Grenfell Tower

[RhythmAndStealth]

Watching the news just now and I can't believe my eyes. It looks absolutely horrific.

I want to think everyone got out safe, but sadly I just can't.

Some of the news reports are about alleged poor safety standards and dangerous living conditions. If that's true it just beggars belief.

Fire

I'm late to this so it will all have been said, but. This is Tory policy realised in blood. Over 70 Tory MPs voted against obliging landlords to make their properties for for human habitation. It's done more obviously than their slow persecution of the disabled but it's all cut from the same cloth. And to accuse Labour of politicising it?! Fuck me. The Tories would rather poor children burned to death than their cronies spent money. If you don't politicise that, or can only be because you agree with the policy.

This after looking at it for a while indicated something is horribly wrong with the very quick spread of the fire and the huge amount of very dark dense hydrocarbon smoke. You could be forgiven for thinking that the whole block stored petrol or similar on every floor, that central stairwell was acting like a blast furnace chimney as a lot of the fire came from inside and yes some from outside too.

As to who supplied and who installed the cladding, was it the right stuff another matter. Most all building materials in the UK have a board of Agrement approval and I expect that cladding was subject to that. Unless someone supplied some stuff of the back of a boat from another country in its place?.

Still I'm sure the truth will come out. In the meantime lots of thoughts for the poor sods who could not get out and faced the agonizing decision to throw their children to hopeful safety like the man who caught the baby thrown from some 100 feet high! amazing the poor child survived.

Fire has flared up again.

I watched a programme about 1666 last week
So when I first heard about wooden battens all the way up, I thought it was fake news!!

And some saying it was for cosmetic reasons? Bloody hell.
If only our rage could have helped this time
But maybe it can prevent this happening again....

I'm late to this so it will all have been said, but. This is Tory policy realised in blood. Over 70 Tory MPs voted against obliging landlords to make their properties for for human habitation. It's done more obviously than their slow persecution of the disabled but it's all cut from the same cloth. And to accuse Labour of politicising it?! Fuck me. The Tories would rather poor children burned to death than their cronies spent money. If you don't politicise that, or can only be because you agree with the policy.

Hear, hear.

Well said Alcon.

Newsnight presenter says there is no difference between building regs for rich and poor.

Difference is when the rich complain about bad work they get listened to.

New thread as this one is filling up

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2955007-Grenfell-Tower-tragedy-continued?watched=1

To prevent something like this happening again there has to be proper regulation of social housing.

And there needs to be a BIG shift in thinking over the way tenants are viewed.

I don't think they're wooden, are they?

I thought the possibilities were:

1. It has nothing to do with the cladding.
2. All cladding has this design flaw, and the law needs to be changed.
3. Some legal cladding fillings are highly flammable, and should be banned.
4. Some cladding fillings are already illegal on high rises and were used.
5. The cladding filling is legal but has been installed incorrectly i.e. no blocks in the air space between the cladding, filling and wall, allowing fire spread to behind the cladding.

I just read elsewhere so thought I'd copy it over to here. The regs for insulation cladding only refer to the flammability of the surfaces not the internal material.

So it's very possible that everything did meet existing regs, they just weren't good enough :(

There is nothing respectful about acting as though inequality isn't killing people in the UK in a multitude of ways, it's merely self-serving denial

This ^^

Can we talk about the elephant in the room? The fact that these people died because they were poor/living in council housing? And, no, I don't mean to be disrespectful. I don't mean to politicise the issue - this already IS a political issue!

It really is.

Have posted on another thread - 11 years the cross party fire prevention group have been demanding that building regs are reviewed.

In the early 1990s there was a "damning review presented to the home office" about fire risks in high rises.

This is a failing across decades & across Tories, Labour & Lib Dem govts.

Shame on them all.

Stable, that's what I've been thinking, meaning that there are huge numbers of cladded buildings that have this same risk, including schools, hospitals etc.

I know it's just me. But it's very early days to be apportioning blame, vilifying X Y and Z.

That may be warranted in the future, but will be the result of an inquiry I think not speculation from a dilletante audience.

We know nothing about this. Well little, unless you were a tenant and were there really.

I don't think people on the internet apportioning blame with no evidence is a good thing. Forget about media and all that for a while. They speculate to accumulate.

As long as the injured, homeless and unfortunately deceased are looked after it will be alright for now. We can only deal with these tragedies in sequence.

There have been many other tragedies in London too recently. Sorry to say, many have moved on from that now. But that is the reality. Borough Market was reopened today.

The view du jour is to blame corner cutting and so on that led to so many deaths and injuries. That may prove to be true, but I am not going to be the one to say that it is.

Aren't the points being raised in part drawn from the previous high rise inquiry, which was ignored?

Agreed Sylvia.

It was an inquest rather than an inquiry, as the loss of life there was not sufficient for an inquiry. Tragically, it looks like the loss of life today will be much higher.

Fire safety groups have been pushing for a review of regulations in this area to no avail.

Excellent posts from ZaphodBeeblerox.

My 6 year old asked me why so many of the people in flats are black and brown

It's very depressing

For those who are saying it is nothing to do with politics this article sums it up for me.

I am not living in the UK at present but I hope there is a huge uproar over this. And I hope things change.

And how on earth will they get the bodies out when it keeps fucking burning

@stopfuckingshoutingatme

???

Either your child is super multicultural observant, or is not. At six years of age too. That's great.

Which is it?

He is a London boy and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice that

Victorian terrace = white
Hugh rise council housing = less white

Anyway it's not the point right now and I truly don't want to argue on such a tragic day please

But he did say it / he surprises me sometimes