UK Horrible fire catastrophe in London

Andy_T

Andy_T

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Most of you, especially those living in England, have certainly heard about the horrible fire it happened in London yesterday .

Grenfell Tower: firefighters search overnight with toll expected to rise

However, I see little coverage in countries outside Europe. (The senate baseball shooting seems to take all the attention).

The more I hear about the background of the catastrophe through English friends, the more angry I get as it it seems that this might have been averted, and that it likely is a direct consequence of much-lauded "deregulation" and "Cutting the red tape" requested by wealthy political donors :mad:.

Grenfell Tower residents say managers 'brushed away' fire safety concerns

'Unforgivable': local Labour MP vents fury over Grenfell Tower fire
 
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Andy_T said:
Most of you, especially those living in England, have certainly heard about the horrible fire it happened in London yesterday .

Grenfell Tower: firefighters search overnight with toll expected to rise

However, I see little coverage in countries outside Europe. (The senate baseball shooting seems to take all the attention).

The more I hear about the background of the catastrophe through English friends, the more angry I get as it it seems that this might have been averted, and that it likely is a direct consequence of much-lauded "deregulation" and "Cutting the red tape" requested by wealthy political donors :mad:.

Grenfell Tower residents say managers 'brushed away' fire safety concerns

'Unforgivable': local Labour MP vents fury over Grenfell Tower fire
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I have been listening to National Public Radio in the U.S., and they have been doing a decent job with updates about the fire, though the congressional baseball shooting also has received high billing.
 
It's so awful, I can't stop thinking about it. I was wondering if it was being reported on outside of the UK. I hope some heads roll over this, it wont bring anyone back but itll certainly help stop it happening again.
 
It was a terrible sight , in the end I just stop watching . I noticed here , it had officials running around checking to see that the same could not happen here . It appears not, sprinklers , smoke alarms are mandatory down here for buildings like that .

Down here they said will be watching the inquiry , to see what happened and if they have to change building codes .

I do hope the inquest/inquiry is an honest open one and not one of those government inquiries where the terms of the inquiry are every thing except what they should be looking into .
 
Well considering the government were shirking responsibility on many housing safety issues, there will probably be some carpet-sweeping!! I'm glad that Sadiq Khan is mayor rather than Boris, as feel that he will push for the truth more than a lot of other politicians.
 
The WaPo and NYTimes have been doing a decent job covering it, and the story has also been showing up daily on my Google news feed.

I can't even imagine what the people who are going through what's left of the building, looking for bodies, are going through right now.
 
Sky news are saying that now there are 58 people missing and presumed dead.

I think this is one of the worst tragedies that has ever happened here in my lifetime. When I saw the image of the burning tower in the early morning when it happened I first thought it was another terror attack. I'm honestly trying to push the idea of the people screaming at the windows out of my mind.

I couldn't sleep because I was so scared of a fire the first couple of nights afterwards. I can't even imagine what people feel like if they live in a tower block with similar cladding. Some people are saying that the cladding on the building may have been the problem.

I said this on another part of the forum a couple of days ago, but I used to work in a (charity-run, not council-run) hostel and we had strict fire safety standards. We had to carry out a thorough checklist every week. I am disgusted at how terrible the fire safety seems to be in some council-run housing.

I hope this awful event means that the entire council housing safety standards are overhauled, if that means that tower blocks have to be ripped down and rebuilt then they should do it.
 
Liz said:
It's so awful, I can't stop thinking about it. I was wondering if it was being reported on outside of the UK. I hope some heads roll over this, it wont bring anyone back but itll certainly help stop it happening again.
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This tragedy has been well-covered. I sometimes listen to a commercial talk/news radio station and it has been mentioned every day since it happened, including the large protests afterwards about how it might have been prevented.


Moll Flanders said:
Sky news are saying that now there are 58 people missing and presumed dead.

I think this is one of the worst tragedies that has ever happened here in my lifetime. When I saw the image of the burning tower in the early morning when it happened I first thought it was another terror attack. I'm honestly trying to push the idea of the people screaming at the windows out of my mind.....
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So am I.
 
It's so horrible and we have had so many terrible things happen to the UK in a short space of time, there was the Manchester attack which was horrifying enough with the kids and young women being killed. In London we have had the Westminster attack, the Borough market attack and now this fire. It's too much.
 
Moll Flanders said:
It's so horrible and we have had so many terrible things happen to the UK in a short space of time, there was the Manchester attack which was horrifying enough with the kids and young women being killed. In London we have had the Westminster attack, the Borough market attack and now this fire. It's too much.
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Hard times, indeed. I suspect that all of this coming on top of a year's worth of uncertainty and angst related to Brexit makes it all the more difficult to bear.
 
Interesting to see that the local Grenfell action group had a blog and they were contantly complaining about fire safety and eventually did a blog saying that they had pretty much given up and nothing would change until there was a catastrophic fire.

Does anyone know how the fire started?
 
It really is a horrible, horrible incident. The thought that children were trapped in there, whole families died in their homes, ... I could go on. And what a horrible way to go. Words truly can't convey the sadness.
 
Jamie in Chile said:
Interesting to see that the local Grenfell action group had a blog and they were contantly complaining about fire safety and eventually did a blog saying that they had pretty much given up and nothing would change until there was a catastrophic fire.

Does anyone know how the fire started?
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The day after, I read a news report that said one of the survivors had said his fridge exploded and that started it, but as far as I know, that hasn't been confirmed.
 
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