Thousands ordered to leave towers
Sixty other buildings have same exterior cladding cited in highrise inferno that killed 79
LONDON — The victims of Britain’s tower block inferno were “murdered by political decisions,” claimed a senior Labour politician Sunday, as the country’s fire-safety crisis expanded dramatically.
The cladding on 60 highrise buildings in 25 areas across the country have now failed fire safety tests, the government announced, leading to fears that they were tinderboxes waiting to be engulfed in flames.
Britain was facing a “national emergency,” Birmingham City Council leader John Clancy told the BBC.
Meanwhile, thousands of people were being evacuated from four London tower blocks because of the serious risk of fire. But some angry residents were refusing to leave. Sayed Meah, who lives with his mother and wife, said they would wait for a legal notice to be obtained or they were “dragged out by their fingernails.”
The evacuation comes amid widening worries about the safety of highrise apartment blocks across the entire country following the inferno that engulfed Grenfell Tower in west London on June 14, killing at least 79 people. Public attention has focused on the external cladding material blamed for the rapid spread of that blaze — but multiple other fire risks have now been identified in some housing blocks.
All of the buildings for which external cladding samples were so far submitted failed combustibility tests, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said. As of late Sunday, that includes 60 towers from 25 different areas of the country — double the figure given a day earlier.
The number of buildings at risk is likely to grow as owners and local officials provide more samples for safety tests.
So far, Camden Council in London has been the only local authority to have asked residents to leave as a precaution. It said about 650 apartments were evacuated.
The council said residents would be out of their homes for three to four weeks while it completed fire-safety upgrades.
“I know some residents are angry and upset, but I want to be very clear that Camden Council acted to protect them,” council leader Georgia Gould said in a statement. “Grenfell changed everything, and when told our blocks were unsafe to remain in, we acted.”
Camden said it decided to evacuate buildings on the Chalcots Estate late Friday after fire inspectors reported that the blocks were “not safe for people to sleep in overnight.” Gould said fire inspectors uncovered problems with “gas insulation and door stops,” which, combined with the presence of flammable cladding encasing the highrises, meant residents had to leave immediately.
Residents — including families with babies and elderly relatives — trooped out of the buildings late Friday night with suitcases and plastic bags stuffed with clothes. Council workers guided dozens to a nearby gym, where they spent the night on inflatable mattresses. Others were being put up in hotels and other housing projects.
Many residents complained of a lack of information and confusion. Officials first announced the evacuation of one building, then expanded it to five, then later reduced it to four. Some residents said they learned about the evacuation on television news hours before officials came knocking on doors.
Renee Williams, 90, who has lived in Taplow Tower since 1968, told Britain’s Press Association: “No official came and told us what’s going on. I saw it on the TV, so I packed an overnight bag.
“It’s unbelievable. I understand that it’s for our safety but they can’t just ask us to evacuate with such short notice. There’s no organization and it’s chaos,” she said.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan backed the Camden Council’s decision to evacuate the apartment blocks.
“I think they’ve done the right thing. Look, you’ve got to err on the side of caution. You can’t play Russian roulette with people’s safety,” Khan told Sky News.
Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, who has been criticized for her slow response to the Grenfell tragedy, said Saturday that the government was supporting Camden officials to ensure residents have somewhere to stay while building work is done.
In response, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, said May needed to “get a grip” and lead a stronger response to what is now a “national threat.”
On Sunday, Labour Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the Grenfell victims were the result of politics.
“Is democracy working? It didn’t work if you were a family living on the 20th floor of Grenfell Tower,” McDonnell said.
“Those families, those individuals — 79 so far and there will be more — were murdered by political decisions that were taken over recent decades.
“The decision not to build homes and to view housing as only for financial speculation rather than for meeting a basic human need made by politicians over decades murdered those families.
“The decision to close fire stations and to cut 10,000 firefighters and then to freeze their pay for over a decade contributed to those deaths inevitably and they were political decisions.”
Police are considering filing manslaughter charges in the Grenfell disaster and they were conducting a wide-ranging investigation that will look at everything that contributed to it.
— With files from Postmedia News