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Grenfell Tower Fire Aftermath: 14-16 June 2017
Topic Started: Jun 15 2017, 11:13 AM (97 Views)
Webster
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note: main Grenfell Tower thread can be found here....

(The Guardian) Summary - 7:15am
(1) At least 17 people have died in Wednesday’s fire at Grenfell Tower. Police have said the death toll is likely to rise.
Sniffer dogs are being sent into the burnt-out tower to search for bodies, while structural engineers work to make the building safe for firefighters to search. The search operation could take weeks, according to the Met commander Stuart Cundy.
(2) A ruptured gas main hampered efforts to quell the fire overnight. It was finally brought under control at 1.14am on Thursday.
(3) Theresa May visited the scene where she met members of the emergency services. She was criticised for failing to meet residents during the visit. Jeremy Corbyn also visited the scene.
(4) Nine firefighters were hurt in the rescue and there are concerns for their mental health. The fire commander Dany Cotton said: “I’m more concerned longer term about the mental impact on a lot of people who were here. People saw and heard things on a scale they have never seen before.”

(5) Labour is demanding a special Commons session to question a senior minister about what the government plans to do in the wake of the fire and ask why it failed to act on coroners’ concerns about two previous tower block fires. The Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, said that what happened amounted to “corporate manslaughter”.
(6) There is growing frustration from the families of the missing about the lack of information about their loved ones. The names of at least 24 people have been circulated by friends and family. Police say they cannot give figures on the number of people missing.
(7) A total of 37 people are still being treated in hospital, with 17 in critical care. They are in six hospitals across London.
(8) The Queen has issued a message of condolence and paid tribute to the bravery of firefighters.

(9) A huge relief effort has swung into action, with charity workers and volunteers providing aid for those affected. Residents have voiced their anger at a lack of coordination from the council and other authorities. More than £1m to help displaced residents has been raised via online donations in just over 24 hours.
(10) Experts said the fire spread at unusual speed and raised concerns whether the cladding may have contributed to this. The tower, which was built in 1974, recently underwent a major refurbishment.
(11) It also emerged the cladding used in Grenfell Tower was behind a rapidly spreading blaze at a tower block in Melbourne in 2014. An eighth-floor fire raced up 13 floors to the roof of the 21-storey building in 11 minutes. The spread was “directly associated” with the external cladding, said the fire brigade.
(12) The Grenfell Action Group, a residents’ association, repeatedly warned about the risk of fire and claimed a major blaze was narrowly averted after a power surge in 2013. The group said its concerns were dismissed.
(13) Witnesses described screams of terror and people jumping out of flats in an attempt to reach safety. A baby was caught by a member of the public after being dropped from the ninth or 10th floor, a witness said.
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Webster
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(The Guardian) Peter Vanezis, professor of forensic medical sciences at Barts and the London, who helped identify the final victim of the 1987 King’s Cross fire, said that identifying those who died would be likely to take months.

Investigators will rely on unburnt documentation, tattoos, dental records and DNA to produce a full list of those who died. In major indoor fires, deaths are normally caused by fume inhalation rather than by the flames, he said: If it’s any consolation to the relatives, they’re normally unconscious when the fire takes over. It’s normally substantial inhalation of carbon monoxide. It’s odourless, you get a bit of nausea and a headache and then you pass out.
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(The Guardian) The Press Association reports that the lawyer for the family of Gloria Trevisan, an Italian architecture graduate missing after the Grenfell Tower fire, has told Italian media there is “no hope” of finding her or her partner Marco Gottardi alive: Friends and relatives of the couple have been appealing for information after Trevisan called her mother from the tower block in the early hours of Wednesday morning. “I’ve heard the recording of Gloria talking to her mother and there is no hope of finding them alive,” said the lawyer, Maria Cristina Sandrin, in a filmed interview with Italian press.

Trevisan reportedly called her mother at 3am, saying a fire had broken out in the building and they were waiting for help. “They wanted to go down but said they could see the flames going up the stairs and the smoke was more and more intense,” Loris Trevisan, Gloria’s father, told the local newspaper Il Mattino di Padova.

The line was disconnected shortly afterwards, Mr Trevisan said, and “hundreds” of attempts to get back in touch had come to nothing.

