Grenfell fire inquiry ends with shocking reminder of the human cost

The final evidence sessions have heard unflinching accounts of how victims died, panicking and desperate in horrific conditions

The public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster is ending as it began: with a shocking reminder of the human cost. It opened in May 2018 with elegies to the 72 victims. Its final evidence sessions have been unflinching accounts of the violence of their final moments.

The hearings sought to satisfy the fact-finding requirements of the coroner but swung the spotlight of an often highly technical inquiry back to the sheer barbarity wrought upon a community that still awaits justice.