Bloody hell.

Massive job for the Fire Service. I can’t hope for any other outcome than a significant number of fatalities.

Sympathies for all concerned…

Wrong forum…. it’s early.

I echo above. Can’t imagine how our emergency services even start to deal with something like that.

My thought are with everyone affected.

Tough one for the crews to tackle.

http://www.rydon.co.uk/what-we-do/refurbishment/case-studies/refurbishment-case-studies/grenfell-tower

Hope the cladding was FR seems to have spread very quickly externally.

Reading some of the news reports it’s really quite awful.

Sounds horrendous

Just seen this on the news 😥

Heartbreaking.

Just seen the huge smoke cloud in the distance when arriving @ Waterloo station.

Sounds like they make have been fitting or refurbishing the gas supply at the time. One eyewitness has said that you couldn’t hear the smoke alarm in the hallway from inside the flats.

Not good.

The cladding seems to have gone up well. Quality control issue?

Pretty grim, how do you go about tackling that or even getting anywhere near the place. You can’t believe that something that’s just been renovated could go up like that?

There was a local flat went up in Southampton the other week but that just burnt out and no serious harm to any other fla to in the block. The fireman guy I was chatting to said that they’re just concrete boxes that are designed to last hours in a fire.

Feel sorry for anyone in or near that.

Quite simply this just shouldn’t be possible.

Listening to a resident being interviewed and his account is describing how fast the fire spread and is suggesting it was the cladding that was combusting.

The cladding seems to have gone up well. Quality control issue?

If it is the cladding then a QC issue would one explanation. God forbid it’s not cost cutting for profit.

Heard about this on the way into work, having now seen some pictures/video online I was truly shocked at the state of the fire, it almost looks like a line of fire climbs 20 stories across the face of the building.

I hope the casualties are minimal but looking at the pics and reports that alarms didn’t sound or weren’t audible, and thick black smoke, I’m worried a lot of people will have died in there 😥

Just awful. 😥

terrifying the whole thing has gone, how does that happen?

awful. The pictures are terrifying

Oh my word, that’s horrific, looks more like CGI in a disaster film. Some very distressing stories about people being trapped by smoke/on the roof etc.

Horrific Images, the speed of it is very worrying theres no way lfb can fight that !

Residents will be clear where the blame lies:

https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/kctmo-playing-with-fire/

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.

(this was written late last year and I don;t know what proportion of residents are members)

That’s horrific, my main client is in the next road, I was only there yesterday.

wow, that Grenfell action group blog is pretty shocking stuff!

There have been quite a few cladding fires around the world, most notably the apartment building in Dubai at Christmas. Wikipedia already has an article on this:

“Grenfell Tower was completed in 1974. It contains 120 flats. In 2015–2016, the concrete structure received new windows and new plastic cladding with thermal insulation. The work was done by Harley Facades at a cost of £2,600,000. After the fire began, there was considerable discussion about the cladding, with people asking questions as to how safe it was.

In July 2009, a fatal fire occurred at a high-rise block in Camberwell. Three women and three children were killed and more than 20 were injured. Firefighters had expressed shock at the rapid spread and ferocity of the blaze with some suggesting a major construction flaw was present in other high-rise buildings in London.

In November 2016, a residents organisation, Grenfell Action Group, published an article on their website accusing the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea of ignoring health and safety legislation. They accused the council landlord Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation of being an “evil, unprincipled, mini-mafia” and of misconduct regarding voting at annual general meetings. The Group also suggested “the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord”. The group has frequently published articles criticising poor fire safety and maintenance at Grenfell Tower. They also revealed that residents had been urged by the landlord and council in newsletters and by notices to stay in their flats in the event of a fire.”

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!

😯

Sounds like heads will roll…..or get higher paid jobs somewhere else within the council/government. 😐

I’m aware of cladding fire in other parts of the world but I’m amazed that it seems you can still get non fire rated cladding in the UK….

Absolutely shocking that something like this can still happen.

This is **** awful. How can it happen, I just dont understand

They also revealed that residents had been urged by the landlord and council in newsletters and by notices to stay in their flats in the event of a fire

Lets hope most didn’t heed that advice 🙁 If this does relate to issues raised by residents previously then I hope long convictions follow not just heads rolling.

What’s the betting that the building will need to be knocked down (if it doesn’t collapse) and it will be replaced with mega expensive private apartments and the existing tenants will need to be ‘relocated’…

^^ This (both posts above). Horrific.

“We have blogged many times on the subject of fire safety at Grenfell Tower“

This is the sort of thing the BBC should have been focusing on in their reports, rather than the repetitive witness stories they showed.

They also revealed that residents had been urged by the landlord and council in newsletters and by notices to stay in their flats in the event of a fire.

The Fire Brigade rep was repeating that advice on the radio this morning.

What’s the betting that the building will need to be knocked down (if it doesn’t collapse) and it will be replaced with mega expensive private apartments and the existing tenants will need to be ‘relocated’…

There is little doubt that the building will be demolished – Police teams will need to sift every scrap of the rubble and ruin for human remains, down to about 5mm. Until the shell of the building has been declared safe by a Structural Engineer and Fire Service, they won’t send teams in to recover victims.

As someone who has to make the decision to send teams into scenes like that, I’d want it knocked down first.

Absolutely horrible.. Do the emergency services own any of those movie stunt air mattress things that would potentially allow people to jump as a last resort?

This is the sort of thing the BBC should have been focusing on in their reports, rather than the repetitive witness stories they showed.

I’ve just been reading the blogs and they mainly seem to focus on access for fire applicances, with some concerns about fire alarm batteries going flat and potentially flammable materials left laying around.

As a journalist, I can understand why the BBC will focus on the ongoing events as a priority.

The current report says…

The local Grenfell Action Group had claimed, before and during the refurbishment, the block constituted a fire risk and residents had warned that access to the site for emergency vehicles was “severely restricted”.

The BBC has been unable to contact the property’s management company in the hours since the fire.

And until a cause of the fire’s origin and the means by which it spread so extensively are confirmed, it’s not really possible to establish where blame may lie.

They also revealed that residents had been urged by the landlord and council in newsletters and by notices to stay in their flats in the event of a fire

in a *normal* fire, that would probably be the best advice. A normal door will give 30+mins fire protection, a fire door considerably longer.

The speed at which this fire took hold (according to early witness reports) indicates this may not have been considered a normal fire (in the conventional sense).

Thoughts with all those affected.

Given the amount of examinations, forensic tests and the time they take I’m not sure where going to work it out on here while it still burns and people are missing.

DM are already blaming a faulty fridge.

No doubt they’ll manage to discover it was an immigrant’s fridge

If it’s a Hotpoint Tumble Drier there’s going to be a lot of Fire Brigades saying ‘we warned you this would happen but for commercial reasons you did nothing’.