A SHORT stroll along from what came to be known as Ground Zero in the aftermath of the Twin Towers atrocity in New York is a small, rather undistinguished church building.

As the horror of the attack unfolded, it became a de facto soup kitchen ministering to the practical needs of firefighters and other rescue services.

Then as people sought a place of calm and refuge in the days and weeks thereafter, the inside morphed into a shrine.

More and more people left notes, photographs and mementoes of those they had lost.

As is the American way, these were surrounded by symbols of America – Old Glory, the national flag, and pin badges and ribbons extolling the value of patriotism.

And that is how it remained as the months went past. When I returned to that scene to look at the sombre black marble memorial erected nearby featuring the names of those lost, the notes tied to the church’s external railings had gone, but inside were still mounted boards recording individual cries of pain and suffering penned and posted in the initial outpouring uncomprehending grief.

These images came flooding back as TV showed pictures of the people living in and around Grenfell Tower, leaving desperate messages of hope and despair on the huge hoardings hastily erected and quickly expanded to give voice to their heartbreak.

Flowers and candles piled up, and, every so often the cameras returned to the grotesque spectacle of the blackened structure which had once been home to a hundreds-strong community.

But while there is a universal human response to tragedy and sudden, unexpected bereavement, the horror that visited London that night is different to the catastrophe in downtown New York.

What devastated the latter was an act of unimaginable violence perpetrated by people who had come to that country specifically to gain the skills necessary to fly planes into designated targets.

What befell the men, women and children in the poorest part of the richest borough in the UK’s capital was apparently the product of serial indifference.

We do not yet know if the cheaper version of external cladding was what caused a small kitchen fire in one flat to become an all-consuming conflagration.

But we do know the local council, and consecutive government ministers, were warned time and again by select committees, public inquiries, and residents that failing to attend to basic safety requirements around installing sprinklers, adequate fire breaks, alarms and exit facilities in tower blocks would put lives at risk.

Putting in place, in fact, all the safeguards which are standard practice in new buildings and those in the better-heeled suburbs a short bus ride away.

The shrine to this grotesque and unnecessary loss of life is not a small place of worship, but the twisted shell of a 24-storey building.

Some have said it should stand as a monument. That would hardly allow healing.

The only meaningful legacy is to provide social housing where the lives of the tenants are valued, and their homes properly protected from hazard.

PS. It was reported that two of the young teenagers caught up in this tragedy, and who have now lost their homes, turned up at their school the next day to sit important exams. Their commitment is beyond praise.

These would be the young folks who are “not bright enough” to be given the vote as they are in Scotland.