LONDON HIGHRISE HELL
CITY WEEPS AGAIN
DOZENS of missing people, many of them children, are feared to have perished in an horrific high-rise inferno that tore through a London block of flats housing 600 residents.
One resident described the blaze as “like hell on earth” as numerous families trapped inside screamed for help.
Firefighters were last night warning the 24-storey building could collapse at any time.
More than 200 firefighters battled the mystery blaze at Grenfell Tower council flats as the fire took hold about 1am (local time) yesterday.
At least 50 people suffering from burns and smoke inhalation were taken to five London hospitals.
Some tried to escape by making ropes from bedsheets. At least one person is thought to have jumped from the building to escape the flames, which engulfed the building within 15 minutes.
Eyewitnesses gave harrowing accounts of residents flashing their mobile phone torches out of their windows and screaming for help as the fire tore through the building.
A baby was caught by a member of the public after being dropped from the burning tower, a witness said.
London Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton confirmed there were a “number of fatalities’’ and described the situation as “unprecedented”, calling it the largest-scale fire she had seen in her 29 years of service.
The building, near Notting Hill, is owned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It has 120 flats housing about 600 residents, mainly migrants with English as their second language.
Firefighters poured water on the flames but the building was still on fire seven hours later, sending plumes of acrid black smoke across London.
Fire investigators will look at whether external cladding, added as part of a multimillion-dollar refurbishment last year, contributed to the rapid spread of the blaze.
Kensington man Simon Lleshi, 39, woke to helicopter noises and looked out his window to see the building ablaze. “I saw all these people through windows who wouldn’t have made it,” he said. “I could hear some of them screaming ‘help, I’ve got children, please help’.
“They were trapped. There was nothing I could do. It was heartbreaking.”
The Grenfell Action Group of residents had warned last year the building was a fire trap and that the building managers had failed to listen to their concerns.
Two Gold Coasters, Ashley Brown and Jesse Backholm woke to the sounds of sirens in their London hostel.
“It’s quite surreal where you have some people standing on the streets watching in awe,” Ms Backholm, 32, said.
“And yet others (are) just going about their day even though there are roads blocked off, helicopters cicrcling and mass amounts of emergency services present.”