This looks grim

[Gob]

A huge fire has engulfed a tower block in Latimer Road, west London, with images suggesting the flames have spread to all 24 storeys.



The fire at Grenfell Tower on the Lancaster West Estate was reported at 01:16 BST and about 200 firefighters are tackling the blaze.

The Metropolitan Police said "an evacuation process is under way".

The BBC's Andy Moore said the whole tower block was alight and there are fears the building might collapse.

The London Fire Brigade say 40 fire engines have been sent to the tower.

Eyewitnesses say they could see lights - thought to be torches - flashing at the top of the block of flats, which people say is "close to burning through".

Forty fire engines and 200 firefighters are tackling the blaze

George Clarke, the presenter of Amazing Spaces, told Radio 5 Live: "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."

[BoSoxGal]

[RayThom]

That's somewhere around the Notting Hill area. A very nice neighborhood by standards.

I wonder if it will be determined to be terrorism by arson?

Covered live:

[Lord Jim]

Just turned on BBC World News...

Regardless of the cause, it looks like an horrific catastrophe...

[BoSoxGal]

That's going to be a big death toll and possibly the building will collapse. When I clicked on the story at the bottom of the page were links to older stories about tower block fires in London and especially a case a few years ago that killed 6 and after which there were calls for fire safety checks in such buildings because many of the fire safety measures in that building had been thwarted by the building's owners/managers.

I would never live in a highrise if I could avoid it. When I moved in with my cousins I paid to have their very aged fire alarms replaced with top quality smoke/CO detectors; just the night before last when I got a craving for late night popcorn and burnt it, I set off the alarms and woke the whole house - but we all agreed it was comforting to know how excellently the detectors worked and that there was NO sleeping through them, super loud blaring and a voice shouting 'evacuate, evacuate!'

This is so sad; when will London get a break from tragedy?

[Gob]

More information...

[BoSoxGal]

"The whole landing was thick with smoke. The smoke alarms weren't going off but the way it spread so quickly from the fourth floor, all the way up to the 23rd floor was scary."

Some Jobsworth somewhere needs to hang over this incompetence! No fucking smoke alarms working in a 24 floor residential building?!

Jesus Christ those poor, poor people.

[rubato]

Frightening tragedy. Most of the building appears to have burned.

The link said it was refurbished in 2016. Didn't they require sprinklers, alarms, &c? Did they not work? ??

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

In the gulf states there have been several high-rise fires where the layer of foam insulation under the Al cladding catches fire and the flames race up the outside of the building. It looks like this is what is being described here:

"Six minutes it took for the fire to reach six floors above the fourth," where she said it seemed to have begun. "All you could hear was people screaming 'help,' and you could see flashlights because it was dark. You could see flashlights from the windows showing that people were still at home. People were screaming, banging on the windows," she told CBS.

Another witness told Sky News that the "fire climbed up the side of the building ... as if it was paper. It flew up. It was horrifying."

Fire safety expert Dr. Angus Law put out a statement saying, "early media reports suggest that this event has similarities with other fires that have occurred recently around the world; it appears that the external cladding has significantly contributed to the spread of the fire at Grenfell Tower."

Slideshow by photo services

The building's external cladding was installed as part of a massive refurbishment completed by the company Rydon in May 2016, the handling of which residents had also complained about.

how did that get approved years after several buildings in the gulf have gone up like torches; although the damage there has been mostly external.

yrs,
rubato

[Daisy]

I haven't even got the words to describe how livid I am by this... wholly fucking preventable.

[Jarlaxle]

How old was the building?

[dales]

I heard that it was constructed in the 1970's.

[BoSoxGal]

12 known dead

65 rescued by firefighters

Several hundred reside in the tower.


The math is horrifying to contemplate.



So it turns out that in the end, all this fuss about terror attacks and yet corporate greed and bureaucratic incompetence combined continue to kill many more people than terrorism could ever aspire to.

[RayThom]

Sniff... sniff... what's that smell?

LAWSUITS!!!
https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/

Ah, the ol' "Lipstick On The Pig" Renovation

[Guinevere]

I've seen several links via FB to articles that state safety requirements for multi-unit buildings were not pushed forward because of Tory landlords blocking the legislation. I hope that's not really true, but don't have the time to verify or research further. I'm linking one such article, as an example, but I don't know anything about the "source."

https://politicalscrapbook.net/2017/06/ ... abitation/

Daisy, any info to add?

[rubato]

from 2015 a fire in bahrain you can see that it is racing up the outside of the building which is covered with aluminum over insulation cladding:




2-21-2015 The Torch towere in Dubai also had a fire race up the outside of the building which I believe was also covered with aluminum over insulation cladding. No casualties:



Dubai marina tower, fire races up the outside of the building again and also appears to be covered with aluminum over insulation cladding.
July 2016




And from a story dated 2013 multiple fires:

Fears of a "towering inferno" disaster in the Gulf are growing after fires left residential buildings heavily damaged in the United Arab Emirates cities of Sharjah and Dubai.

The Arab Gulf states are home to some of the most spectacular high-rise towers in the world. But some building experts say that many of those towers are sheathed in a highly flammable material that puts occupants at risk.

One expert in the UAE has estimated that 70% of the high-rise buildings there have panel facade cladding made of a combustible thermoplastic core held between two sheets of aluminium.

When the panel ignites, fire spreads rapidly, racing to the top of the building and sending flaming debris hurtling to the streets below. "Like a Roman candle" is how one observer described it.

The initial cause of the fire can be something as simple as a discarded cigarette butt or a charcoal barbecue left unattended on a balcony.

A fire at the Al Hafeet Tower in Sharjah on 23 April was eerily similar to a blaze that gutted the Tamweel Tower in Dubai last November. And the 40-storey Al Tayer tower in Sharjah also suffered a similar fate in April 2012.

In all three cases fire roared up the sides of the building as individual panels ignited and burst into flame. No deaths were reported from any of the fires.

"[The facades] are good-looking, long-lasting and easy to maintain, but they have one big problem - they burn rapidly," Thom Bohlen, of the Dubai-based Middle East Centre for Sustainable Development, told the BBC.

This problem is so well known and for so long that any building authority who approved it to be installed in 2016 was clearly negligent. In the Gulf fires there were few or no casualties because the construction prevented the fire in many cases from penetrating the buildings. There were other safety issues inside the building in this case, lack of alarms, flammable debris, and apparently no sprinklers (which is shocking by itself).


yrs,
rubato

[Guinevere]

No fire alarms, smoke detectors, or sprinklers? In 2017. Horrifying.

http://tuckered.co.uk/2017/06/14/no-fir ... s-in-2017/

[Gob]

It had fire alarms and sprinklers.

[Guinevere]

The BBC says it did not have sprinklers. And it certainly didn't have working fire alarms.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40284233

Also:

Rydon said it was "shocked to hear of the devastating fire" adding that the work "met all required building control, fire regulation and health & safety standards".

It later issued a new statement, removing the previous mention of the building meeting fire regulation standards, instead saying the project met "all required building regulations".

Weasels.

More here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40276900

[oldr_n_wsr]

So, were sprinklers and alarms mandatory in a renovation? Only in new construction? Not at all?
Conflicting reports. Building conformed to "all required building regulations", what does that mean?
My thoughts and prayers are with the victims.