Seventeen people have been confirmed dead following the Grenfell Tower fire, with the toll expected to continue to rise when firefighters can conduct a more thorough search of the building.
Police confirmed further fatalities on Thursday. More than 24 hours after the devastating blaze swept through the west London tower block, the London fire commissioner also said the building is “not structurally safe” for firefighters to conduct a full search, meaning a complete assessment of the number of dead could still be some distance away.
In a briefing on Thursday morning, Met commander Stuart Cundy said the search operation could take weeks. And, after reports on Wednesday that residents had raised multiple concerns about the building’s fire safety standards, he said it was too early to say whether the refurbishment project on the tower had anything to do with the fire.
After firefighters spent the night going from floor to floor in the 24-storey building, with little hope of finding survivors, Dany Cotton said the building would have to be shored up before they could move away from the centre.
“On the upper floors there are still some very small pockets of fire remaining,” she told BBC News. “Due to the nature of the building at the moment we are not sending firefighters in there, because it is not structurally safe for them to go right out to the edges of the building now.”
Of 78 people who were taken to six hospitals, 37 were still being treated – 17 of them in critical care, NHS England said.
An update from the London fire brigade said a ruptured gas main had hampered efforts to quell the fire. They said that about 60 firefighters and eight fire engines would be at the scene on Thursday.
As the Lancaster West estate woke up in the shadow of the smouldering tower, Theresa May was onsite to meet Cotton and other firefighters. She apparently left the area without meeting residents. Jeremy Corbyn was expected to visit along with local MPs later on Thursday morning. The Queen also issued a statement offering her “thoughts and prayers” to the families who had lost loved ones.
But there was also growing anger at the circumstances that led to the fire, with Tottenham MP David Lammy branding what had happened “corporate manslaughter”.
“This is the richest borough in our country treating its citizens in this way and we should call it what it is,” he said. “It is corporate manslaughter. That’s what it is. And there should be arrests made, frankly. It is an outrage.”
Lammy said that a close friend of his family, Khadija Saye, and her mother Mary were missing in Grenfell Tower. Saye, a 24-year-old artist, worked for Lammy’s wife, who is also an artist. Lammy called her “a beautiful young woman with an amazing career ahead of her”. He had heard nothing from her, he said. “Obviously as the seconds pass we grow more sad and bleak at every second,” he said.
The political fallout continued, with Labour calling on the government to answer “some very serious questions” about why it failed to act on coroners’ concerns about two previous tower block fires before the Grenfell blaze.
John Healey, the shadow housing minister, demanded that a government minister come to the Commons for a special statement session on Thursday. “Overnight we have asked the government: get a minister into parliament today, let parliament recognise how serious this tragedy is,” Healey told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
“It is the sort of thing that allows us to pay respect to the victims, but importantly it helps provide some of the answers that people are asking about what went off, what’s being done and most importantly what’s not being done to learn the lessons and act after the last tragedies that we saw now nearly eight years ago.”
Healey accused ministers of rejecting or ignoring key recommendations of coroners’ reports into tower block fires in south London and Southampton. In 2009, a fire in Lakanal House in Camberwell killed six people and injured at least 20. In 2010, a fire at Shirley Towers apartment block in Southampton killed two firefighters.
Healey said there should be an immediate fire safety review of tower blocks.
Many local residents spent the night in makeshift shelters near the site of the fire, with some still awaiting news of those missing.
Hundreds of people have called a specially established casualty bureau to report those still missing after the blaze. A wall of condolence has been put up nearby with photographs and dozens of messages left for loved ones.
People living on the Lancaster West estate had to navigate a warren of police cordons and television crews as they made their way to work, while street sweepers cleared away discarded water bottles and food containers from the thousands of donations, interspersed with chunks of black ash from the tower, which was still smouldering on Thursday morning.
Cundy said a full search of the building was taking place. He added: “The thoughts of all of us from the emergency services … and from all of London, our thoughts will be with those so affected by a fire on a scale that is unprecedented.”
Structural surveyors and urban search and rescue teams will be deployed on Thursday to assess the building’s integrity and secure it for a more detailed search. “There are still a number of floors that will require a thorough search for us to make sure there are no further people involved in this fire,” Cotton said. “However, we do anticipate that on some upper floors there may still be people involved in there.”
With nine firefighters sustaining minor injuries, Cotton said she was concerned about the effect of the fire on their mental health. “People saw and heard things on a scale they have never seen before,” she said. “Going forward, one of my main concerns about my firefighters is about their mental wellbeing, and about doing trauma and care counselling for them.”
Originally published on The Guardian
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