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Article snippet: LONDON — A fire tore through a 24-story West London apartment building early Wednesday, killing at least 12 people and injuring more than 70. The cause is still under investigation. The fire was first reported at 12:54 a.m. The site was Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, built in 1974, which housed at least 400 people in 120 apartments across 20 residential floors. Firefighters responded within six minutes. According to the London Fire Brigade, the blaze began on the second floor and spread quickly to the top. The brigade’s leader, Commissioner Dany Cotton, said it was too early to speculate on the cause. Early news reports said that the fire may have been caused by the explosion of an electrical appliance, but nothing has been confirmed. That is a major question for investigators. Usually, high-rise buildings are designed to contain a fire in its unit of origin, and in contemporary buildings, alarm systems and sprinklers are the norm. Grenfell Tower was recently fitted with exterior aluminum cladding. Christopher Miers, the managing director of Probyn-Miers, a forensic architecture firm that examines buildings that are defective or fire damaged, said: “It’s a possibility that there are areas in the external wall system that played a role and it’s an area that would need to be considered.” Whether the cladding had a role in this case was not clear, but such cladding, which often consists of aluminum sheets sandwiched over some kind of insulation, has been seen a... Link to the full article to read more