HIGH RISE HORROR
Death toll as huge blaze rips through tower block
AT LEAST six people have died after a huge fire destroyed a tower block in west London that was home to some 600 people.
Witnesses said residents were trapped on upper floors in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower as children screamed for help and parents held babies out of windows.
Met Police confirmed six people had died, but said they expected that number to rise.
London Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton said this was an “unprecedented incident.”
She told reporters: “In my 29 years of being a firefighter, I have never ever seen anything of this scale.”
She said firefighters had only managed to get to the 19th and 20th storeys of the building.
Residents who escaped the inferno, which broke out around 1am today, complained there had been no fire alarm in the north Kensington building, with people relying on neighbours to wake them.
They said official advice in the event of a fire had been to stay inside.
Mickey Paramasivan, who was in his seventh floor flat with his partner and child, said: “If we’d listened to them and stayed in the flat we’d have perished.”
London Fire Brigade said the cause of the fire was still being investigated.
But several residents reported one man had said it started in his faulty fridge.
Samira Lamrani, 38, said: “He was just beside himself.
“I could hear him saying that he contacted the emergency services immediately and they reassured him everything would be under control within a short period of time, and obviously it wasn’t.”
Residents said refurbishment work had recently been carried out, with cladding on the outside of the structure and work on the gas supply.
A residents action group said its warnings about safety had
fallen on “deaf ears”.
The Grenfell Action Group said in November 2016 “only a catastrophic event” would expose the concerns residents had.
The group said Grenfell Tower had issues with evacuation procedures.
Leader of Kensington and Chelsea Borough Nick Paget-Brown said “several hundred” people would have been in the block.
London Ambulance Service said more than 50 patients were taken to five hospitals. More than 200 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze.
Ann Waters lives in a house at the foot of the tower and was forced to flee her home when burning debris began raining down.
The 57-year-old said: “It was the screaming that was the worst and I could hear that from the ground. All I could hear was ‘help, help, help’.
“It was like something out of a nightmare.”