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EDIT: The OP is out of Date.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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Seems similar to the building boom in the mid 80s to 90s in South Korea. Eventually a shopping mall collapsed and everyone had to fix their shit.

I know where I'm at, but when I put kebabs of Peace on the Poll, I mean it as they accidentally burnt down the building making bombs or some shit. Its happened before.
 
UltraSonichu said:
Yeah the point of the cladding in the first place was mostly to prettify the area (dem house prices ain't gonna raise themselves). Basically all local councils in England are massive corrupt scams where the senior management take home six figure salaries and bonuses all the while massively underinvesting in the actual areas they claim to support.* My heart yearns for a corporate manslaughter conviction but there has only been one successful conviction the whole time the law has been around as the evidence threshold is enormous. :heart-empty:

:powerlevel: *source: as part of my day job in the past I've had to run investigations on them. You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy
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It's not just the council's Either, it's also the people buying up land and building homes.

Each new development needs a certain percentage of social housing, problem is it's not based on occupancy it's based on property. So any social housing on new builds are usually blocks of flats.

They fill their quota, maximize how much they earn on their investment, then tell people it's up to the social housing now to maintain it. Council don't want to spend out on social housing (because it's more expensive than a 4 bed property) so they skimp out on renovations. And the result is this.
 
tehpope said:
Seems similar to the building boom in the mid 80s to 90s in South Korea. Eventually a shopping mall collapsed and everyone had to fix their shit.
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The "fixing their shit" stuff usually lasts a decade or two until standards start being relaxed until another disaster happens and the cycle starts all over again.
 
UltraSonichu said:
Yeah the point of the cladding in the first place was mostly to prettify the area (dem house prices ain't gonna raise themselves). Basically all local councils in England are massive corrupt scams where the senior management take home six figure salaries and bonuses all the while massively underinvesting in the actual areas they claim to support.* My heart yearns for a corporate manslaughter conviction but there has only been one successful conviction the whole time the law has been around as the evidence threshold is enormous. :heart-empty:

:powerlevel: *source: as part of my day job in the past I've had to run investigations on them. You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy
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Probably powerlevel-ly, and not a detailed comment on the situation in England and Wales, only Scotland, but whatever:

It's advantageous in pretty much all cases of fatalities at work to have the HSE bring the prosecution under health and safety legislation, rather than have Crown Office attempt the prosecution under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act. The reason, in the least spergy terms, is that the Health and Safety at Work Act imposes in part a reverse burden of proof on the defendant, whereas under the CMCHA, the prosecution has to carry the whole burden of proof.

It will not have escaped anyone's attention that the victims of this tragedy were not at work. They were sleeping in their beds. The H&SaW Act approach is not open.

There is enormous and growing public anger at what happened to these people, which translates into significant scrutiny on CPS' decision whether or not to prosecute.

I wouldn't hazard a guess until far more evidence is in the public domain as to whether or not there will be a conviction. But I would put money on this: there is going to be a prosecution of someone for what has happened here.
 
Fareal said:
Probably powerlevel-ly, and not a detailed comment on the situation in England and Wales, only Scotland, but whatever:

It's advantageous in pretty much all cases of fatalities at work to have the HSE bring the prosecution under health and safety legislation, rather than have Crown Office attempt the prosecution under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act. The reason, in the least spergy terms, is that the Health and Safety at Work Act imposes in part a reverse burden of proof on the defendant, whereas under the CMCHA, the prosecution has to carry the whole burden of proof.

It will not have escaped anyone's attention that the victims of this tragedy were not at work. They were sleeping in their beds. The H&SaW Act approach is not open.

There is enormous and growing public anger at what happened to these people, which translates into significant scrutiny on CPS' decision whether or not to prosecute.

I wouldn't hazard a guess until far more evidence is in the public domain as to whether or not there will be a conviction. But I would put money on this: there is going to be a prosecution of someone for what has happened here.
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How do your H&S laws work there. Here, everyone involved from the most lowly employee to the people at the top of the corporate hierarchy is in the firing line. The only way people further down the food chain can escape that is if they can show a paper trail proving that they made people up the chain aware of the problem repeatedly and that management didn't act. Even that can't be used as an excuse if they actually did something illegal at the direction of higher ups, or didn't do what they could to mitigate the risk.

