London — British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday that her initial response to the Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 71 people in London a year ago, was not good enough because it had given the wrong impression that she did not care. The 24-storey social housing block in west London, home to a close-knit, ethnically diverse community, was engulfed by flames in the middle of the night on June 14 2017, in Britain’s deadliest fire on domestic premises since the Second World War. The tragedy, which unfolded within one of London’s richest boroughs, prompted a wave of soul-searching about inequalities, neglect of immigrant communities and poor safety standards in social housing. The day after the disaster, May briefly visited the site, thanking firefighters for their work and holding a short meeting with the team in charge of the response. But her failure to meet any of the traumatised survivors or desperate relatives searching for missing loved ones angered the local community a...
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