Giannino Gottardi, father of Marco, told Il Mattino his son had called at 3.45am, then again just after 4am. Gottardi Sr said: “In the first call Marco told us not to worry, that everything was under control, that basically we must not worry. He was trying to minimise what happened, probably not to unsettle us. But in the second call, and I can’t get this out of my head, he said there was smoke, that so much smoke was rising.”

Trevisan, who completed her master’s degree in architecture at the University of Venice last October, had travelled to London with Gottardi to find work, according to Sandrin.

The couple recently moved into their apartment on the 23rd floor of Grenfell Tower, which went up in flames on Wednesday morning. Emergency services have so far searched up to the 20th floor, but concerns over the structural integrity of the tower block have forced firefighters to suspend full searches for the time being. “She said goodbye,” said Sandrin of Gloria’s phone call to her parents. “She said: ‘Thank you, Mother, for what you have done for me.’”

She asked journalists to give the family privacy, as “we don’t know in what condition we will find the bodies, [or even] if we will find the bodies. The first thought for the family is to bring them back home,” she added.
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Sky News: Grenfell fire protesters storm Kensington and Chelsea town hall
Quote:
 
Protesters demonstrating over the deadly Grenfell Tower blaze have stormed Kensington and Chelsea town hall.

Dozens of demonstrators holding up placards and appeal posters shouted "we want an inquest" and "we want justice" as they entered the building.

Protesters were called away from the foyer by an organiser, who urged them to remain calm.

More follows...
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(The Guardian) A response from Kensington council’s head of communications to the five demands of the protesters is being read out by a protester named Mustafa.

There’s a lot of anger as he is reading them.

The first was demand was that people be housed in the borough.

In response, the statement says they will be housed “as locally as we can but we may need help from the closest neighbourhoods”.

The second demand by the protesters was that funds be released by the council to help those affected in the short and long term.

The council statement said: We are already releasing funds to look after the immediate effects of all those affected.

The protesters also requested a list of the number of people in Grenfell Tower.

The response was: This is not a matter for the council but for the coroner, police and other emergency services.

The council’s head of communications said he would strive to get them a number of residents by the end of the day, Mustafa, who was reading the council’s responses, said.
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(The Guardian) Emotions are running high at the protest at Kensington and Chelsea town hall. They were demanding that the chief executive or council leader come out to address them but instead were given a written response by the council’s head of communications.

There were many chants of “Not 17”, a reference to the fact that they believe many more than 17 perished.
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(The Guardian) Labour have called on the government to lift the borrowing cap on housing revenue account so councils can pay for all housing to meet safety standards.

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said: The tragic fire that occurred on Grenfell Tower must never be allowed to happen again. The lessons of Camberwell, Shepherds Bush and Southampton have not been learned, and it is the responsibility of government to provide solutions.

The government must now as a matter of urgency lift the housing revenue account borrowing cap to free councils to undertake the urgent retrofitting work required on all existing housing stock found not to meet required safety standards.

Councils must also be given the power, as Labour’s housing manifesto pledges to do, to borrow to invest in council housing on the scale necessary to allow all those living in homes deemed to be unsafe to be properly rehoused.
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--Protest organiser Mustafa Mansour outlines council responses to demands made on behalf of those affected by #GrenfellTower fire (Sky News, 16 June 2017)
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(Sky News) Mounted police officers are at the top of the street on stand-by and police would be aware of the strength of feeling of the community, says Sky's Ashish Joshi at the scene.
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(Sky News) Mounted police are on stand-by nearby following the protest at Kensington town hall
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(Sky News) Sky's Enda Brady says about 20 police officers have gone into the town hall to try to restore order.

People now seen running away from the town hall

Scuffles seen outside the town hall
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(Sky News) Scuffles thought to be as police try to remove staff from the council building. "Tense" scenes, says Sky's Enda Brady
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(The Guardian) Sky are reporting that there has been an arrest at the protest. Their correspondent, Enda Brady, said he was moving away from the scene for his own safety as the atmosphere was growing hostile towards the media.
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--Theresa May sweeps into St Clements Church close to Grenfell House without speaking to public (David Brown, The Times of London - 16 June 2017)
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--"I want her to come out her and face us. What are you doing here on Friday? I lost my home on Tuesday, people lost their lives on Tuesday." (Hannah al-Othman, Buzzfeed UK - 16 June 2017)
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(Sky News) The Prime Minister has met survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire

Theresa May has announced a £5m fund would be made available to pay for emergency supplies, food, clothes and other costs.
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