The number of recovered bodies, or missing presumed dead has risen to 80.
Of the 129 flats at Grenfell, police have spoken with survivors of 106 of them to establish who was living in each and whether there were any visitors at the time of the fire. Records from the landlord were found to inaccurate.
Of the 23 remaining flats, no survivors have been located so far to try and establish an accurate figure. Police have followed a new of investigative avenues, including information about take away food deliveries.
Scotland Yard have warned the death toll will likely rise and it may take until the end of the year to establish the total need of people who have died. They have said that identifications may take many months more and some bodies may never be recovered.
It has been reported both speculatively and from the four initial inquests, that most deaths will have occurred from inhalation of fire fumes. There is the likelihood of carbon monoxide poisoning and the recent revelation of hydrogen cyanide toxicity from the burning insulation.
People trying to escape the fire have been reported as piled up. One man described tripping over bodies until he reached the fourth floor where he finally fell. He came face to face with a dead man, an image he said he would likely never be able to erase. As he began to lose consciousness, prostrate on the floor, he was grabbed by a fire fighter and dragged to safety.
The positioning of the bodies will likely tell a story for each person who died, but what other stories will be told?
Those families on the highest floors who were seen flashing mobile phone torches from windows, what will their story be?
What would any of us do in those circumstances? Would we try to comfort our children? Would we hold on to our loved ones in our terror and regret?
I wonder what stories are confronting the recovery teams in the attitudes of the remains.
I doubt any of them will have been counting their money.
The company which supplied the aluminium composite material cladding panels for Grenfell has been reported as Arconic.
95 samples of cladding, believed to all be from council owned high rise buildings have failed combustability tests. That remains a 100% failure rate and Theresa May has ordered a national inquiry.
It's thought that not all buildings will be evacuated. Camden council evacuated five of it's tower blocks due to 'a particular set of circumstances' which included hundreds of fire doors missing.
The inquest were opened and adjourned for four of the people who died in the Grenfell fire today:
Isaac Paulo, aged 5. He vanished in thick smoke on the 13th floor as his family escaped from their home on the 18th floor. Preliminary findings of the cause of death was given as inhalation of fire fumes. The little boy was identified by his dental records.
Khadija Saye, aged 24. A newly discovered photographic artist with her work currently on display in Venice, she was due to be the subject of a documentary about her work. She was found in the hallway of the ninth floor having escaped her 20th floor flat where she lived with her mother. Preliminary findings of the cause of death were given as inhalation of fire fumes and burns.
Mary Ajaoi Augustus Mendy, aged 54. Khadija Saye's mum. She was found on the 13th floor, four floors above her daughter with whom she had an inseparable bond. The provisional cause of death was given as inhalation of fire fumes pending further investigation. She was identified via dental records.
Mohammednur Tucco, aged 44. His body was recovered by the nearby leisure centre. He was reported missing along with his wife and three year old daughter after visiting relatives in the Tower. His provisional cause of death was given as inhalation of fire fumes.
If you're getting mail from people in countries you have blocked, then they might not be in the country they've stated on their profile.
That may because they just happen to be elsewhere at the time, or perhaps because they're pesky wee scammers.
I think you can also set up an account without having a fixed IP address. I don't get the techie stuff myself, but I suppose people do it either because that's the technology available to them, or because they're pesky little scammers.
An MP who lost a friend in the fire has stated that delays in announcing a more accurate, or final death toll are leading to suspicions of a cover up.
I think perhaps the public are unaware of the scale of the devastation in the building.
I've mentioned this earlier - if all the complete bodies have been removed from the tower as stated and there are 19 bodies in the mortuary, that leaves at least 60 reported missing bodies that are incomplete.
I suspect 'complete' refers to not only bodies that aren't dismembered, but ones which aren't severely charred. If surviving residents have reported bodies piled up in corridors and stairwells, the intensity of the fire may have made it impossible to establish how many remains are in each pile without meticulous in situ forensic exploration in dangerous and difficult conditions.
Where there were explosions, bodies may be fragmented. If two charred arms and two legs are found, is that one child, or four?
If the aim is not only to establish the number of dead, but to identify the bodies and return them to loved ones for burial, it's going to take a lot of painstaking forensic work.
Perhaps part of the problem is simply not being able to graphically describe the scenes of devastation to the public. It has been hinted at, but perhaps not many have, or want to put the pieces of information together. It certainly has been made clear that some bodies may never be identified on many occasions.
I could go on listing the difficulties that have been reported piecemeal in the media, but suffice it to say the people working the recovery phase probably could do without criticism and accusations right now.
60 tower blocks across the UK have been found to have unsafe cladding.
Whilst it has been acknowledged that landlords will have been reviewing the buildings they have most concerns about first, every single sample tested so far has failed combustability tests.
It's not thought that every building will have to be evacuated - the decision to evacuate the five blocks in Camden was in combination with other fire safety issues.
As witnesses have described dozens of people jumping from Grenfell windows and bodies piled up in stairwells and corridors, it is believed the death toll will rise considerably.
The police use Interpol guidelines for identifying victims of disasters which involves only declaring those deaths they are certain of. It has been acknowledged that sub-letting and the reluctance of undocumented migrants to come forward will make determining the exact number of people in the building on the night of the fire difficult.
Yes, some residents have resisted leaving, Guzman.
I think that might be to do with the chaotic way events have unfolded.
Initially, residents were told they were safe, but further tests and consultation with the fire service who were patrolling the corridors of the tower blocks in Camden lead the Labour MP to make the decision to evacuate.
It's reported that she asked the fire service if they could guarantee the safety of the residents and they replied 'no'.
The situation is further confused by a fire in one of the blocks two years ago being contained.
