Fire in London Apartment building - Grenfell Tower

taz'smum

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It made me feel sick waking up to this, as someone who escaped from the 4th floor, where it started, said that the fire alarms didn't go off, so I fear the worst, large numbers of fatalities on the floors above - a horrendous tragedy - just heart wrenching.
 
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genevieve

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I just saw some stories about this. Absolutely horrific :(
 
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This is really shocking, BBC reporting people saying it only took half an hour for the fire to spread to top floors.
 

Cachoo

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I just saw this. This is horrible and where are the sprinkler systems? How awful for the victims and their loved ones.
 

genevieve

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Coco

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It's just unspeakable and unimaginable. I live in an older 8 story and there are no sprinklers, but for a building that tall to not have some on upper floors at least is quite scary.

I heard a baby survived despite being thrown from a 10th story window. Someone caught the child.
 

GarrAargHrumph

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I understand that the building didn't have sprinklers, and they aren't required in older buildings in London; just recommended.

I also understand that modern towers are built so that fires are contained in the unit or on the floor. There are fire blocks, basically. So something about the construction of this tower perhaps failed, or was compromised during a renovation.
 

GarrAargHrumph

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Vash01

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Last night I was watching Brian Williams 11th hour and he interrupted his interviews to show what was happening in London. First they showed the fire on all floors, then dark, smoke, and it got really awful. My first thought was - I don't see anyone surviving this. :( It was around 4 am in London. They said the building may collapse. They were still getting the updates when the 11th hour ended.

Just curious - is this a poor area and is that why the complaints didn't get the attention they needed? Ihave not read any posts or any news yet. Just got to work and wanted to check in,
 

BittyBug

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What a horrific situation. I hope those who perished went quickly and that those who survive are able to fully recover, especially emotionally.

Fires can be merciless, and the thought of being trapped in one is a nightmare of the very worst kind.
 

GarrAargHrumph

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Just curious - is this a poor area and is that why the complaints didn't get the attention they needed? Ihave not read any posts or any news yet. Just got to work and wanted to check in,

If Wikipedia is correct, they say that "many of its later residents were well-to-do private individuals including ex-Olympians." But you can't count on Wiki as a solid source.

It's in Ladbroke Grove, as I understand it, and a friend of mine lives in that neighborhood. Back when he bought his place decades ago, the area was somewhat rough, he says, but now it's gentrified. I haven't spoken to him about this tower specifically, so I don't know where in his neighborhood it is, exactly, or what the demographics of the people living there are. Others can comment on that who have more knowledge.
 

Gazpacho

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If Wikipedia is correct, they say that "many of its later residents were well-to-do private individuals including ex-Olympians." But you can't count on Wiki as a solid source.

It's in Ladbroke Grove, as I understand it, and a friend of mine lives in that neighborhood. Back when he bought his place decades ago, the area was somewhat rough, he says, but now it's gentrified. I haven't spoken to him about this tower specifically, so I don't know where in his neighborhood it is, exactly, or what the demographics of the people living there are. Others can comment on that who have more knowledge.
Interesting, I read that the residents were mainly on the poor side.
 

Skittl1321

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I saw this in the middle of the night while up nursing. So terrifying, I fear for what the death toll will be. It is horrifying that the advice is to stay put-surely that only protects people in a small fire, but who could predict something this awful.

I hope this leads other buildings to increase their alarms and sprinklers. Anything that could prevent it from happening again.

And as horrible as an accident would be, I truly hope it wasn't arson.
 

mella

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To try to answer some of the questions I've seen in this thread (not gospel just some thoughts based on what I know of UK and UK construction):

I've seen the estate it's part of described as a social housing estate. Given age it's likely a mix of council owned flats with less well off tenants and privately owned flats with relatively better off people who own flats originally bought under ownership schemes. The surrounding area as a whole is "gentrified" but id be surprised if blocks like this are heavily occupied by well off people.

The stay in place policy is pretty normal for buildings of that scale in the UK but given age of the building and recent massive refurbishment of have expected checks to have been done to ensure that strategy was appropriate. The stay in place strategy only works if you're confident of the fire integrity between the floors and walls of each unit which could be questionable in a building this age. Bizarre to think it wouldn't have been reviewed especially if the gas supply is adjacent the stair as suggested by one report I read.

Speculation about problems with the gas in the days running up to the fire and engineers being called - but biggest concern as I see it is suggestion that the cladding panels helped the fire spread so quickly. If they have used an unapproved core (in the panels installed during the refurbishmemt) this is going to get very bad for the council and their agents. Certain panel cores have been known to be problematic in fires for over 20 years and as such aren't approved by lpcb. In a non residential property the fire brigade wouldn't even go in to a fight a fire in a building with non approved core. I truly hope it's not found that non approved cores were used as that could surely only be considered gross negligence.

Also suggestions that the government suppressed a report that came out of a fire in 2009 in a tower block that killed 9 and delayed a review of the fire standards for buildings. Worth noting that reviewing fire standards would usually mostly impact new buildings not older ones like this but the are some suggestions the government resisted recommendations to make sprinklers a requirement in blocks like this one.
 

ballettmaus

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This is beyond horrible. I don't even know what to say. :(
Radio news just reported that the fire has still not been put out :wideeyes:
 

loulou

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As I hear, number of occupancies is uncertain. Apparently, many were subletting, even to three, four more people per unit. Some of the occupancies were illegally in the UK, hence there's no record of them. It seems likely number of victims released will be high and yet actual number of victims will be higher.

There's another thing I hear, I don't know whether to trust it: authorities think they already have a pretty good estimate, but they won't realese it because "public opinion isn't ready to hear it yet".
 

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