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Grenfell Tower Fire Aftermath: 14-16 June 2017
Topic Started: Jun 15 2017, 11:13 AM (96 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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(Sky News) The Government's £5m package includes:

:: A commitment that victims who lost their homes in the disaster must be rehoused at the earliest possible opportunity and the Government should aim to do this within three weeks at the latest.

:: A guarantee to rehouse people as close as practically possible to where they previously lived - meaning they can continue to access the same public services such as their local school or local GP. This rehousing would be in the same borough and, if not, a neighbouring borough.

:: Until people are rehoused, the cost of temporary accommodation will be met on their behalf.

:: The Government will also provide any necessary financial assistance to families who have been rehoused so children and their parents do not incur any extra costs in travelling to their local school.
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(The Guardian) Theresa May has announced a package of measures to help the families affected by the Grenfell Tower fire, including £5m of cash handouts to be distributed to residents, after the government faced growing criticism over its botched response to the disaster.

After being widely criticised for failing to meet victims face to face, the prime minister paid two visits to the scene of the deadly blaze on Friday.

She met victims at a nearby hospital, before returning to Downing Street to chair a two hour crisis-meeting of cabinet ministers, including home secretary Amber Rudd and communities secretary Sajid Javid, to agree what action should be taken.

May then returned to the area, where families affected by the blaze were gathered in a local church to speak to her. She told them the government would make £5m available, to be distributed by the local council, for affected families to pay for anything they need - including funeral costs.

The government is pledging that all residents displaced by the fire will be rehoused locally within three weeks, close enough so that children can attend the same school. And, when the public inquiry into the tragedy gets underway, May said local people would be consulted and would also be given access to free legal representation, so that their concerns can be aired.

Downing Street sources said the prime minister had been prompted to act after hearing traumatic stories from residents who fled the scene in the early hours of the morning, “with nothing apart from the clothes they stood up in”.

The two-hour Cabinet committee meeting marked an escalation after the government had initially relied on junior ministers to tackle the consequences of the fire, categorising it as a “civil contingency”.
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(Sky News) The Government says it will check "at speed" with local authorities whether all high-rise buildings in their area have complied with recent fire orders, where work has been deemed required following an inspection.

It will identify all high-rise buildings owned or managed by housing associations or local authorities and conduct a fire safety review of all buildings similar to Grenfell Tower. The Government will also work with the devolved administrations on the issue.
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(The Guardian) At St Clement’s Church, the prime minister was greeted as she left the building and got in her car by shouts of “shame on you” and “coward, coward”. She did not speak to anyone as she left. One local said: “The tower block is more strong and stable than that woman.” There was a brief scuffle between one protester and some of the more than 30 police lined up outside the building.
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(Sky News) Theresa May leaves with a police escort after meeting victims at a church near to Grenfell Tower.
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(Sky News) The Prime Minister faced cries of "coward" and "shame on you" as she returned to Kensington to meet victims. She has been criticised for not going to talk to victims earlier.
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(The Guardian) Hundreds are still gathered in the street outside Kensington and Chelsea town hall, after police managed to regain control of the lobby which had been invaded earlier by furious demonstrators. “What do we want? Justice!” protesters are chanting. “When do we want it? Now!”

Speeches continue in the square outside the building’s main entrance, as a police helicopter buzzes overhead. Many here have said they were personally affected by the fire and are now seeking answers from officials who they say did too little to prevent it, and are still doing too little to deal with its aftermath.

Earlier, hundreds pushed their way into the lobby, hammering on the glass doors and getting halfway up a staircase until their path was blocked by police.

It is thought that a demonstration that was intended to take place outside the Department for Communities and Local Government in Whitehall will now be redirected to Kensington. Some around the area are covering their faces, but others are calling for the demonstration to remain peaceful. The situation is tense.
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(The Guardian) Rochelle Thomas, from Latimer Road, just a street away from the Grenfell Tower fire, stood near the doors to the council building with a homemade poster listing the names of council officials she and others are holding responsible for the tragedy.

