CROWDS going into KENSINGTON TOWN HALL ..... BBC NEWS now

[RTKangaMummy]

They were outside but now the crowds have all entered the civic centre town hall

I am not surprised that this is happening

There couldn't be a more tragic example or a more ugly one of unrest and inequality in the UK today, this fire happened several days ago, there have been no provisions for the traumatised surviving tenants of the block, volunteers are helping,this would never had happened to the rich for obvious reasons, but if it had they'd have been put up in luxury hotels immediately

The 'stay put' advice centres on a belief that fires start inside, stay inside and are reasonably contained within flat/s of origin. this fie climbed up the outside of the building, ripped through the cladding, melted windows and created huge volumes of pungent smoke.

By the time the stay put advice was not relevant, it was too late for so many.

It wasn't wrong advice, just not advice for this kind of fire. All the firefighters said they have never eve seen a fire like this, other than in films.

can anybody with knowledge tell me why people were told to stay in the building?

As far as I understand it - the Fire Brigade guidelines on Tower blocks are that people stay in their flats unless there is a fire in their actual flat. If there is they have to go into the nextdoor flat. The flats usually contain the fire for at least an hour which gives the Fire Brigade time to extinguish it. These Tower Blocks tend to only have one staircase therefore the FB need it to get equipment and Fire fighters up to the fire. However if a building has been renovated- and badly- then this can compromise the integrity of the flats and the fire can spread more quickly. Which is what has happened in this case - and at a terrific speed.

It stands as some ridiculous meaningless point but if it makes you happy

You are blaming them now? Wow.
For trusting they weren't being housed or renting in a place that would go up like it was made of matchsticks in half an hour?
For trusting that in this country, in this day and age, that that could never happen?
Whether they had 'chosen' the Lada Option or the Volvo Option?

Disgraceful.

I sort of get the car thing but form a more cynical angle. I've seen Fight Club , which has two creepily relevant sequences: one with a flat fire caused by an appliance accident, and one where the protagonist describes his job in risk management for big car companies. It's nastily cynical and I am sure it is what the building renovation company's loss adjusters and insurers are up to right now.

this would never had happened to the rich for obvious reasons, but if it had they'd have been put up in luxury hotels immediately

You know that a large number of people have been put up in local hotels, right?

It has been widely reported. Feel free to actually get yourself informed before posting dickish comments

DRAYLON,

you may well be right, and of course green targets do matter too, but it seems shocking to not prioritise fire safety over all else in a tower block.

There is a lack of basic common sense in these decisions, if the council is responsible for managing the block it should spend the money wisely. 200K is a small price to pay for a sprinkler system.

I spent 2 k on putting wired fire alarms with back up systems on my 2 victorian buy to lets, despite there being no legal requirement, l did not ask my tenants as l feel it is my responsability to make the property safe

probably naive or stupid but once an assessment was made ,would it not have been possible for professionals to organise a basic ,safe,exit down the stairs for some people?

Call me naive but I would have expected HA flats and LA flats to be god standard H and S compared to private flats and HMOs. More than safe enough . Rolls Royce safe enough. Buildings don't come with NCAP advice so we can choose.

The video of people storming in to the town hall clearly shows some of the people laughing and hiding.

@sparechange

What on earth would that achieve?
Other than for ghouls on social media to be able to speculate on the number of potential victims?

By concealing the numbers, they are downplaying this tragedy. I fear they want the numbers to be released gradually over time so that by the time the real figures come out (in months or years) the public will have forgotten about it. Those are human beings lying dead in that tower. They deserve to be acknowledged.

randomer - it was too hot by then, too smoky.

There was no safe exit.

poo - oh,that's all right then. I feel batter now. cancels out all the images of the bereft , the angry and the bereaved.

What a crass post.

Thanks for the insult Spare, I have a friend who lived there and she hasn't been given temple accommodation anywhere, she is relying on friends' generosity

whattodo this is what I mean by rent a mob . People with no other agenda than to cause trouble.

I'm just going to throw it out there that the same cladding was used on The (luxury, 5 star) Address Hotel in downtown Dubai, which went up in flames in a very similarly super-fast fashion on New Year's Eve 2015/16, so the suggestions that 'rich people would never sleep in a building with this cladding' are not necessarily true and are just being used to further exacerbate the rich vs poor conflict. Since that fire at The Address, the same sort of cladding has been removed and replaced with the more fire resistant version on most of the high-rise buildings in Dubai.

I agree with PPs who have said that the council would have used this cladding in good faith, as did the building developers of luxury properties around the world, before the true nature of the risk became clear.

The invasion of the Town Hall that BBC news described as passing relatively peacefully?

I think some on here want civil unrest of the violent kind. Just so they can further Other the victims.

Sparechange obviously knows everything or nothing. Take your pick.

Draylon, I'll wait for you to post some evidence that the UK is jettisoning the European Standards, particularly those allied to safety.

But while you're looking for that I'll direct you to the article in the CIBSE technical journal:
"The UK is a full member of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) and adopts ENs as national standards. If Britain votes to leave the European Union, UK organisations will still be subject to European Standards, in the same way as other non-EU members of CEN."

Posters spouting what you just did here:

Draylon Fri 16-Jun-17 18:22:55
Capitalism without care kills.
Yes, sadly it does. And it's ironic that we all voted to get rid of those nasty European Standards, isn't it?

are just plain irresponsible.

I agree saucery absolutely.

Yes, Sparechange is obviously the one we should listen to

To the PP who cited the hotel in Dubai : even the wealthiest companies will cut cost corners to build at the lowest price possible.

But in Dubai there was no loss of life I believe? Presumably because of the fire precautions inside the building.. for example, sprinklers.

*butterfly' there was also a very similar fire in Australia. Long(ish) ago. Builders do know - and have known for ages - that this cladding , when fitted in a certain way, isn't firesafe.

This post has probably moved way past this point but regarding figures of people, I lived in an estate similar to this and many were ex-council owned and rented out. Often these would be split up to whole families living in rooms and sharing with others. So a three bedroom flat normally housing 4/5 people in a family would often have a family of 3 in bedroom 1, couple in 2, another family of 4 in bedroom 3, family of 3 in living room etc etc. All done on the sly and unbeknownst to authorities/council tax etc. You could even have workers sharing a bed and splitting shifts. One sleeps all day works nights, comes home and swaps with his mate who sleeps all night and works all day. My Swedish mates used to do this to save cash.

You could end up with up to 10+ sharing sometimes. With that in mind they cannot even begin to estimate, or even guesstimate either.