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Grenfell Tower fire disaster


DonPeffers

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Sincere condolences to the friends and family of those who have perished in a horrible way and hoping those in hospital can recover.

If there are any other tower blocks with the same construction and exterior cladding it would be prudent to move everyone out NOW and not wait 5 years for a public enquiry.

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That rain screen cladding is an obvious problem but as Mr Peffers says above, the first priority is to look after all those directly involved.

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Its taken until today ( saw him on the news) that a client of ours survived, but he was late home and saw the fire start, so raced to the 10th floor to get his family out.I really didnt want to call him at the time , as thinking on the 10th floor was bordeline . One of my engineers lives 100 yrds from the block. Believes so far he has 4 funerals :(. He says that the accounted dead are just the ones that jumped to their deaths, which he witnessed. He thinks that most above the 12th perished in there. I hope to god he is wrong, but he was there to witness helplessly everything as it happened that night. It should never happen in this modern day. So, so unbelievably sad. 

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Desperate times and really really sad.

I was involved as a building safety lead about 20 years ago in a data centre, we had a company train us on evacuation, the consultant chappie was ex-royal marine and his messages have never left me, all about having an exit plan for every situation. Sounds OTT but every hotel I stop in I walk the fire route from my room so I/we know the way out came in handy last year when I was in San Jose on business and at 3am the an A/C unit was alight on the roof of the hotel about staying calm as those around you are running around in blind panic ... 

Everyone should have a plan for a fire at home and have at least 1 escape route and you all should know it ... 

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And with planning for a fire at home everyone should have a home fire extinguisher.

We think about it for the car but not always for the home. Many years ago had a small kitchen fire and had to run to the car to get the extinguisher; now have home extinguishers.

 

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its horrific and only going to get worse.

 

I donated again to the just giving page today and am going to forgo some beers or so as those people have nothing now.

wish I could help in a better way but im not sure how and I think this is the least we could do. I would encourage others to do the same.

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3 hours ago, dpeffers said:

And with planning for a fire at home everyone should have a home fire extinguisher.

We think about it for the car but not always for the home. Many years ago had a small kitchen fire and had to run to the car to get the extinguisher; now have home extinguishers.

 

Same here, extinguishers in the house.  Of course, that might be coloured by the fact that I lost everything at age 12 when the family house burned down in 30 minutes just after Christmas due to an electrical fault.  No one hurt thank goodness, but it's a hell of a shock to be fine one minute and homeless half an hour later with nothing but the clothes on your back.

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http://metro.co.uk/2017/06/16/30000-buildings-in-uk-are-covered-in-the-same-cladding-as-grenfell-tower-6713539/

Would you feel safe sleeping in one of those?   Only if I slept with a parachute on my back.

£5,000 saved on renovation by using cheaper, more combustible cladding foam but a £25 million building now destroyed and many lives lost.

Seems Mrs May would not meet the public after the Grenfell Tower fire because HER safety could not be guaranteed.

No guarantees of safety for occupants.

Grenfell Tower was built in the same year (1974) the film The Towering Inferno was released--how sadly ironic.

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Burning to death has to be the worst ever. Especially when you can see it coming... words really can't convey the level of sympathy I have...

When it comes to the response, personally I don't want a handwringing pat on the back media opportunity. I want my leaders to crack on getting stuff done.

To that extent and I have no political axes to grind, giving the government a hard time now is not appropriate. 

If however they have been complicit in allowing poor building codes, then let loose the dogs of war.

Actions not platitudes please...

I'm struggling to believe it was only £5k difference to get the fire proof cladding. But even if it was £55k and somebody cut that corner, there is a bag of wire wool and another of rock salt waiting for them...

I do think the instant information internet generation does have false expectations as to how quickly information can be released. I fear some victims will only be identified by dental records once all the dust has settled. 

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Such dreadful news and needless loss of considerable life.

I had a firemen pop in to the shop today and informed me they expected the death toll to be well into treble digits but the'rekeeping it hush hush at the moment for some reasons .........

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7 hours ago, MrPoseidon said:

Such dreadful news and needless loss of considerable life.

I had a firemen pop in to the shop today and informed me they expected the death toll to be well into treble digits but the'rekeeping it hush hush at the moment for some reasons .........

