London Fire: Grenfell Tower thread five

[RhythmAndStealth]

RIP

Five victims officially named
At least 79 victims expected, possibly more
Many displaced and struggling

To all those affected and all those helping

Thread four
Thread three
Thread three contains links to threads one and two.

I have just found these threads. DH is a mental health nurse in the borough that covers Grenfell Tower. They have a permanent staff presence there. There are a huge number of very traumatised people including those who didn't live in Grenfell but witnessed the fire and saw people jumping or screaming for help.
It's so important not to let this just slowly fade away from the news. This is a total scandal and we need to stay angry and keep asking questions.

^Fire chiefs warned that councillors were failing safety duty
Detailed guidance listed the key questions councillors should ask contractors^

The London fire brigade was so alarmed about the failure of the capital’s councillors to take responsibility for the risks posed by refurbished high-rises that two years ago it issued specialist guidance on the questions local councils needed to ask contractors and planning officers to ensure buildings were safe.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/01/grenfell-tower-fire-chiefs-key-questions

That sound very legally liable.

BLOODY HELL.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-cladding-boss-senior-executive-government-adviser-tower-building-regulations-advisory-a7817936.html

Sorry Red I missed that youd already posted that.

Helena: Oh heck, that is so totally dodgy. They are even trying to control the formation of a support group and will doubtless get even more government funding for that. It sounds slick and pre-planned which taises the spectre of other disturbing questions. For the spokesperson of that group, who likely is not a survivor, to threaten that survivors won't participate in an inquiry sounds like they are trying to shut them up. Why?

user Yvette Williams seems to be a member of Justice4Grenfell. I think the Guardian are talking about a different group altogether.

The Guardian mentions the Grenfell victims and survivors trust. I dont think its the same group.

At least thats the way it reads to me.

Agree that the group mentioned in the Guardian article sounds as dodgy as fuck.

Actually Ms Williams is genuine - don't think she's right to threaten that survivors won't participate in an inquiry because the powers that be would be only too happy methinks

BUT

Sir Martin Moore-Bick has said the scope of inquiry would only be from the start of the fire to the aftermath and not investigate the preceding factors leading up to the fire. Why?

That angers me too user. The residents warned and told the council and TMO many many times about the lack of fire safety.
Then they are proven right in the most horrific way. And now Moore Bick says the scope of the investigation wont include this part of it.

its ignoring and minimising the residents concerns over again.

It protects their mates if they don't investigate cladding and gasline refubishments to the building. If they don't investigate why an action group with nameless members ( do any of the residents actually know who they are? ) has continually been publishing articles on fire safety in the building since 2011.

From that guardian article:

Labour MPs invited survivors to parliament for a meeting chaired by Diane Abbott, which collapsed into recriminations and resentment.

One activist, who walked out of the meeting, said that local residents and survivors felt as if they had been paraded before a “flock of vultures”.

“How many more times are the victims of this tragedy going to be exhibits in a grotesque sideshow?” Ishmahil Blagrove said in a posting on Facebook after the meeting, questioning why MPs had not come to visit the site of the fire.

Someone was asking for names of who is running the grenfell action group. This is Joe Delaney being interviewed the morning after the fire. He is local and as you can imagine the interview shows the raw emotion and frustration having witnessed the horror him and others had predicted. Francis O'Connor is another local person involved in the group. He was the person who received a solicitors letter sent on behalf of rbkc to remove names from the blog or else. They never removed the names as they knew what they had printed was not a lie. No action was taken by the council or their legal advisors.

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/grenfell-tower-fire-couple-who-escaped-burning-block-with-two-daughters-lose-unborn-baby-in-wake-of-a3577816.html
Grenfell Tower fire: Couple who escaped burning block with two daughters lose unborn baby in wake of disaster

Mother escaped from 21st floor but was unconscious. She was 7 months pregnant and and the baby was dead so they delivered it whilst she was in an induced coma.

Just awful.

