Grenfell Tower fire in North Kensington - news and discussion

[scifisam]

Teresa May says "lessons will be learned".

Yuck.

Worse - she said "If there are any lessons to be learned they will be, and action will be taken," leaving open the possibility of doing fuck all. If there are lessons to be learned, FFS. And 8pm till she said anything.

 

[Wilf]

just how the fuck ...

Britain First Provoke Muslims Helping Grenfell Fire Families Outside East London Mosque | HuffPost UK

ghouls. just money grubbing ghouls.

But if you go on beyond that, there's some brilliant clips of people getting it sorted, supporting each other.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

Think it was a member of the London Assembly

It's a wonder someone didn't knock his fuckin lights out tbh!

 

[Pickman's model]

A shame someone didn't knock his fuckin lights out tbh!

Not just his lights

 

[1927]

There was a good article (independent I think?) that I read earlier that said if there were gaps between the cladding and insulation or other materials, and there is a fire behind the cladding panels, then the chimney effect may have come into play.

Another London disaster, the Kings Cross fire of 1987, led to the discovery of the trench effect during fires on steeply inclined surfaces. I am not a fire specialist but there may be some overlap between the two mechanisms, especially if flashover was involved.

I think that is very plausible. I know if a fire on a construction site, I lecture in civstructuin health and safety, where a plumber was brazing a pipe passing through a walk for an outside tap, the heat from the copper pipe ignited the aluminium backibgbon Kibgsoan and it burnt I. The cavity wall. The chimney effect , or more correctly convection, caused fire to spread to roof space and the 3 storey block of flats was totally lost!

 

[SpookyFrank]

Worse - she said "If there are any lessons to be learned they will be, and action will be taken," leaving open the possibility of doing fuck all. If there are lessons to be learned, FFS. And 8pm till she said anything.

TBF her version of 'doing something' would probably be to send a van full of goons to check the immigration status of the poor souls huddled outside in their slippers.

 

[Orang Utan]

It's a wonder someone didn't knock his fuckin lights out tbh!

If he had said it today, I'm sure they would have

 

[not-bono-ever]

Need action on this. No more treating people like unwanted surplus. No fucking more. Going home now still furious and pissed. Fuckers

 

[equationgirl]

I Know none of this analysis brings them back. I'd perhaps hoped that authorities had learned after incidents like King's Cross and lakanal, amongst others but clearly not.

How many of the poor and vulnerable in society have to die before action is taken?

 

[Mr.Bishie]

If he had said it today, I'm sure they would have

I did wonder if that was from today!!

 

[DaveCinzano]

Absolutely. But right now, there are hundreds of destitute, bereaved, traumatised people - and but for these spontaneous, autonomous acts, they would have nothing, be nowhere. And everyone knows this. No one will forget.

Case in point: the Westway Sport & Leisure Centre, run not by the council but by the Westway Trust, has turned itself into a dormitory shelter for up to three hundred people, mostly refugees from the buildings around Grenfell Tower displaced by debris and ash or else ordered to evacuate for safety reasons.



Stocked entirely by donations, staffed entirely by volunteers, not because it was anyone's job, but because it is everyone's responsibility; not to let the state or crap companies or weak regulators off the hook, but because that could be me, because it is the right thing to do, because I don't know what else to do, because we are Londoners, because Christian or Muslim or Sikh or Jew or anarchist or socialist or just an ordinary neighbour, because JUST BECAUSE.

Because Theresa May sure as shit isn't going to be putting anyone up for the night.

 

[Wilf]

Worse - she said "If there are any lessons to be learned they will be, and action will be taken," leaving open the possibility of doing fuck all. If there are lessons to be learned, FFS. And 8pm till she said anything.

Earlier on, when Butchers raised the Hillborough parallel, I mentally wondered whether someone would come out with the 'lessons will be learned' line. Didn't post it because I thought even the monsters who run out world have acquired enough faux emotional intelligence to avoid anything so crass.

 

[Wilf]

Need action on this. No more treating people like unwanted surplus. No fucking more. Going home now still furious and pissed. Fuckers

Stay mad mate.

 

[Orang Utan]

I did wonder if that was from today!!

That was from when he was mayor

 

[ElizabethofYork]

Good mate of mine works for LFS. He sent me this earlier. Spoiler tags cos I don't think everyone wants to read it.

Spoiler: Graphic

We had the fire investigation lady in the office before - she'd been doing an aerial survey of the building to spot any survivors and try and judge if it was safe to send teams back in.

She said there were dozens of bodies on the roof where people had tried to get away from the fire and been overcome by the smoke.
Those poor people.

Shit. Shit.

 

[Buckaroo]

Is there any info on how and where the fire started?

 

[bi0boy]

Is there any info on how and where the fire started?

Only rumours, a fridge

 

[weltweit]

Is there any info on how and where the fire started?

I heard someone on the radio claim a washing machine caught fire.
But I don't know how credible that story was.
Oh eta might have been a fridge indeed..

 

[1927]

I know the USA isn't held in the greatest esteem in these boards, but it would have been admirable if say Earls Court had cancelled everything for the next couple of weeks to provide shelter fir those made homeless, in The way that the Dome in New Orleans did after Katrina. I know it's a different situation, but it needs a venue in a massive scale to assist people. Not ideal to be sleeping in an exhibition hall, but it's something.