There has been a fair bit of speculative suggestion that the death toll has been suppressed. It had even been suggested on social media that a 'D' notice had been served on the press. Unless the press have conspired to lie, this is not so - the Telegraph, at least, said yesterday that no such action had occurred. It seems to be part of a hijacking exercise by certain groups. Death tolls are always wildly understated all around the world in these circumstances because until there is certainty on numbers it would be wrong to issue guesswork figures. I suspect that your fireman has been mislead. Why would any authority want to suppress what is obvious to any one who can see a that a building with x flats per floor and y floors gutted is going to be a terrible toll? Both central government and the LA have been criticised heavily already and the discovery that there was a conspiracy of silence would not aid their causes. There's an agenda here...

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We do seem to be being drip fed the bad news ie. 17 confirmed dead, then a day later 30 then 50 then 70.

Perhaps the powers that be feared a major riot if the true death toll was announced soon after the fire. One resident on TV said there were 600 people in the flats so how hard can it be to register survivors who escaped the fire, plus the number known to have died, plus those being treated in hospital then add on those who have declared themselves safe (as were away from the Tower on the night of the fire) thus giving a grand total of residents accounted for.

When this number is deducted from the total number of residents on the Council's records the net figure is the total missing (presumed dead).

The figure could increase if friends had stayed over and died in the Tower but were not on residency records.

 

 

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6 hours ago, Man On The Clapham Omnibus said:

There has been a fair bit of speculative suggestion that the death toll has been suppressed. It had even been suggested on social media that a 'D' notice had been served on the press. Unless the press have conspired to lie, this is not so - the Telegraph, at least, said yesterday that no such action had occurred. It seems to be part of a hijacking exercise by certain groups. Death tolls are always wildly understated all around the world in these circumstances because until there is certainty on numbers it would be wrong to issue guesswork figures. I suspect that your fireman has been mislead. Why would any authority want to suppress what is obvious to any one who can see a that a building with x flats per floor and y floors gutted is going to be a terrible toll? Both central government and the LA have been criticised heavily already and the discovery that there was a conspiracy of silence would not aid their causes. There's an agenda here...

There certainly seems to be an Agenda from certain Political parties to score points which given the scale of lives lost does them no credit at this stage. Especially when so little real facts are "known to be true" 

As to suppressing the number so of deaths, it's possibly down to actually having to prove without any doubt that someone is dead. Otherwise they are just missing, imagine the media uproar if they said the number was 100, gave a list and then 5 people walked back onto the scene. The Emergency Services will have a procedure to go through, doubt it's any more sinister than that.

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This is a terrible event and one which should never have happened. I have many problems with all this is one  the way that a certain person has made political capital out of a tragedy. Encouraging people to occupy buildings, etc May has lost control of her party her advisors and the media and more importantly the emergency and how people are treated.

I have no doubt that an investigation will find a number of people responsible for this, the Council officer who signed it off, the housing association who appear to have ignored warning signs, the fire standards that have allegedly not been broken but then again they might have been if Hammond is right. The contractors are also in for a hard time. Jail sentences should be lengthy for those found guilty.

The survivors should have immediately been housed in hotels, without doubt but what is the long term future? You cannot suddenly find the housing for that many people in that area, simply not possible, unless you do as Corbyn wants and seize others property. So this is an ongoing issue to deal with.

It has been spun as it was only done to improve the looks because the rich did not like seeing the block, which is not true it was done to insulate amongst many things,but lets not get into that.

As for the number of people, the problem is I fear no one knows how many. They know how many was on the rent books etc, but there appears to be stories of lots of extra guests being there who possibly should not have been in there for what ever reason. They will only know when they count up the remains and I suspect many will never be identified.

I cannot believe that Khan and May have not pulled in all the specialist fire teams from around the country already so they can each work a floor at a time and get the bodies counted and cleared out. Then there is talk of this taking two - three years to investigate and only when all the inquests have been held will they make the findings public!! This needs doing much quicker but with the same accuracy otherwise there will be no end for those who lost loved ones and the guilty will be outside too long.

Grenfell needs to come down quickly and build good quality social housing to replace what was there with none of the usual penny pinching. Take the money from overseas aid to pay for it. And if it is found that a lot of others need to come down as well then so be it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                All the political parties should stop trying to score points and deal with this like a first world country not some tin pot back water and get a grip on what is needed. Once again our emergency services showed what a back bone is and performed above and beyond. Interestingly I read today that if the fire fighters had followed the  H&S procedures as laid down they would not have saved as many as they did, makes you think doesn't it.

Those who died, those who survived, those who attended from the emergency  services deserve answers and straight ones as soon as is possible.

                                                                                                                                                       

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