12 die in London tower block fire
78 injured in inferno as firefighters battle to control blaze
FIRE engulfed a 24-storey housing block in London early yesterday, killing 12 people and injuring 78 others in an inferno that trapped residents as they slept. Flames raced through the high-rise Grenfell Tower block of flats in the Kensington area after taking hold about 1am.
Witnesses reported some residents screaming for help from the windows on upper floors, and others trying to throw children to safety.
More than 200 firefighters, backed by 40 fire engines, fought for hours to try and bring the blaze, one of the biggest seen in central London in memory, under control.
By noon, London police said six people had been killed.
They cautioned that the death toll was likely to rise and that there could be people in the building who were unaccounted for. Firefighting crews still had to reach the top four floors of the building, where several hundred people lived in 130 flats.
The cause of the fire, which left the tower block a charred, smoking shell, was not immediately known.
The block had recently undergone millions in the refurbishment of its exterior.
Residents rushed to escape through smoke-filled corridors after being woken up by the smell of smoke.
The fire engulfed all floors from the second to the top of the 24-storey block. Reports said some residents leapt out of windows to escape the flames. One woman lost two of her six children as she tried to escape.
“I spoke to a lady who lives on the 21st floor. She has six kids. She left with all six of them.
“When she got downstairs there were only four of them with her. She is now breaking her heart,” said Michael Paramasivan, a resident.
Other witnesses spoke of children, including a baby, being thrown to safety, from high up.
One witness, said: “There’s people throwing their kids out, saying: ‘Just save my children, just save my children!’”
London Fire Brigade Commissioner Dany Cotton said: “In my 29 years of being a firefighter, I have never ever seen anything of this scale.”
London mayor Sadiq Khan said the fire raised questions over the safety of high-rise blocks.
More than 12 hours after the fire broke out, the building was still smouldering, although not in danger of collapse.
Firefighters rescued large numbers of people from the 43-year-old block, a low rent housing estate that overlooks up-scale parts of the Kensington area.