According to the radio this morning they have finally said that they will refund rent for anyone how has had it taken from their accounts and they will also suspend rent payments for anyone in the surrounding blocks who has suffered disruption.

Surely this should have been done straight away, not almost 3 weeks later!

Joe Delaney in Channel 4 news. He's great.
www.channel4.com/news/grenfell-local-resident-promises-are-being-made-and-they-are-rarely-kept

I read that - so sad, about the baby, the little boy, still born. They got their daughters out but still it is so sad. I also read today in the newspaper about a Chinese /English lady whose husband was 5000 miles away when the fire was going on. She was on the 22nd floor and was told by the fire people to stay put until 3am. She moved nito a neighbour's flat with cleaner air (i think a lot of people did that). Then the fire advice changed and she went down with her flat mate with wet towels over their faces. They pretended the bodies they walked over were clothes to get over how horrible it was. At the 5th floor firemen helped them down. At the 2nd floor she knew she was safe as the air could be breathed properly again. Her flatmate got out too. She thinks they were the only people on the 22nd floor who made it and that they were the last to leave - they did not leave until 3am when the fire people said to leave. Their neighbours were too scared to leave and presumably died up there.

The point about the scope of the inquiry may not be maliciously intended. One of the big reasons many public enquiries fail or get into a mess is because they become so enormous even the best people cannot easily manage them (child abuse is an example - such broad scope is could not easily ever be done or finished). If you narrow it down a bit it becomes a manageable task. I was saying to my son yesterday I don't know why people take on leading enquiries - you get no thanks, it tends to go horribly wrong, everyone hates you from all sides and it takes double the time you expect and it often destroys your career and reputation. I would never do it.

I think there needs to be two enquiries. One, as announced, dealing with the fire itself and the aftermath, but another dealing with the cladding, insulation and gas works historically. If the enquiry covers too much it'll take far too long. Best to have separate enquiries that can run alongside eachother to speed up the process. After all they are two distinct things - the fire itself, how the fire brigade acted during the fire, the support afterwards, etc., completely different to the legality of the cladding, work quality, cost, etc.

The problem with having two enquiries is that you have the first one examining "what happened?" which is the easy job and then the very complicated one examining "what enabled it to happen and why?". Most governments will not resist the temptation to argue that it makes sense for "two" to follow "one" and then get to the end of "one" and kick "two" into the long grass before abandoning it. This happened with Leveson and this meant that the most important questions were not investigated, ie the corrupt nature of the relationship between some of the press and the Met.

But the answer isn't to have just one single inquiry that will look at and then report on everything because if done properly this won't provide answers for years.

In my view there should be a single inquiry but having parallel streams, a "what happened?" stream being fast-tracked to given an interim report within a year and a "why?" stream being worked on at the same time but with the explicit intention of delivering a full report in a timescale of years.

Bah, I did mean to say that I go along with Best to have separate enquiries that can run alongside eachother to speed up the process as posted by Badbadbunny.

I think we should also try to do enquiries within about 6 months even if that means they are not so thorough. Pointless enquiries which take 6 years and never seem to conclude much at all seem such a waste of time to me. Let us just find out the main causes. If the CPS thinks corporate manslaughter changes need to be brought bring them and make sure from now on fire rules are safer.

Red thats awful

Lucy i get what you are saying but i dont think the fact that the residents reported their concerns about fire safety and were ignored and threatened should be left out of the enquiry. The residents themselves have said they want the wider issues in social housing to be part of the enquiry.

This needs to be respected. Because the way they and their fears were treated did contribute to this tragedy.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/02/im-still-waiting-for-rescue-grenfell-survivor-adrift-after-traumatic-escape

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/07/after-grenfell-social-tenants-across-london-who-feel-they-are-being-ignored

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-charge-grenfell-tower-refurbishment-10722834
Tory in charge of Grenfell Tower refurbishment investigated TWICE over his role
Rock Feilding-Mellen was probed after Kensington and Chelsea Council approved a scheme to lease a library building to a prep school at which his children were on the waiting list