I'll note that Grenfell is more a failing of the British fire safety codes that allowed cladding good for a single story building to be installed on buildings more than a dozen tall.
Grenfell itself was pretty old, and was almost as safe before it's retrofit as, say, modern US skyscrapers, and MORE safe than a lot of modern British construction due to their little fire code problem.
After, of course, it was a disaster waiting to happen. They're busily ripping similar cladding off of a couple hundred similar buildings.
As I understand it, the rules were you either used a fireproof cladding material, or if it wasn't rated, you built a fake wall out of it and tested it to make sure it met the standard as a full assembly.
Somebody, somewhere skipped the testing part. Then everybody else were just good little lemmings and followed along the with the assumed type accreditation of the building before them.
I think that a home today can be built more fireproof than ever. They have homes today that can survive being in a raging forest fire.
You want a fireproof home and are willing to pay $1 more a foot for it? You'll get a fireproof house. You want the cheapest possible? Your home won't be as fireproof.
You could have a fireproof house back in they day, it just involved more sacrifice and expense.
Remember, we used to have really bad fires back in the day, take out whole city blocks.