior warnings about Grenfell’s safety. (The former should be allowed to bid alongside the displaced survivors, the latter should be in jail for negligent homicide.)
By the time the fire gets to the point where aluminium panels burn, it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn what’s sandwiched between them.
The fire was caused by the initial electrical problem, which lit the window frame, which lit the EWI. The flames spread in the EWI, due to lack of fire breaks and the chimney effect. The cladding only caught light because of those failings, not because it was “cheaper”.