In reality, it's going to be insurance companies fighting over where liability lies here and you don't get a choice about the strategy your insurer uses.
 
repentance said:
How do your H&S laws work there. Here, everyone involved from the most lowly employee to the people at the top of the corporate hierarchy is in the firing line. The only way people further down the food chain can escape that is if they can show a paper trail proving that they made people up the chain aware of the problem repeatedly and that management didn't act. Even that can't be used as an excuse if they actually did something illegal at the direction of higher ups, or didn't do what they could to mitigate the risk.

In reality, it's going to be insurance companies fighting over where liability lies here and you don't get a choice about the strategy your insurer uses.
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The employer is on the hook here for H&S breaches which lead to prosecution. I will refrain from sperging about the definition of employer, but in reality you don't get any further down than director level when engaging in prosecutions, because directors are on the hook for everything companies do in UK companies law. (Yes this is a large generalisation, but that's the tl;dr)
 
Ravenor said:
The Newspapers today are full of the outpouring of anger about this whole mess.
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"The Daily Mail tells how a young Italian couple who were engaged to be married phoned their parents from their flat on the 23rd floor to say goodbye.

The architecture graduates moved to London three months ago to look for work and were captivated by the views of the capital from their flat, often posting pictures on social media."

What the hell were Italian architecture graduates doing living there if this housing thing was supposed to be for the poor? Or was this tower partial gov housing, partial not?
 
heathercho said:
"The Daily Mail tells how a young Italian couple who were engaged to be married phoned their parents from their flat on the 23rd floor to say goodbye.

The architecture graduates moved to London three months ago to look for work and were captivated by the views of the capital from their flat, often posting pictures on social media."

What the hell were Italian architecture graduates doing living there if this housing thing was supposed to be for the poor? Or was this tower partial gov housing, partial not?
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They where essentially broke but tje building can be a mix of private landlords and DSA tennants the area is also in a weird place with the higest in average earning being 130k but the median average is 32k so filling both ends of the 10% ers i.e. lowest an highest earners living cheek by jowl its not uncommon in london at all.
 
repentance said:
I'm reading people saying Scotland Yard has opened a criminal investigation. Can you confirm that?
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Not sure but its likely this was no normal fire and lots of people have died from willful negligance not just because of a accident.

Having said that with the met this could just be proforma to look line they are doing something.
 
tehpope said:
Seems similar to the building boom in the mid 80s to 90s in South Korea. Eventually a shopping mall collapsed and everyone had to fix their shit.

I know where I'm at, but when I put kebabs of Peace on the Poll, I mean it as they accidentally burnt down the building making bombs or some shit. Its happened before.
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I wish "austerity" had been an option
 
heathercho said:
"The Daily Mail tells how a young Italian couple who were engaged to be married phoned their parents from their flat on the 23rd floor to say goodbye.

The architecture graduates moved to London three months ago to look for work and were captivated by the views of the capital from their flat, often posting pictures on social media."

What the hell were Italian architecture graduates doing living there if this housing thing was supposed to be for the poor? Or was this tower partial gov housing, partial not?
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I saw a link on Twitter to a Rightmove listing for a two bed flat in this building - £2500/month. It's very common to be earning decent money in a professional career and still have to live in a shithole in London. I think the block may have been a mixture of private and social housing. The flat on Rightmove looked like it had been done up nicely by a private landlord, but god only knows what it looks like now.
 
Sports Casual said:
I saw a link on Twitter to a Rightmove listing for a two bed flat in this building - £2500/month. It's very common to be earning decent money in a professional career and still have to live in a shithole in London. I think the block may have been a mixture of private and social housing. The flat on Rightmove looked like it had been done up nicely by a private landlord, but god only knows what it looks like now.
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Yeah, it's not dissimilar to Sydney I imagine. I think the mix of social housing and private makes this even worse.
By worse, I mean that there were more people involved in making idiotic choices that cost people their lives for the sake of $, rather than just the council/local gov being typical tightasses. Doesn't help that Corbyn the Communist keeps opening his mouth screeching about this being a poor vs rich issue, to build the image that Grenfell Tower was specifically a social housing estate.

This fire should raise issues about the state of the housing market in London, the pressure it puts on industry and council a like to house people, foreign investment, the overpopulation caused by too many immigrants and the issues they bring themselves, like being assbackwards about keeping areas tidy etc. They're issues that can be fixed and should be addressed, but they won't be because identity politics and corruption. So I fully expect to see this kind of thing happen time and time again.

Though I am glad to see that people are mad at that arrogant cunt Sadiq for a change.
 
People have now taken to the council to protest over the lack of work done by them. I wonder how well it would go down if they responded with "Well it's part and parcel of you having a kitchen".
 
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