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Grenfell Tower Fire Aftermath: 14-16 June 2017
Topic Started: Jun 15 2017, 11:13 AM (94 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) Local residents were disappointed that the prime minister did not speak to them after her visit to the St Clements’ church, and her swift departure led to shouts of “shame on you” and “coward” from a large crowd of people who had waited outside the church to hear her say something.

Simon McDonald, who works doing youth training with an organisation called Inspired Possibilities, and who grew up in the area, had come to volunteer his services, was disappointed that the Prime Minister didn’t stop and talk to affected families outside the building. “We were looking for her to say that she is here with the community. She just needed to say a few words of comfort.”

Paul Dhillon, who works near the block and who was here on the night the fire happened, was cynical about her decision to visit. “She’s just doing damage limitation, because she screwed up her polls.”

Layla, who lives in the block beneath the tower, and who waited in vain to see Theresa May, said she didn’t think that there was anything the prime minister could have said to locals that would have made them feel better. “What could she have said? We’ve got so much pain and hurt. We saw it and we live on it.”
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(Sky News) Protesters outside Kensington town hall demand answers from the council over the deadly Grenfell Tower blaze
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(The Guardian) Victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster will be asked how the public inquiry into the fire should be carried out, Theresa May has announced.

Survivors and the families of those who died in the devastating blaze will also be given state funding for legal representation at the probe, the prime minister told residents during a visit to a nearby church.

The package of measures to help the families affected by the Grenfell Tower fire, will include £5m of cash handouts to be distributed to residents, after the government faced growing criticism over its botched response to the disaster.

(Guardian correspondents) Heather Stewart and Jessica Elgot have more on that here...
-Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/16/grenfell-tower-fire-may-offers-handouts-amid-criticism-of-response
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(The Guardian) Carolyne Hill, 39, from Brixton, said she came to the Kensington demo to “make a stand for my fellow Londoners.”

She said: “I believe that the council is supposed to protect its people. This council committed basic gross negligence in providing basic human rights in their fire safety - people died in their homes.

“The council is following legislation made by the government, the government has made cuts in every single borough. This is the result of our government, our councils not caring about their people. They’ve put profit over people now for far too long. This is the result.”
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--"This is the result of our government and councils not caring about the people." Carolyne Hill from Brixton on the #GrefellTowerFire (Damien Gayle, The Guardian - 16 June 2017)
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(The Guardian) (Guardian correspondent) Damien Gayle is reporting that protestors have now left the hall and are marching back to the tower to join the other protest there.

--Protesters now heading back to the #GrenfellTower (Damien Gayle, The Guardian - 16 June 2017)
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(The Guardian) Weyman Bennett, one of the organizers called for May to go. He warned it was going to be “a long hot summer” and the working class would come together to oust her.

The crowd of about 500 people are now marching from the department of communities on Marsham Street to Downing Street. Promising the anger would swell the crowds on the protest he told marchers: “By the time we get to Downing Street, we will know if we are then going to join the others in Kensington town hall or if they will come to Downing Street.”
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(The Guardian) Back at St Clement’s Church, May was also the subject of people’s anger.
A woman, wiping away tears after May’s visit said: “Everyone has lost everything and no one is doing nothing. This is our town.”

Another man, who did not give his name, said: “What did she bring, what useful things did she bring? The tower block is more strong and stable than that woman’s government.”
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(Sky News) Sky News has spoken to Damian Magee - one of the firefighters who responded to the Grenfell Tower blaze. He told David Bowden: "I've never, ever seen anything like this. Everybody was in shock. It was like something out of a movie.

"There was screaming. Children screaming for help. It was difficult to get into the block because it was disintegrating high up. There was debris falling all around. High bits of metal and concrete. Eventually we found a way in. The whole area was full of smoke. It was like a war zone.

"There were also difficulties getting people out of the building because of the falling debris."
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(The Guardian) At the Downing Street protest, Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigade Union said fire standards had deteriorated because of years of cuts. “I heard people saying we need to learn the lessons from Grenfell Tower. These are not new lessons. We learned these lessons 40 years ago and we have to ask why these lessons were not learned,”
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