LONDON EMERGENCY:
At least 6 are dead and 74 others injured in the Grenfell Tower fire.
At least 6 fatalities confirmed; at least 74 people taken to hospitals
A deadly night-time fire raced through a 24-story apartment tower in London early Wednesday, killing at least six people and injuring dozens more. Some desperate residents threw their children from high windows, hoping someone on the ground would catch them.
Police commander Stuart Cundy said there were six confirmed fatalities, adding that the figure was likely to rise "during what will be a complex recovery operation over a number of days."
People in the apartments cornered by the quickly advancing flames and thick smoke banged on windows and screamed for help to those watching down below, witnesses and survivors said.
Flames from the inferno lit up the night and smoke spewed from the windows of the Grenfell Tower in North Kensington where more than 200 firefighters battled the blaze and went into the building with breathing apparatus. A plume of black smoke stretched for kilometers across the pale sky after dawn, revealing the blackened, flame-licked wreckage of the building.
"This is an unprecedented incident," Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton told reporters on the scene. "In my 29 years of being a firefighter I have never, ever seen anything of this scale."
The London Fire Brigade received the first reports of the fire at 12:54 a.m. and the first engines arrived within six minutes, she said. Flames could still be seen more than 10 hours later.
There was no immediate word on the cause, but angry residents said they had repeatedly warned about a potential fire threat. One resident said the fire alarm did not go off.
Samira Lamrani, a witness, said a woman dropped a baby from a window on the ninth or 10th floor to people on the sidewalk.
"People were starting to appear at the windows, frantically banging and screaming," Lamrani said, and the woman gestured that she wanted to drop a baby. "Somebody did, a gentleman ran forward and managed to grab the baby," Lamrani told Britain's Press Association news agency.
People at the scene spoke of being unable to reach friends and family inside. Others said they could see people inside using flashlights and mobile phones to try to signal for help from higher floors.
The disaster occurred 10 days after a terror attack at London's Borough Market, and some locals said they initially feared the fire was also terror-related, though authorities discounted that possibility.
"The flames, I have never seen anything like it, it just reminded me of 9/11," said Muna Ali, 45. "The fire started on the upper floors ... oh my goodness, it spread so quickly, it had completely spread within half an hour."
Other witnesses described a white, polystyrene-type material falling like snow from the building as it burned. Some locals feared the charred tower block might collapse but a structural engineer said the building was not in danger, London Fire Brigade said.
Edward Daffarn, a 55-year-old who lived on the building's 16th floor, said the fire alarm didn't ring. "I'm lucky to be alive. A neighbor's smoke alarm went off and another neighbor phoned and told me to get out," he said.
Daffarn said residents had complained for years to London City Council about building safety, to no avail. "I consider this mass murder," he said of the blaze.