Disaster Grenfell Tower fire & fallout

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EDIT: The OP is out of Date. Will get around to updating someday.

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Hueg Apartment Fire in London Page 7 Kiwi Farms (1).png


https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...ll-tower-block-white-city-latimer-road-london

A fire has broken out in a tower block in west London with reports that people are trapped in their homes.

The fire in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in Latimer Road in White City started in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The fire brigade said on Twitter they were responding to a fire on the Lancaster West Estate. Two hundred fire fighters are at the scene along with forty engines that were called at just after 1.15am.

Photographs and video from the scene showed huge flames engulfing most of the block, with lights on in many windows. The tower contains 120 homes.

Witnesses described hearing shouts for help coming from people inside the tower and walls of the building creaking.

Fabio Bebber tweeted from the scene that the fire had taken over most of the block.

The Metropolitan Police said two people were being treated at the scene for smoke inhalation and cordons were in place. Residents in neighbouring streets were being evacuated.

George Clarke, the presenter of Amazing Spaces, lives nearby. He told Radio 5 Live: “I was in bed and heard ‘beep, beep, beep’ and thought, ‘I’ll get up and run downstairs as quickly as I could’.

“I thought it might be a car alarm outside and saw the glow through the windows.

“I’m getting covered in ash, that’s how bad it is. I’m 100 metres away and I’m absolutely covered in ash.

“It’s so heartbreaking, I’ve seen someone flashing their torches at the top level and they obviously can’t get out.

“The guys are doing an incredible job to try and get people out that building, but it’s truly awful.”

The tower block was built in the 1970s as part of the Lancaster West Estate project.
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"housing estate"

It's so charming how you limey faggots call PROJECTS something so charming.
 
Deffo not kebab. I'm saying incompetent sparky or seeing as it's on a London council estate, drugs lab.
 
What until the press uncover the fact the tower was filled with DUP potato niggers.
 
I'm going with resident got pissed, lit fag, dropped it on the couch, passed out, 420 blaze the neighbours
 
This is fucking horrifying, the bodycount from this is going to be massive and their is going to be lot's of questions about this from the health an safety executive.

My guess is this was a pure accident possibly caused by some half competent spark or some such like @CWCissey said causing an accidental fire.
 
AnOminous said:
"housing estate"

It's so charming how you limey faggots call PROJECTS something so charming.
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The American equivalent to a housing estate can mean anything from a rich private planned community to public housing projects. The specific term for British social housing is a "council estate," but are far more widespread and following Thatcher's privatization efforts, many which didn't go to shit are quite upscale. Looking at the rents of the tower block in question, which is near Notting Hill, such is the case. Still, it seems the governing body was fucking up.
 
Clearly a cell of the terrorists that call themselves "GamerGate" did this, and will soon drop a propaganda video called "Game Over London"
 
Apparently the smoke alarms didn't go off
Zoe told BBC London Radio: "I was actually on the floor where fire started – the fourth floor.

"Someone started banging on my door saying there’s a fire and to get out.

"When I got on the landing it was thick with smoke but the smoke alarms weren’t going off, which is quite scary.

"Then I just ran down the stairs. You could see the fire is in one of the flats.

"They were saying apparently the fire was caused by a fridge freezer, don’t know how true that it is but the way the fire spread from the fourth floor all the way up was just scary.

"When we got downstairs we were seeing people in the building flashing their kitchen lights, bedroom lights trying to get everyone’s attention.

"I just hope they got out.

"People then started panicking, windows were falling out, debris started falling down.”
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PrincessOf Aus said:
Apparently the smoke alarms didn't go off
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Thats more than a tiny bit worrying those buildings are supposed to have a 1 bell all floors system to prevent situations like this from happening i.e people cut off above the ignition point by smoke.

I've been watching this on the bbc all morning and that building has had serious problems in its construction to burn that badly that quickley.
 
Ravenor said:
I've been watching this on the bbc all morning and that building has had serious problems in its construction to burn that badly that quickley.
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It had just been refurbished with cheap Chinese cladding according to the reports I'm reading. Once the initial fire reached that, the rest was inevitable.

Apparently it also had a central fire escape, which sounds like awful planning.
 
repentance said:
It had just been refurbished with cheap Chinese cladding according to the reports I'm reading. Once the initial fire reached that, the rest was inevitable.

Apparently it also had a central fire escape, which sounds like awful planning.
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Ah there you go then, also the central escaoe thing is normal it doubles as a normal staircase but is supposed to be cast concreete with fire doors on every floor, they normally go around the lift shaft like the treads of a screw.

Back in the 50's an 60's when these desgns where mostly drawn up they where more concerned with density of families and fire was a secondary concern.
 
Ravenor said:
Ah there you go then, also the central escaoe thing is normal it doubles as a normal staircase but is supposed to be cast concreete with fire doors on every floor, they normally go around the lift shaft like the treads of a screw.

Back in the 50's an 60's when these desgns where mostly drawn up they where more concerned with density of families and fire was a secondary concern.
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I'm not sure whether fire doors would have helped a lot. It sounds like it travelled along the outside of the building and as the floors and ceilings of the originally burned through the fire would have spread that way internally.
 
repentance said:
I'm not sure whether fire doors would have helped a lot. It sounds like it travelled along the outside of the building and as the floors and ceilings of the originally burned through the fire would have spread that way internally.
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Fire doors are suposed to act as a delay to the fire and smoke long enough to allow escape, in this case it could have helped but as you said the fire started spreading beteeen the cladding.
 
Ravenor said:
Fire doors are suposed to act as a delay to the fire and smoke long enough to allow escape, in this case it could have helped but as you said the fire started spreading beteeen the cladding.
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Someone who knows more about both fire and building materials than I do commented that 1kg of the particular type of cladding used burns with the same amount of energy as 1kg of petrol - so it's effectively going to act as an accelerant.

I know it's an issue with a lot of modern building/furnishing materials. I remember that when the installation of smoke alarms became compulsory here our fire services made sure to hammer home that they mean "get out right now" because an average suburban home will be well alight before fire engines arrive and will burn to the ground in 12 minutes - everything inside will either produce toxic fumes which will quickly overcome occupants or feed the fire.
 
Have been watching the coverage. Jokes aside, being trapped in a tower block above a rising fire is pretty much most people's worst nightmare. The smoke alarms not going off is a huge fuck up, however that happened. That should not have happened.

More than one person is saying the plastic cladding caught fire and went up.

If the building needs to come down - which looks probable - the demolition will be pretty difficult in such a heavily urbanised area. Lets hope to god it doesn't actually collapse.

God bless the fire service. They went in there last night when the whole fucking thing was ablaze to try and get people out.
 
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