Tower blaze ‘a matter of time’
London’s mayor is demanding answers after a huge fire engulfed a 24-storey apartment block in the English capital, causing multiple casualties.
The blaze, in the Grenfell Tower in Latimer Rd in the district of White City, west London, broke out in the early hours of Wednesday local time (about 2pm in New Zealand) and last night had been burning for several hours.
The London Fire Brigade confirmed there were ‘‘a number of fatalities’’. It was not clear last night how many people had died.
Massive flames licked up the sides of the block as more than 200 firefighters were called into action. Several hundred people would have been in the block when the fire was reported.
At least 50 people were taken to five hospitals after the fire, a London Ambulance statement said.
‘‘I want to reassure Londoners that we will get all the answers.’’
There were fears people were trapped inside the highrise. Shouts for help could be heard coming from the building.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was devastated to see the ‘‘horrific scenes’’ and said there would be a ‘‘great many questions’’ over the coming days.
‘‘One of the concerns that we have is it’s a 24-storey building but for obvious reasons, with the scale of the fire, our experts weren’t able to reach all the way to the top, so of course these are questions that need to be answered as soon as possible.’’
‘‘I want to reassure Londoners that we will get all the answers.’’
An action group said their warnings fell on ‘‘deaf ears’’ after highlighting safety concerns about the block. It was reported the building was owned by local authorities.
The Grenfell Action Group, a community organisation formed to oppose a nearby redevelopment project, has been warning about the risk of fire there since 2013.
The group said on its blog that it had raised concerns about testing and maintenance of firefighting equipment and blocked emergency access to the site. A blog post from November 2016 said ‘‘only a catastrophic event’’ would expose the issues.
The group said there was one entry and exit to Grenfell Tower during improvement works at the block in Latimer Road and it had issues with evacuation procedures at the building.
‘‘All our warnings fell on deaf ears and we predicted that a catastrophe like this was inevitable and just a matter of time,’’ the group said yesterday.
London Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton said the fire took hold of each floor in the building.
Nick Paget-Brown, of the Kensington and Chelsea council, said he was working to establish how many people were in the tower block at the time of the fire but expected it would be several hundred. Some people were trapped in the fire, with residents desperately shouting for help from windows on upper floors as the fire spread.
Witness Jody Martin, who was among the first on the scene, said he could not see any noticeable fire escapes around the building.
‘‘I watched one person falling out, I watched another woman holding her baby out the window . . . hearing screams, I was yelling [at] everyone to get down and they were saying, ‘We can’t leave our apartments, the smoke is too bad on the corridors’,’’ he said.
Actor and writer Tim Downie, who lived about 600 metres away, said he feared the block would collapse. Police said it was structurally sound but being monitored.
Guardian journalist Alice Ross said she could see a man trapped in the tower.
‘‘People on the ground were yelling at him to try and get his flat number so services could reach him, and the Fire Service was spraying around his window,’’ she said.
Witness Hadil Alamily said she saw ‘‘someone jump on fire from the top floor’’. ‘‘He was screaming help, help, help but noone helped. He dashed a mattress out of the window. He was literally on fire and jumped.’’