Report of flaws at burned London tower incites anger
LONDON — Grief turned to outrage Friday over a deadly high-rise tower fire in London amid reports that materials used in the building’s renovation could have fueled the inferno that left dozens dead and missing as it gutted the public housing block.
Engineering experts say outside insulation panels installed on the 24-story Grenfell Tower may have helped the fire spread rapidly from one floor to the next. The Guardian newspaper reported Friday that contractors installed a cheaper, less flame-resistant type of paneling in the renovation that ended in May 2016.
Tensions were high Friday two days after the overnight fire gutted the housing block, killing at least 30 people and leaving dozens missing and hundreds homeless.
Scuffles broke out near the Kensington and Chelsea town hall offices as demonstrators chanting “We want justice!” surged toward the doors.
London has a chronic housing shortage even in the best of times, and those left homeless by the fire — already angry over what they see as government inequity and incompetence — fear being forced out of the British capital.
The Grenfell Tower housed about 600 people in 120 apartments. Britain’s Press Association reported that some 70 people are still missing after the fire.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said people were frustrated by the lack of information about the missing and the dead as well as a lack of coordination between support services. Residents who survived the tower blaze lost everything and have no idea where they are going to live or how they will get back on their feet.
“The scale of this tragedy is clearly proving too much for the local authority to cope with on their own,” Khan said in an open letter to Prime Minister Theresa May.
After meeting with Grenfell survivors on Friday, May announced a $6.4 million fund to help them and expressed sorrow for their plight. The package includes a guarantee to rehouse people as close as possible to where they previously lived — a poor neighborhood surrounded by extreme wealth.
“(This aims) to give the victims the immediate support they need to care for themselves and for loved ones,” May said.
But the Conservative leader still struggled to overcome accusations that she lacked compassion because she had failed to meet with victims on her first visit to the devastated site. Police surrounded May as she left a church Friday following the meeting with survivors and protesters shouted “Shame on you!” and “Coward!”
Using drones and sniffer dogs, firefighters continued to search the burned-out housing block that looms over the low-income community in west London.
The fire, which started just before 1 a.m. Wednesday, surprised many as they slept and the speed with which it spread shocked fire experts.
Metropolitan Police commander Stuart Cundy responded to fears that the number of dead could exceed 100 by saying: “I really hope it isn’t.”
London Police have launched an investigation to determine whether any crimes contributed to the blaze. May on Thursday announced a public inquiry while Khan called for an interim report on the fire to be published this summer.
Grenfell Tower is a public housing project owned by the local government council and managed by a nonprofit known as the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organization.
Forensic experts said the fire at Grenfell was so hot that it is going to make it difficult to identify those who lost their lives.
“When you have a fire that takes hold like that, that is literally an inferno. You get a lot of fragmentation of bodies, charring of bones,” said Peter Vanezis, a professor of forensic medical sciences at Queen Mary University in London. “Sometimes all that’s left is ash.”