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Glasgow grieves as flames erode its heritage and identity
The Observer
|March 15, 2026
When Eilidh MacInnes joined a crowd on a Glasgow street last Sunday to watch smoke billowing above the city centre, she had deja vu.
“The big, lit-up clouds and that smell – it did feel like [2018],” she says. With a laugh, she adds: “Or just another day in Glasgow.”
MacInnes, a hospitality worker, has witnessed two of the city’s most dramatic fires. The first was the second of two blazes at the A-listed, Charles Rennie Mackintosh-designed Glasgow School of Art (GSA), in June 2018. It also destroyed the adjacent 02 ABC music venue. Then, last week, MacInnes watched as a fire took hold on B-listed Union Corner, starting in a vape shop and causing possibly weeks of travel disruption after narrowly avoiding the railway station next door.
This story is from the March 15, 2026 edition of The Observer.
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