 

[DaveCinzano]

The absence of the council on the street as hundreds of families were homeless was concerning, said Judith Bakeman, a Labour councillor at Kensington and Chelsea. “There’s been so many cuts, there aren’t enough people to deal with this.”
Referring to Notting Hill Methodist church’s Rev Mike Long, she said: “Mike has been running this centre giving people food and water all day and not a single person from the council has been here.”

As we spoke, a volunteer from the Harrow Club and Latimer AP Academy, came to tell the councillor she had 138 beds available. He said that no one official had been to the centre and he didn’t know what to do with that information.

London fire: Twelve confirmed dead but police expect further fatalities after tower block blaze – latest updates

 

[agricola]

I Know none of this analysis brings them back. I'd perhaps hoped that authorities had learned after incidents like King's Cross and lakanal, amongst others but clearly not.

How many of the poor and vulnerable in society have to die before action is taken?

TBH lessons were learned after the Kings Cross fire, and the Underground is much safer as a result.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I know the USA isn't held in the greatest esteem in these boards, but it would have been admirable if say Earls Court had cancelled everything for the next couple of weeks to provide shelter fir those made homeless, in The way that the Dome in New Orleans did after Katrina. I know it's a different situation, but it needs a venue in a massive scale to assist people. Not ideal to be sleeping in an exhibition hall, but it's something.

New Orleans superdome maybe not the best example here. Read up on it, it's an excellent case study in how not to deal with evacuees from a disaster area.

 

[campanula]

So a Beko fridge...or a Whirlpool washer - both articles have had recalls for substandard or dangerous manufacturing...and yet, they carry on producing cheap dangerous crap, seemingly without sanction.

 

[phillm]

The hateful Katie Hopkins like a stopped clock is right at least twice a day. Couldn't agree more with her polemic.

KATIE HOPKINS: Jail those to blame for the Grenfell fire | Daily Mail Online

This is corporate manslaughter on a scale we have never seen in our lifetime, where the lives of ordinary people were considered incidental to the career and salary advancement of the few.

A grubby trail of lies, deceit, cost-cutting and backhanders are likely to be uncovered. I can almost smell them out here on the street between the bits of building strewn about the floor.

Somebody needs to go to jail.

All the executive team should serve time inside and see what life is like when you are nothing, have nothing, and your voice counts for nothing.

But none of it will change this reality. It won't change this horrible thing and it won't make it better.

They are all dead.

Latest estimates say 12 confirmed dead; locals say you can easily add a zero to that.

Now we’re listening! How pathetic we are. How cruel.

Sadiq Khan will tell us 'lessons have been learned' and that 'changes will be made'. He's good at this scripted sh*t.

Right now, to these people I am with, that means nothing. Their anger is real and it’s justified.

I am angry with them.

It is time some people were made to pay

 

[scifisam]

Katie fucking Hopkins is on the scene? Haven't these people suffered enough? I mean that seriously, not as a joke - someone that manipulative and sociopathic should not be allowed near suffering people.

 

[Buckaroo]

So a Beko fridge...or a Whirlpool washer - both articles have had recalls for substandard or dangerous manufacturing...and yet, they carry on producing cheap dangerous crap, seemingly without sanction.

Maybe but the cheap, dangerous crap are the people responsible for contracting out fire safety and ignoring residents' concerns.

 

[maomao]

The hateful Katie Hopkins like a stopped clock is right at least twice a day. Couldn't agree more with her polemic.

KATIE HOPKINS: Jail those to blame for the Grenfell fire | Daily Mail Online

This is corporate manslaughter on a scale we have never seen in our lifetime, where the lives of ordinary people were considered incidental to the career and salary advancement of the few.

A grubby trail of lies, deceit, cost-cutting and backhanders are likely to be uncovered. I can almost smell them out here on the street between the bits of building strewn about the floor.

Somebody needs to go to jail.

All the executive team should serve time inside and see what life is like when you are nothing, have nothing, and your voice counts for nothing.

But none of it will change this reality. It won't change this horrible thing and it won't make it better.

They are all dead.

Latest estimates say 12 confirmed dead; locals say you can easily add a zero to that.

Now we’re listening! How pathetic we are. How cruel.

Sadiq Khan will tell us 'lessons have been learned' and that 'changes will be made'. He's good at this scripted sh*t.

Right now, to these people I am with, that means nothing. Their anger is real and it’s justified.

I am angry with them.

It is time some people were made to pay

She's wrong. She's itching for a scapegoat from the management company. This is a political disaster, a direct result of the tabloids and the Tories' war on health and safety and red tape. Political heads should roll. Don't be taken in by her anger, she's never been right in her life.

 

[magneze]

Who gives a shit what she thinks?

 

[agricola]

I suppose you would have got good odds on Sadiq Khan being named in that diatribe.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

She's wrong. She's itching for a scapegoat from the management company. This is a political disaster, a direct result of the tabloids and the Tories' war on health and safety and red tape. Political heads should roll. Don't be taken in by her anger, she's never been right in her life.

Yeah. She wants a nice simple culprit and deal with them and everything back to normal. The people who are angry about the cladding and the fire service cuts and the council ignoring them and tying it into a whole climate of "fuck you" are the ones who know what's going on.