Residents are also unhappy about the standard of emergency alternative accommodation.
It's perhaps understandable that residents are angry, confused and frightened. Mixed information has lead many to mistrust the authorities.
Social workers, the fire brigade and other public sector employees are working with residents in a bid to avoid legal measures being used to compulsorily evacuate them.
If my family were in that situation, my daughter and I managing our back to back shifts, my granddaughter's care, laundry of work and school clothes, restricted diet, costs, etc., it would be a logistical nightmare. It's tricky enough as it is in the privacy of our own home where we have facilities and space to rest.
Proposals to relax fire safety standards for new school buildings as a cost-cutting measure in the wake of the Grenfell fire have been dropped.
With thousands facing evacuation from high rise buildings deemed unsafe, the charity Shelter warned that up to a million families face eviction from private rented accommodation by 2020 due to rising rents, cost-cutting benefit freezes and a lack of investment in social housing.
Police have warned that due to austerity measures, they do not have the resources to cope with civil unrest and rioting.
I've heard Christian interpretations of the film focusing on rebirth (as in 'born again' christianity) as Andy Dufresne escapes both mentally while he's incarcerated and physically at the end, symbolically struggling through a narrow pipe to freedom.
...Norwegian people because of Anders Behring Breivik? Do you avoid all men because of Fred West, Peter Sutcliffe, or Ian Brady? All women because of Rose West, or Myra Hindley?
27 tower blocks in 15 local authorities have failed fire safety tests.
Assuming there's roughly 500 people living in each one, that's 13,500 men, women and children who are, and have been, living with the risk of dying like those at Grenfell...so far.
There has been criticism that Grenfell Tower survivors will not be exempt from bedroom tax, or benefit caps as they are rehoused.
This means that if they are placed in accommodation deemed too large for their family, the shortfall in benefits will either have to come out of their food money, or they will build up rent arrears and risk eviction.
This can happen to non-working families and those on a low income. It's particularly difficult in areas where rents are high, like the London.
I've been in this position myself as a lone parent with a low income. Although rents are high here, they're not as extortionate as they are in London. I just got very, very thin avoiding rent arrears and didn't end up homeless.
I remember going to bed hungry every night and waking up every morning shaking with exhaustion for a good two, or three years as I worked towards improving my situation. I don't think non-living wages and the poverty traps are ethical, but I was young and strong at the time.
Is it appropriate to do this to the survivors of Grenfell?
Camden council has evacuated five of it's tower blocks overnight amounting to some 800 households.
Most residents became aware of the evacuation through the BBC news on the television, despite reassurances in a meeting with the council yesterday that they were safe in their homes. Many were given just 5 minutes to pack, including very elderly residents who grabbed their essential medication and little else.
Residents were urged to stay with family, or friends where they would be more comfortable.
Some were placed in hotels (read: one room for a family, bed and breakfast, shared bathroom facilities, no kitchen facilities), but many were allocated closely packed together air mattresses with one blanket and one pillow in public buildings. Food and water was available.
One woman was interviewed by reporters as she waited for a taxi with her three young children at 4am in the morning.
Whist many residents were angry, distrust in of the authorities and confused, many were grateful of the safety measures and were prepared to make the best of it.
It's expected to be two to four weeks before residents will be able to return home.
You:re right Ooby, the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has the highest disparity of wealth of any borough, most of the population in the top 10th percentile and the many living in the Tower block area in the bottom 10th percentile.
Grenfell Tower will have originally been entirely council owned for the benefit of low income families being able to rent affordable, lifelong, accommodation.
Margaret Thatcher decided to sell off the council housing stock and made it illegal for the councils to use the money to build more social housing.
My parents benefitted from this scheme, rent paid being taken into consideration in the asking price. They were quite cross that the condition of the property was also taken into account and having scrimped and saved to do work on the property, they ended up paying more for it. The increase in the property's worth since they bought it however, is obscene. If they had chosen to sell up, they would have made a killing.
So, Grenfell tower at the time of the fire consisted of a mix of properties. Some were still council owned, some were privately owned probably by elderly people like my parents who bought when the properties were going for a song.
I suspect a good sized proportion were privately rented, however. These properties were recently selling for around the quarter of a million mark. Anyone who has that kind of money isn't going to buy a property of that price in that area for themselves. They buy to rent and as an investment.
The private rents were around £400 a week. Some of the tenants survived the fire because they were working night shifts, but in the kind of jobs where they would likely rely on benefit subsidies to meet the extortionate rent.
People living in poverty are so often derogated for sponging off the state, but any housing benefit paid by the government for privately rented properties is in effect a payment to rich people.
If you have tenants in receipt of housing benefits, the government in effect pay your mortgage, pay you a nice income after the mortgage is paid off for doing next to nothing and you get the capital of the property at the end of it.
If you don:t earn enough to obtain a mortgage, you get to rent sub-standard properties for more than the cost of the mortgage, have short-term contracts and over a lifetime probably pay out enough to buy two properties, or more, but have no capital at the end of it.
Grenfell Tower will have been a money spinner for the rich feeding off the poor and the government. The refurbishments were penny pinching to the point of possibly not meeting building and fire safety regulations.
There has also been much criticism of the refurbishment planning records where the emphasis was not on the ecological value of the insulating cladding, but on improving the aesthetics of the building for the benefit of Kensington and Chelsea's wealthy residents.
But hey, that's business and the art of rolling with collateral damage is underway.
jac_the_gripper Forum Posts (5,363)
RE: Towering inferno in England
Scotland Yard has reported that so far, 60 companies have been identified as being involved in the renovations of Grenfell.This figure is also expected to rise.