Ronan Point - Collapse

Collapse

At approximately 5:45am on 16 May 1968, 56-year-old cake decorator Ivy Hodge went into her kitchen in flat 90, a corner flat on the 18th floor of the building, and lit a match to light the stove for her early morning cup of tea. This sparked a gas explosion, which blew out the load-bearing flank walls, removing the structural supports to the four flats above. It is believed that the weakness was in the joints connecting the vertical walls to the floor slabs. The flank walls fell away, leaving the floors above unsupported. This caused the progressive collapse of the whole south-east corner of the building.

Because the building had just opened, three of the four flats immediately above Miss Hodge's were unoccupied. Out of the 260 residents of the building, four people were immediately killed in the collapse, and seventeen were injured, including a young mother who was stranded on a narrow ledge when the rest of her living room disappeared. Miss Hodge survived, despite being blown across the room by the explosion — as did her gas stove, which she took to her new address after the explosion.

Despite the extent of the damage, Ronan Point was partly rebuilt after the explosion, using strengthened joints. Nonetheless, public confidence in the safety of residential tower blocks had been irreparably shaken. Within a couple of decades, this lack of confidence, plus the mounting social problems manifesting themselves within such developments, led to many tower blocks being demolished. Ronan Point was demolished in 1986 to make way for a new development of low-rise housing.