[Church:] Britain is paying tribute to the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire one year on from that tragedy. The high-rise in west London is now cloaked in a shroud. It was lit up overnight to remember the 72 people who died there in the early hours of June 14th last year. The United Kingdom will hold a minute's silence in just a few hours. A public inquiry is under way into the tragedy. Investigators and survivors have been asking hard questions about the response to Britain's deadliest domestic fire since the Second World War. And Prime Minister Theresa May is apologizing for her error in judgment.
[Theresa May, British Prime Minister:] I didn't, of course on that first visit meet members of the community or survivors. And I'm sorry for not having met them then. I regret that, because I think people perhaps felt, they wanted those of us in power to know that we had understood and recognized what had happened. And perhaps felt that not meeting them immediately meant that I didn't care enough, and that was never the case.
[Church:] And amid all the apologies and questions of the voices of the Grenfell survivors and the testimonies of bereaved friends and relatives. CNN's Nick Glass, brings us their stories.
[Nick Glass, Cnn Correspondent:] In other circumstances, you probably wouldn't give it a second look. Just another London tower block, one among many. Under the white plastic sheeting is Grenfell tower. And Grenfell is the stuff of nightmares. The tragedy played out mercilessly in front of all our cameras. Strip away the shroud and as everyone knows this is still an incinerated concrete shell, a 24-story tombstone, the relic of a fire that should never, ever have happened.
[Unidentified Male:] My mum and my sister were murdered and cremated on the 14th of June last year. To be more specific, my mum and sister were poisoned by the smoke, they were burned, they were cremated. I had to listen to them suffer and I had to listen to them die. I had to watch Grenfell Tower burn for a couple of days, but particularly the top floors. If that is not torture, then I'm not really sure what else is.
[Glass:] Ahmed stayed on the phone to his younger sister Maryam until she fell silent and all he could hear was the crackle of flames. One year on and Grenfell remains a place of profound sadness. How could anyone forget what happened here? There's grief and dignity, and also simmering anger and an unquenchable desire for justice. The photos of the missing once plastered everywhere have begun to fade and fray, but not the memory of the night or the manner of their dying.
[Unidentified Male:] When I go pass, I look at the tower, I have flashbacks. I know they are just pictures in my head, but I can actually see people behind those windows. I honestly don't it looks to me like it's only the outside bit. Oh, my god.
[Martin Moore-bick, Grenfell Tower Inquiry:] In terms of loss of life, the fire was the single greatest tragedy to befall this city since the end of the Second World War.
[Glass:] The sight of the building engulfed in flame is indelibly imprinted on the memories of those who experienced an event of unimaginable horror. Unimaginable horror, that is the truth of it, that the launch of the public inquiry, they stood in silent for a symbolic 72 seconds. 72 people died in the fire. Here was a room overflowing with the bereaved.
[Hisam Choucair, Witness, Grenfell Tower Inquiry:] I have to live with my family ripped apart for the rest of my life. I don't see this as a tragedy. I see it as an atrocity.
[Glass:] His solution care lost six relatives in the fire, his mother, sister, brother-in-law, and three nieces. For seven tearful days, the bereaved paid tribute to their loved ones. Some made commemorative videos. This artist had just shown her work at the Venice Biennale. It made it all the more heartbreaking. So many children, so young, so vibrantly full of life.
[Marcio Gomes, Father Of Logan Gomes:] He was so peaceful. So restful. He looked like he was just sleeping. As babies do.
[Glass:] At the very top of the building on the 23rd floor, Rania Ibrahim was trapped with her two young girls. In perhaps the most haunting of all the footage from the night, she used her mobile phone to live stream on Facebook. First we hear a woman's voice shouting down.
[Unidentified Female:] We're stuck on the 25th floor! Hello! There's too many people stuck upstairs! Hello!
[Glass:] And then we hear Rania herself. None of them got out.
[Unidentified Male:] This isn't a time for vitriol and hatred. It's a time to come together and hold one another, to hold in embrace. Because we know we're going to go forward.
[Glass:] The hope is for justice and a resolution of some kind. The inquiry has already heard about what experts have described as a litany of failures at Grenfell. Everything caught fire much faster than anyone could ever have imagined. Window frames, fire doors, and perhaps most disastrously of all, the exterior cladding installed just a few years ago. The small fire evidently started in a fridge freezer on the fourth floor, swept up the building in just 19 minutes. The other issue involves the fire brigade. Their initial advice to residents was to stay put in their flats, believing the fire could be contained.
[Unidentified Male:] I will not have peace until I have the truth. I want to know why I was physically stopped from leaving the flat at about 2:00 a.m. Why were we kept inside for so long? What was responsible for that decision? I want answer. If I had not listened to the fire brigade, my son would have been likely alive today.
[Glass:] The London fire brigade has described Grenfell as the most challenging incident in living memory. They say that the firemen on the ground were wholly unaware of fire safety defects in the fabric of the building, and even early on, advice to residents to stay or leave involved substantial risk either way. Grenfell tower will eventually be demolished, but never forgotten. Over 300 other British tower blocks are clad in similar material. The conclusions of the inquiry are keenly awaited. Grenfell will remain a synonym for the cruelest of human tragedies. We all watched helplessly on. How in this day and age could this happen? Why couldn't we save so many of those trapped on the upper floors? Nick Glass, CNN, at Grenfell tower in West London.