Tensions are running high because we have had no answers yet,” she said. “This is the third day, we don’t know where the survivors are, there are hundreds of thousands of donations and we don’t know where to take them because we don’t know where the survivors are. The councils are telling us nothing and we don’t know if the council even care; they’ve done nothing so far.

She called on the council to help the traumatised residents affected by the fire.

We need them to rehabilitate everyone whose lost their homes, and we need to know what steps the council’s going to take for the mental health of the thousands who are affected: the people who were in the building, the people who lost their friends and the people who witnessed children being thrown from the windows.

There are people who still can’t sleep because they are having nightmares about this.
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--"These are the people responsible." Rochelle Thomas holds up a list of council officials named at the #grenfelltower fire demo (Damien Gayle, The Guardian - 16 June 2017)
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(The Guardian) Mustapha Mansour, who organised the protest at Kensington and Chelsea town hall, is from the Radical Housing Network, which is a London-wide alliance of grassroots housing campaigns of which Grenfell Action Group are a member.

The BBC has reported that Mansour is also a family friend of someone who is missing.

A statement on the network’s Facebook said: “Protest at Kensington Town Hall to demand that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea are held accountable for the deaths and horrific harm of Grenfell, that residents and housing movements’ demands are met, and that this atrocity can never happen again.”

The group have organised a further protest on Saturday, which hundreds have signed up to on Facebook. A further 1000 have expressed interest.

Using the event page, organisers called for people to come and show their support for tonight’s protest as well, which could mean many more join the already heated protest. The group is also posting legal advise and phone numbers for anyone attending who gets arrested.
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(Sky News) Confrontations between protesters and security at Kensington town hall
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--"THERESA MAY..."
"MUST GO"
The current chant at Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall #GrenfellTower (Paul McNamara, Channel 4 - 16 June 2017)
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(The Guardian) Chris Milson, a lawyer at Cloisters Chambers, went to the area of Grenfell Tower to volunteer today, and has been left frustrated at the lack of organisation and oversight being provided.

“There are a lot of people, with a lot of goodwill but it’s very fragmented - where the oversight need to be it just isn’t. There are so many donations, so many volunteers but not much in the way of co-ordination, which is where the council should be stepping in.”

He added: “I haven’t seen this much aid out of a war zone, but the council just hasn’t stepped in. There is too much in the way of donations. But the problem is how to get it to the right people, and what you do with the surplus. One man, I’m sure with the bestof intention, left a massive box full of milk - and now volunteers have to figure out what to do with a box of gone-off milk.”

He said he’d been told that the council was due to meet with community centres who have been attempting to help. “There is so much goodwill, but people are having to step in where the state should be. This is one of the richest borough’s in the country, but they are letting volunteer groups step in and fill the void.”

Volunteers continue to steam to the area, but there appears to be no one stationed at tube stations directing donations and volunteers to where they may be needed. “People who want to help are wandering around like nomads, there’s just this huge vacuum where leadership should be.”

He said he had a sense that anger was growing, not just among residents but volunteers and the general public. “There is a palpable sense of anger, not just from residents but in general about the society we live in. It’s kicked London in the teeth because it has brought home just how unequal the city is.”
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(The Guardian) Around 100 protestors held a minute’s silence for the victims of Grenfell outside government offices saying the victims of recent terror attacks were treated with more respect that those in the inferno.

“There has been no minute’s silence for the victims of Grenfell. We want to remind politicians that people killed by politicians are equally as valuable as those killed by terrrorists,” said one speaker before the crowd fell silent for one minute.
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(Sky News) Theresa May leaves a church after meeting people caught up in the blaze. She said in a statement: "The individual stories I heard this morning at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital were horrific. I spoke with people who ran from the fire in only the clothes they were wearing.

"They have been left with nothing, no bank cards, no money, no means of caring for their children or relatives. One woman told me she had escaped in only her top and underwear.

"The package of support I'm announcing today is to give the victims the immediate support they need to care for themselves and for loved ones. We will continue to look at what more needs to be done.

"Everyone affected by this tragedy needs reassurance that the Government is there for them at this terrible time - and that is what I am determined to provide."
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