Good day all. Last week, there was a horrific fire in a London apartment tower complex. The news flashed around the world and people were horrified at how fast the fire spread.
I’ve held off a bit on reporting on the fire for simple reasons. The information is still being updated. As it stands now, at least 58 people are confirmed dead and that toll is expected to climb. The fire blew up so fast that many people were trapped in the tower and either suffocated or burned to death.
One of the reasons to come out on why the fire spread so fast, was the materials used in a recent renovation. They weren’t fireproof. Now people are getting very angry and want some heads on a pike. Here are some of the details from the Daily Mail:
After tragedy upon tragedy, it was left to the Queen to try to make sense of it all. In her official birthday message yesterday, she issued a rallying call to the nation following the Grenfell Tower fire – now the single most deadly blaze of modern times.
With others, including Theresa May, facing growing criticism for their mishandling of the disaster, her words were deftly judged – and came as much-needed balm.
Prime Minister May has come across of late as being a complete moron. What she should have done was go done there and help out as best she could. Instead, she appears to have cowered at 10 Downing street due to “Security Concerns.” She might have considered Winston Churchill or Margret Thatcher. They would have been there as soon as their presence wouldn’t have interfered with ongoing rescue operations, and this after they put all available resources into saving people.
Praising the support of volunteers in both London and Manchester in the wake of the terrible fire and recent terror atrocities, the Queen said she had been struck by the willingness of people to ‘offer comfort and support to those in desperate need’.
The Prime Minister, meanwhile, missed Trooping The Colour to meet Grenfell survivors, volunteers and community leaders in Downing Street. It was her third attempt to set things right after she was criticised for meeting only officials when she visited the scene on Thursday. On Friday, after seeing victims during a low-profile church visit, she was met with cries of ‘coward’ and ‘shame on you’ as police held back an angry crowd.
One of the major issues with the aftermath of the fire is locating survivors and identifying the dead. There is no central authority working to locate people.
Mirna Suleiman said: ‘I spoke to the casualty helpline and they didn’t have any information. They didn’t offer any help. I was expecting to hear lists of missing people, lists of people who had died, passed away. [But there was] nothing, they weren’t collating these numbers.’
She also claimed the rescue centres held no formal records of those that had attended, and said one hospital had even told her they were unable to say whether Mr Alhajali was there because of ‘confidentiality reasons’.
This is, unfortunately part and parcel with the British bureaucracy. Being helpful is not one of their mandates. Now, all rescue efforts have ended, and the recovery efforts have begun.
At the scene yesterday, Met Police commander Stuart Cundy confirmed that 30 people had died, while another 28 were missing, adding he had to ‘assume’ these people had died. It means the tragedy has eclipsed 1985’s Bradford football stadium fire, which left 56 dead.
However the loss is likely to be greater. The commander stressed this information was based only on the number of people they believe were in the tower when it caught fire.
‘That number 58 may change,’ he said. ‘I really hope it won’t but it may increase. My commitment to families is that as soon as we can, we will locate and recover their loved ones.’
Mr Cundy also spoke out about the community’s concerns that the true number of those who died was being suppressed. ‘I really do understand the frustration of so many about not knowing the scale of the tragedy that is unfolding behind us,’ he added.
Part of the problem is that, other then the tenant lists, the local Council doesn’t have very good information on who was in the building at the time. FYI. When people refer to Council housing, or Council Flats, they’re talking about government owned apartments. Not quite like our Section 8 Housing system, but close enough. It doesn’t help that the Council is not doing much other then covering their backsides.
Elsewhere on the estate surrounding the tower, fury continued to mount over the ‘appalling’ lack of help for victims. Residents spoke of the council’s failure to co-ordinate the humanitarian response. Community organiser Pilgrim Tucker said: ‘There’s been no coordination at all. I have not seen a single council officer at the scene. Where are the authorities?
‘Volunteers have picked it up and there has been amazing support and help but it shouldn’t have to be like this. I haven’t seen or heard from anyone from central government.
There is no evidence of it at all. We have got the emergency services down here, local people doing the best they can and the army of fantastic volunteers, but there is no official response.’
Ok, right there is one major difference between Americans and the British, (as well as most of the world). Americans, traditionally, don’t wait for the government to show up and fix things. We tend to take matters into our own hands and start working. In major disasters, the Government will state flat out that it can take up to 3 days for them to get into an area.
Of course, we also have the usual “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you, so shut up!” issues. One of the biggest failures for the United States was the responses prior to and after Hurricane Katrina. I don’t need to go over what a pair of screw ups then Mayor, (And now convicted criminal), Ray Nagin and Governor Blanco were. They had plenty of warning and utterly failed in their duties.
It was local residents who took matters into their own hands and rescued people. There was one instance where a person, frankly one with a criminal record, stole a bus and used it to rescue people. IIRC, he made three trips before they caught him. There was no prosecution for one simple reason. The DA didn’t want to get lynched.
In Britain, along with most of the world, there is a tendency to sit around and wait for the government to come in and help. People will literally die waiting for help that is either delayed, or doesn’t come at all. I don’t have first hand information, but I suspect that a large number of private donations flooding into the survivors aid funds are coming from individual American citizens.
Many campaigners also say they have yet to receive any cash promised by the Government to help them rebuild their lives. Many are having to rely on handouts from volunteers collecting money from well-wishers.
Last night, Emma Dent Coad, MP for Kensington, claimed some victims had been sent out of the borough with just £10 to live on per day. Last night, it also emerged that relatives who lost family members are being blocked from accessing money donated to them on the JustGiving website.
As I mentioned briefly in an earlier post, if the recent election had happened after this fire, Theresa May would be out and Jeremy Corbyn would be in and making an even bigger mess of the situation. His answer is to basically confiscate the property of better off people and hand it to those who have been displaced.
Now, once the recovery operation is concluded, the full investigation into what happened will begin. From early statements, not to mention the images taken during the fire, it isn’t going to end well fro some people. The building had recently undergone a renovation. Apparently, this renovation consisted of installing a pretty cladding on the outside of the building. This is what caught fire. How this happened is sadly very easy to determine. The cladding wasn’t fireproof or fire resistant. That type of cladding was more expensive.
Also, it appears there was no fire suppression system in the building. Water sprinklers might have bought time for the fire department to arrive and rescue people and might have prevented the explosive spread of the blaze. I don’t have any idea on how building codes work in London, but I suspect, like after the sinking of the Titanic and the loss of most of the passengers, some changes will be made. To late to help those who burned up though.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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