The lessons of Grenfell

We have been told that committees will meet, urgent discussions will be held, the guilty will be punished, and steps taken to ensure that the Grenfell tower disaster will not happen again. Sophocles was not the only ancient to say that it was a foolish man that counted on the future.

Fires were so common in densely packed Rome – perhaps a hundred a day? – that there was no point in talking about preventing them. For the architect Vitruvius (d. c. 20 bc), the collapse of wooden buildings was the main concern. He advised foundations should be as solid as possible, whether on rock, clay or loose ground, ‘of the soundest workman-ship and materials, and of greater thickness than the walls above’. Further, streets should be built with the direction of the wind in mind and ‘so set out, that when the winds blow hard their violence may be broken against the angles of the different divisions of the city, and thus dissipated’.