Grenfell Tower fire- thread three

[RhythmAndStealth]

Seventeen tragic deaths confirmed so far, six victims provisionally identified.
Number of those who perished feared to rise into triple figures as search proceeds
Search for remaining victims expected to take weeks, sadly it’s considered unlikely that it will be possible to identify all the victims
Names of those still missing start to emerge
Nearly 80 victims being treated across six hospitals, with 15 still in critical care
Hundreds of people displaced and dispossessed, concerned about when and where they will be rehoused

Public inquiry ordered.
Criminal investigation launched.
Serious questions being asked about fire safety regulations, management of social housing, austerity and inequality.
Fire Brigade search of building expected to take weeks due to complexity of building, extent of fire damage and the necessity of undertaking a painstaking fingertip search.

“There must be arrests after this monstrous crime” David Lammy MP

‘Families rehoused last night been left clueless about where to spend next nights. No word from #kccouncil. Chaos.” Emily Maitlis, BBC

“We have to act as if it was our friends, our family in that block” Nick Hurd MP, Policing and Fire Minister

“Someone needs to be held accountable. These deaths could have been prevented.” Local resident to Sadiq Khan

Thread 2
Thread 1

Definitely. Having seen clips of the interview, I feel safe in assuming the eye roll was at TMs non-answering. I'll watch the whole thing when it's on in a mo.

LeMesmer i agree Its not the fault of the HA frontline staff on the ground.

Yes, it's still the same for us now LeMes. We have hundreds of people on our 'patch' and we know them all very well. Know them by name and get to know their families as well.

The fire stations that were closed down in London due to austerity measures by Boris - i'm curious to know what the sites are being re-developed as. Social housing for ordinary people, or investment properties for rich folk to buy?

DailyMailReadersAreThick and StatisticallyChallenged yes your rationale is quite right. I just feel as though no stone should be left when this investigation begins. I'm not clued up on the legal side but do know it's not unusual for private leaseholders in shared LA/private estates to have bills of many thousands of pounds when new windows/painting/roof work is carried out.

The front line staff are often the most caring and always the ones who bear the brunt of the problems created by those in charge.

I

I'm very worried there are going to be riots. The council/government need to appoint deignated liaisons and advocates for these poor people. You can't expect people to be calm and logical when they are traumatised, bereaved and exhausted. I'm a doctor and when dealing with the family of a dying person I often have the same conversation 5 times before the message sinks in. It's very difficult to process things in that state. And that's in a typical not-unexpected death of an elderly person often.

Drumming up conspiracy theories etc is unhelpful- someone needs to calmly explain how the figures for missing and dead are calculated, and be available to answer questions. And someone needs to give people a clear timeline on when they'll be housed and assure them that children etc can continue at their schools. Simple things like laundry facilities would make a huge difference in a situation like this.

Henman we identify visitors through the cameras of multi tenant buildings. We have good cameras and to come in you have to have a picture of your face taken. We had people obstruct their face and the security guard would telephone the tenant to ask for the name of the person who was visiting. It freaked tenants out and we explained that we do this for safety. It's imperative we have a good facial picture or a name and it has been an effective deterrent from a crime perspective.

Before anyone asks we don't have any women in burquas visiting. Headscarf is fine. It's just to see facial features.

When we have had to evacuate the building it takes our security team about 10mins to give a preliminary count of the number of people in the building.

Again having a system like this costs money. The camera and speakerphone costs about £1000 per building. We then have a team of 30 security people working the cameras (it's a 24/7 function so there are 3 shifts). Yes it's not cheap but it's the basics of providing safety and it's certainly cheaper than having a security guard/doorman at each location. Ironically most of our security team are tenants.

From twitter.

Save Cressingham‏ @SaveCressingham Jun 15
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Replying to @urbaneprofessor
Just to get paving fixed, residents had to catch lambeth in a written lie before HCA believed, despite elderly resident in hospital
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Reply Retweet 2 Like 2 Direct message
Save Cressingham‏ @SaveCressingham Jun 15
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Replying to @urbaneprofessor
Have you ever tried to report issues to social housing regulators? Unless irrefutable written evidence, then resident not believed

Oh and when we shared our methods the other HAs said it wouldn't be ethical to use cameras like that and that they aren't the police.

Well when a man broke into a building and went to assault a resident our security team had already alerted the police. The man turned out to be a repeat offender and had previously been in jail for assulting a woman.

Buying a £100 camera would mean we wouldn't have good images. The police asked us for the make and model of our cameras because the images were better than what they get from their cameras.

From Twitter

Hannah Al-Othman @HannahAlOthman

These posters have appeared near the Tower

RBKC underspends used to build reserves

Yea, I think the council had in and around 350 Million on hand in cash there was no lack of funds available for repairs.

Where did you get '350 million' from?

Contractors who worked on the £8.6 million Grenfell Tower refurbishment could have spent just £5,000 more to get fire resistant cladding, it was revealed last night.
Hundreds of Reynobond aluminium coated panels – banned in the US over safety fears – were fitted to the outside of the London high-rise last year.
metro.co.uk/2017/06/16/30000-buildings-in-uk-are-covered-in-the-same-cladding-as-grenfell-tower-6713539/

Would be nice if they could utilise that £350mil now to set up a proper command & control hub with counsellors and various other relevant bodies in it (such as DWP etc) & proper signposting, advice & information.

Sadly it appears that the local council are completely disorganised, dysfunctional & seem to have no proper major incident plan in place.

