Or the fact you might have some genius who will prop the door open to “help” people escape.
I don’t know at all tbh but just something I read.
Grim listening to the news there at lunchtime as I was out in the car. A family and their neighbours were huddled in the second floor from the top effectively awaiting their deaths and they videoed their goodbye and sent it to their families.
Christ. That is grim.
Christ.
The idea would be that 1 hour is loads of time for a fire brigade to get there and assess whether you need to get out or not. Obviously it’s better to have trained people making these decisions rather than panicked civilians. The fact that they were on the scene in 6 minutes and were still too late to help is terrifying. Can’t imagine you’d get a response time much faster if you were living next door to the fire brigade
There was a lad on the radio last night who had a mate living in the same block up near the top. He got out and rang your man who said he was staying put and only for the other chap begged him to get out he’d be dead now
She really is dreadful, not an ounce of compassion in this cold technocrat.
The walls and windows are supposed to be two hour fire-proofed, but whatever cheap shit they used for the cladding put paid to that. There was a similar incident in Melbourne 3 years ago but they had a sprinkler system installed which saved the lives of the residents. Mind-boggling to think a tower block in a modern city would have neither a sprinkler system nor an integrated alarm system. One or the other would have given some chance to the people on the top floors.
There’s a frightening video about the Melbourne tower block fire and the cladding used on the link below.
In Australia, the cheap, flammable cladding is legal for low-rise buildings but not for high-rise, hence it’s easy to obtain.
But the proper fireproof cladding and the cheap, flammable cladding are pretty much indistinguishable to the eye and the cheap cladding is therefore widely used on high-rise buildings there.
It seems clear that there has been a similar failure in London.
What this fire shows, yet again, is that the gospel of “light-touch” regulation doesn’t work, across so many different areas. Corners will always be cut and real lives are destroyed. “Health and safety” are, like “political correctness”, words that been consistently demonised by right-wing media and politicians. That allows the climate to pervade where a disaster like this can happen.
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I don’t think this has been posted here yet, it was written last November. Fucking hell.
The fallout from this is going to be Hillsborough-like, even bigger I think.
Selected extracts:
It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO, and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders. We believe that the KCTMO are an evil, unprincipled, mini-mafia who have no business to be charged with the responsibility of looking after the every day management of large scale social housing estates and that their sordid collusion with the RBKC Council is a recipe for a future major disaster.
It is our conviction that a serious fire in a tower block or similar high density residential property is the most likely reason that those who wield power at the KCTMO will be found out and brought to justice! The Grenfell Action Group believe that the KCTMO narrowly averted a major fire disaster at Grenfell Tower in 2013 when residents experienced a period of terrifying power surges that were subsequently found to have been caused by faulty wiring. We believe that our attempts to highlight the seriousness of this event were covered up by the KCTMO with the help of the RBKC Scrutiny Committee who refused to investigate the legitimate concerns of tenants and leaseholders.
We have blogged many times on the subject of fire safety at Grenfell Tower and we believe that these investigations will become part of damning evidence of the poor safety record of the KCTMO should a fire affect any other of their properties and cause the loss of life that we are predicting:
In the last twenty years and despite the terrifying power surge incident in 2013 and recent fire at Adair Tower, the residents of Grenfell Tower have received no proper fire safety instructions from the KCTMO. Residents were informed by a temporary notice stuck in the lift and one announcement in a recent regeneration newsletter that they should remain in their flats in the event of fire. There are not and never have been any instructions posted in the Grenfell Tower noticeboard or on individual floor as to how residents should act in event of a fire. Anyone who witnessed the recent tower block fire at Shepherds Court, in nearby Shepherd’s Bush, will know that the advice to remain in our properties would have led to certain fatalities and we are calling on our landlord to re-consider the advice that they have so badly circulated.
The Grenfell Action Group predict that it won’t be long before the words of this blog come back to haunt the KCTMO management and we will do everything in our power to ensure that those in authority know how long and how appallingly our landlord has ignored their responsibility to ensure the heath and safety of their tenants and leaseholders. They can’t say that they haven’t been warned!
You’d swear they nearly started it to prove their point the way they’re talking
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A guy tried to throw a bottle at Sadiq Khan and he was heckled at the Tower there earlier.
Ive stated this a few times. Their statements since the fire have been very triumphalist.
There’s no smoke without fire.
Baffling. Utterly baffling. She’s the PM and she wouldn’t speak to people after a disaster like that? Doesn’t even matter if they thought some people might direct their anger towards her. It’s just wrong.
Jesus.
"Police have said that some of the dead from the devastating blaze that destroyed a tower block in London may never be identified as officers warned that the painful process of retrieving the victims could take months.
Detectives added that they were combing through scores of reports of missing people who lived in Grenfell Tower block in west London as they attempted to end the agony of those who were waiting for news of friends and relatives.
Among the missing are entire families, a six-month-old baby, a young Italian couple, and a five-year-old boy who lost hold of an adult’s hand as his family struggled through thick smoke to escape the blaze."
A possible figure of 150 victims came up on Channel 4 News earlier.
This is the biggest disaster in the UK since Hillsborough, and the similarities are eerie.
In the second half of the 80s there was a succession of disasters, most of which could have been prevented had authorities given a shit. The political atmosphere was vicious at the time.
With the succession of terror attacks, now the Grenfell Tower fire, and the political situation and atmosphere absolutely febrile, it really feels like Britain has returned to those sort of days.