Question 3:
Direction: Answer the following question after reading the given passage correctly.
The Ronan Point disaster took place in 1968, and there are clear parallels to Grenfell: in both cases, government policy was pointed at one objective but lost sight of building safety. In recent years, energy efficiency was the goal: hundreds of buildings were funded to install insulation on their exterior walls. In 1968, the target was mass-building of new homes. Sir Keith Joseph, as housing minister from 1962 to 1964, had called for a rise in house-building productivity to cope with the postwar baby booms and wartime bombing.
Ronan Point was part of the answer to that call: a brand-new tower block, built using modern techniques that required little skilled labour - or even scaffolding. It was one of the new "Large Panel System" designs. Hannah Brack, an independent researcher, has uncovered records which show Anthony Greenwood, the housing minister at the time of the collapse, wrote to Prime Minister Harold Wilson on that very day worrying about central government culpability: they had "pushed" the design onto local authorities.
The explosion was not huge. Miss Hodge survived - so did her oven, which she took to her new home. When estimating the size of the force applied to the wall, the inquiry notes her eardrums did not burst. But, in the words of the official inquiry, the force was enough to blow out "the external load-bearing flank walls" of the flat. In short, the blast knocked out the wall supporting the flats above hers. They, in turn, fell down with enough force to destroy the floors beneath hers. It is a miracle that only four people were killed. Had it occurred later in the day, when more people were in their living rooms, it could have been much higher.
Who was the housing minister at the time of the collapse of the Ronan Point?
Direction: Answer the following question after reading the given passage correctly.
The Ronan Point disaster took place in 1968, and there are clear parallels to Grenfell: in both cases, government policy was pointed at one objective but lost sight of building safety. In recent years, energy efficiency was the goal: hundreds of buildings were funded to install insulation on their exterior walls. In 1968, the target was mass-building of new homes. Sir Keith Joseph, as housing minister from 1962 to 1964, had called for a rise in house-building productivity to cope with the postwar baby booms and wartime bombing.
Ronan Point was part of the answer to that call: a brand-new tower block, built using modern techniques that required little skilled labour - or even scaffolding. It was one of the new "Large Panel System" designs. Hannah Brack, an independent researcher, has uncovered records which show Anthony Greenwood, the housing minister at the time of the collapse, wrote to Prime Minister Harold Wilson on that very day worrying about central government culpability: they had "pushed" the design onto local authorities.
The explosion was not huge. Miss Hodge survived - so did her oven, which she took to her new home. When estimating the size of the force applied to the wall, the inquiry notes her eardrums did not burst. But, in the words of the official inquiry, the force was enough to blow out "the external load-bearing flank walls" of the flat. In short, the blast knocked out the wall supporting the flats above hers. They, in turn, fell down with enough force to destroy the floors beneath hers. It is a miracle that only four people were killed. Had it occurred later in the day, when more people were in their living rooms, it could have been much higher.
Who was the housing minister at the time of the collapse of the Ronan Point?
Direction: Answer the following question after reading the given passage correctly.
The Ronan Point disaster took place in 1968, and there are clear parallels to Grenfell: in both cases, government policy was pointed at one objective but lost sight of building safety. In recent years, energy efficiency was the goal: hundreds of buildings were funded to install insulation on their exterior walls. In 1968, the target was mass-building of new homes. Sir Keith Joseph, as housing minister from 1962 to 1964, had called for a rise in house-building productivity to cope with the postwar baby booms and wartime bombing.
Ronan Point was part of the answer to that call: a brand-new tower block, built using modern techniques that required little skilled labour - or even scaffolding. It was one of the new "Large Panel System" designs. Hannah Brack, an independent researcher, has uncovered records which show Anthony Greenwood, the housing minister at the time of the collapse, wrote to Prime Minister Harold Wilson on that very day worrying about central government culpability: they had "pushed" the design onto local authorities.
The explosion was not huge. Miss Hodge survived - so did her oven, which she took to her new home. When estimating the size of the force applied to the wall, the inquiry notes her eardrums did not burst. But, in the words of the official inquiry, the force was enough to blow out "the external load-bearing flank walls" of the flat. In short, the blast knocked out the wall supporting the flats above hers. They, in turn, fell down with enough force to destroy the floors beneath hers. It is a miracle that only four people were killed. Had it occurred later in the day, when more people were in their living rooms, it could have been much higher.
Who was the housing minister at the time of the collapse of the Ronan Point?