They need to put their hands up & admit they can't do it on their own so better people can be drafted in to take control.

The longer there is a vacuum, the more angry & frustrated people get (understandably).
They've already been failed once by the council, now they're being failed all over again.

I don't think there's any contingency plan for this kind of thing though.... who are these 'better people' to deal with it?

The below article is possibly not helpful, but it does answer my question on a different thread.

Just in"case it "disappears" Reality Check: Can the government requisition homes?

C&P I have edited it to remove other stuff below:-

Reality Check: Can the government requisition homes?

6 hours ago
From the section UK Politics 

[quote]The claim: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says the government should requisition housing if necessary for those made homeless by the Grenfell Tower fire.

Reality Check verdict: Doing so would not be allowed under current rules, and legislation to allow property to be seized in peacetime would be controversial.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "It cannot be acceptable that in London you have luxury buildings and luxury flats kept as land banking for the future while the homeless and the poor look for somewhere to live."

Mr Corbyn's spokesman was asked about the legality of this and said: "We would find a way to do this if necessary - we are looking into the ways in which it could be done depending on circumstances."

The obvious example of governments forcing owners to allow their properties to be used was during the two World Wars. Many stately homes were requisitioned as part of the war effort. Bletchley Park, where crucial code-breaking was carried out, was bought privately before the war, but requisition was later used to extend the site.
Image copyright Evening Standard
Image caption Land around Bletchley Park was requisitioned as part of the war effort

The government had to pass legislation in order to do that - the Defence of the Realm Act in 1914 and the Emergency Powers Act in 1939 - but this does not appear to have happened in peacetime to meet emergency housing needs.

"Any property requisitions may therefore require emergency legislation in Parliament to instigate and would probably prove controversial," said Mark Woloshak, a lawyer from Slater and Gordon.

Local authorities do have the power to force someone to sell their land, using something called a compulsory purchase order (CPO).

These are used when there is a strong public interest justification, in order to "deliver social, environmental and economic change", according to government guidance.

For example, if land or buildings are empty, they might be compulsorily purchased in order to redevelop housing estates or to build a public road. The owner will be compensated.

However, doing this with empty luxury flats would be extremely expensive.

Also, research from the London School of Economics recently found "almost no evidence of units being left entirely empty - certainly less than 1%", but that "for those units bought as second homes, occupancy could be as little as a few weeks a year".

And there are questions as to whether the exercise of this power in the context Mr Corbyn refers to would be lawful.

"It wouldn't stand in the courts… it would be a breach of the purpose that legislation is for," said lawyer Chad Sutton from Planning Clarity Legal.

Acquiring land through a compulsory purchase order is also not a quick process, often taking up to two years before public bodies can get access to the land, so this would not be a quick fix to rehouse displaced people in the short term.

CPOs are intended as a last resort after the authorities have attempted to negotiate with the landowners.

There are currently no powers available to force an owner to rent out their property if it is vacant.

Local authorities have access to use Empty Dwelling Management Orders, but those are designed to allow local authorities to step in when empty properties have become targets for vandalism or a blight on the neighbourhood.

There are restrictions on their use that would prevent them applying to luxury flats in good condition, even if they were empty.

So, to provide emergency housing in the current circumstance, the government would need legislation either to allow requisitions or the use of CPOs.

Reality Check: Is Corbyn's idea for housing fire victims legal? (c) BBC '17 [/quote]

I really, really hope that those mps (at the time of '05) are absolutely bricking themselves!, especially those TORY LANDLORD SCUM, who no doubt being running around trying to off-load their properties and or trying to get spRinklers fitted/updated on the cheap.

I bet within the day or two there'll mass regisnations "due to "stress" or "wanting to more time with their families" excuse syndrome.

Oh and the other excuse will be "LESSONS WILL BE/HAVE BEEN LEARNT"

Sorry if my comment upsets anyone.

Link to RKBC page with RKBC Statements of Account

The 2016-17 Draft Statement of Accounts includes this:

usable reserves at 31 March 2017 of £274 million (£300 million at 31 March 2016)

The 2015-6 Statement of Accounts includes this:

usable reserves at 31 March 2016 of £300 million (£265 million at 31 March 2016)

Looks like they also keep a minimum working balance of £10m.

Its being reported widely in most of the media that the borough had in excess of 350 million in reserves.

Absolutely, Faith they need to set up a central location where by those affected can get access to all the supports they need to get through this tragedy. Sadly, the council seems to be so far out of its depth its scary, its shameful these people have to wonder around various places hunting down council employee's.

Having lived in NY during and after 9/11 and seeing the difficulty in situations such as this in identifying the missing its going to be an extremely long, arduous and painful task.

My God .

And here come the Hillsborough tactics.

twitter.com/Liam_O_Hare/status/875847470957441024

And here Helena

www.thesun.co.uk/news/3818777/hard-left-activists-blasted-for-hijacking-the-genuine-outrage-grenfell-tragedy

I don't think there's any contingency plan for this kind of thing though.... who are these 'better people' to deal with it?

Surely central Govt has contingency plans they can put in place when there are major emergencies! Id be shocked they don't have some type of plans they can implicate quickly.

For example, benefit and pension staff so anyone on either can access their payments, grief counselors,council staff for accommodation, red cross to set up pre-paid debits( Access the funds available via central Govt) they are but a few of the top of my head they all need to be accessible in the one place.

As Katrina showed Bush for who he was this is Mays Katrina.