Fire-risk focus widens as London towers evacuated
Calls for hospitals, schools and universities to be checked.
Hospital buildings in Britain are being subjected to urgent fire-safety tests over fears some may be covered in flammable cladding.
Meanwhile, residents in five tower blocks in Camden, north London, were yesterday told to immediately evacuate their homes to allow “urgent fire-safety works” to take place.
Camden Council said 800 households were to be moved into temporary accommodation because the blocks were covered in similar cladding to the material used in the Grenfell Tower fire which claimed at least 79 lives this month.
Downing Street said yesterday that as well as hospitals, schools, universities, offices and all other public buildings needed to be checked for panels that may be a fire risk.
A total of 14 high-rise buildings with cladding in nine council areas have now failed fire-safety tests. Evacuations will be ordered of any that are declared unsafe by fire brigade inspectors.
The buildings in Camden’s Chalcots estate were being emptied after firefighters said they “could not guarantee our residents’ safety”, local council leader Georgia Gould said.
She told Sky News that a rest centre had been set up and residents were being found hotels and other accommodation.
It is the first council to evacuate a building in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy on June 14.
Gould said experts had been inspecting the buildings since the Grenfell Tower fire and they found “that the cladding was not up to the standard, it was not fire retardant”.
“Grenfell changes everything. I don’t believe we can take any risks with our residents’ safety,” she said.
Scotland Yard said it was considering manslaughter charges after disclosing that the cladding and insulation on the outside of the fatal London tower failed fire safety tests.
It also emerged that the Grenfell Tower blaze was started when a Hotpoint branded fridge-freezer caught fire. Owners of the same model, of which 64,000 were sold, have been told to contact the company as the Government ordered tests to be carried out on similar models.
Tests on cladding samples from 600 tower blocks in England are being carried out on the orders of the Department for Communities and Local Government.
This week, Simon Corben, in charge of estates and facilities for the NHS, wrote to all NHS trusts ordering them to “urgently” check buildings. The letter, published by the Health Service Journal, told staff to find out what type of cladding had been used, whether the buildings are used for in-patients, which contractor carried out the work and whether a risk assessment had been carried out in the last year.
Corben wrote: “We do need to take all reasonable precautionary measures and be ready to rapidly implement any recommendations that come from the findings of the ongoing investigations.”
Meanwhile, police said the search for bodies in Grenfell Tower could take until the end of the year, such is the difficulty involved in finding human remains among the ashes.
Investigators said it is possible that some may never be recovered.
Grenfell changes everything. I don’t believe we can take any risks with our residents’ safety. Georgia Gould