Horrific fire in council tower block, west London, UK

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My heart goes out to these social housing tenants whose building went up in flames, and these people have lost everything -- anyone in the London region who can help, these are centres local to the fire, that are taking donations of helpful items. The fire started around 1 in the morning and proceeded into the night, is still burning this morning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40269625

Bring items to:

St Clements Church
95 Sirdar Road
W11 4EQ

The Rugby Portobello Trust
221 Walmer Rd,
W11 4EY

Tabernacle Christian Centre
Jubilee House, 210 Latimer Road,
W10 6QY

The Harrow Club
187 Freston Rd,
W10 6TH


Toiletries -- toothbrushes, soap, etc
Clothing for all ages
Blankets and towels
Non-perishable foods

Or the offer of a place to stay/ spare room temporarily.

It's a horrific thing. Have they any idea what caused it?

It's a damn shame they lost many precious things.

Hopefully, they'll move these people to better accommodations eventually.

Thanks for those links, smudge -- yes, residents had already been complaining about safety concerns in this building, and were ignored.

This building was council housing/social housing, so these residents and this area is a disadvanted community to begin with. There are many problems everywhere concerning social housing and things being kept safe and up-to-standard.

Some tenants have said on-camera that someone on the 4th floor claims it was his refrigerator that "exploded" and started the fire.

This is unconfirmed as of yet.

But even if this were to be the cause of the fire, it's scandalous that the materials used in the building caught fire so rapidly like a wick and the entire building is engulfed, instead of being limited to that one person's apartment or floor.

It's a terrible shame.

Sadly there is already a severe crisis in housing in London, particularly in social housing. The system is severely burdened and although hopefully these tenants will get priority placement, the scary thing is that even individuals in emergency situations (domestic abuse etc) get put into temporary hostel situations indefinitely, as there is not even availability of enough apartments or houses for everyone on the waiting lists. For 120 displaced people this is going to be a worrying time.

Edit -- my mistake: considerably more than just "120 people" as obviously families boost the numbers living there to hundreds now homeless. 120 apartments, housing hundreds of individuals.

When I signed up for social housing, one of the options I ticked was "No tower blocks".

I saw in that article that vacant spaces in that building had been turned into flats. Were these blocking existing escape routes? The residents said there was only one exit, and there had been refurbishments that blocked exits.

Also the cladding -- apparently there had been "plastic cladding" installed on the outside of the building to improve the looks of it, and witnesses say this stuff went up like a wick.

I wouldn't be surprised if that cladding was responsible for how very rapidly the fire raced up and across the whole building.

For all of those expensive "refurbishments," it doesn't seem like they consisted of particularly good decisions.

Very shocking and tragic.

I saw the video on the NYT's web site. Mother God, what did they use for insulation? Futon mattresses? I have never seen a high rise burn like that UNLESS it was arson.

I lived in Detroit, and have seen plenty of s**t burn to the ground, but usually it was started with 10 gallons of gasoline and a M 80 or two.

Smudge, indeed, all that money on stuff that apparently didn't make the place any safer but considerably less safe!

Tawaki -- I know, it's crazy! That building burned like it was entirely doused in gasoline from head to toe! Seriously I don't think I've ever seen or heard of such a massive fire from supposedly just one person's apartment. Even the London fire chief who spoke on TV said she had never experienced anything like this.

Ezra, yes, very shocking and sad.

AspieUtah, yes indeed she makes the token visit while the sad thing is, these people need so much more very real help in their lives which the system is failing them in, including unsafe housing.

No sprinklers in the building.WTF??I would think it would be mandatory in a high rise.
Just sickening.

What caused it, are incompetant landlords not wanting to own up to safety concerns over tenancy blocks of housing or towers. People got cremated in there through a system of political moral injustice through the housing council association such as the Chelsea and North Kensington Borough Council. Cameron is such an arse.

Misslizard and Empathy, I totally agree. It's shocking that there was no legal requirement for a sprinkler system to be part of the refurbishments, and yes, in a far more deeper reaching way it's the entire poorly handled system these tenants were in anyway, on a socio-political level, that led to their being in the position for this to happen.

Many people believe that there is an unspoken agenda of what amounts to a form of "social cleansing" in London; it has been something going on in my own borough for years, regarding a similar tower block whose tenants have had to fight for their homes.

There is a severe housing crisis in London; wealthy and greedy developers want to get their hand on prime real estate -- and it's all prime real estate -- in order to demolish places occupied by the working class, and redevelop with unaffordable luxury housing; councils are eager for the money those guys would pay to buy it off, tenants are basically "in the way" . . .there is a kind of domino effect behind the scenes of all this that tends to result in disadvantaged people and their housing being given as short shrift as the powers that be can get away with even when seen to be "improving" something.

Here's an interesting article: http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/analysis-what-the-grenfell-tower-fire-tells-us-about-london%e2%80%99s-housing-crisis/ar-BBCH3QL?li=BBoPU0R&ocid=iehp

It would make sense BirdInFlight, this government is evil.

I don't think we should let them run anymore, surely we as residents of the UK shouldn't be letting this government literally get away with murder (from purposely cutting back on everything).

Maybe the people of Britain complaining are all as bad as they are. Nobody is doing anything. Maybe it's time for action.