Deadly Tower Block Fire: We Will Ask Questions- Mayor Of London
London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, said questions will need to be answered over the safety of tower blocks after several people were killed on Wednesday when a fire engulfed a 24-storey building.
Some residents said they had been advised to stay in their flats in the event of a fire, while the block’s residents association had previously warned it was worried about the risk of a serious fire.
“These questions are really important questions that need to be answered,” Khan told BBC Radio.
“Across London, we have many, many tower blocks and what we can’t have is a situation where people’s safety is put at risk because of bad advice given or if it is the case as has been alleged, tower blocks not being properly serviced or maintained.”
Fire engulfed a 24-storey block of flats in central London on Wednesday, killing some people, injuring at least 50 more and trapping some residents who were asleep inside their flats that were caught in the towering inferno.
Flames licked up the sides of the block in the north Kensington area as 200 firefighters, backed up by 40 fire engines fought the blaze for hours. Plumes of black and grey smoke billowed high into the air over the British capital hours after the blaze broke out at the Grenfell Tower where several hundreds of people live.
Residents rushed to escape through smoke-filled corridors in the housing block after being woken up by the smell of burning. Some said no fire alarm sounded.
Witnesses said they saw trapped residents desperately shouting for help from windows on upper floors as flames enveloped the building. London Fire Brigade said the fire engulfed all floors from the second to the top of the block which contained 130 apartments.
“In my 29 years as a fire fighter, I have never ever seen anything of this scale,” London Fire Brigade Commissioner, Dany Cotton told reporters.
“I am very sad to confirm that there have been a number of fatalities, I cannot confirm the number at this time due to the size and complexity of this building.” London Ambulance Service said more than 50 people had been taken to hospital.
A witness told Reuters she feared not all the residents had escaped the fire. Some were evacuated in their pyjamas.
“I looked through the spy hole and I could see smoke everywhere and the neighbours are all there. There’s a fireman shouting “get down the stairs”, one of the block’s residents, Michael Paramasivan, told BBC radio. “It was an inferno.”
“As we went passed the fourth floor, it was completely engulfed in thick black smoke. Once outside, I’m looking up at the block and the smoke was just billowing up. It was like pyrotechnics. It was just unbelievable, how quickly the building was burning.”
The cause of the fire, which broke out just before 1 a.m. (0000 GMT), was not known, the Fire Brigade said. Residents said repairs had been made recently to the exterior of the block.
