Tower block on fire in London

[Mee]

I don't actually see this as being a class issue but an issue with building standards. There will be "luxury" apartments up and down the country clad with this material.

The refurb that happened recently in the building was £8.7 million. They just appear to have inexplicable stuck the equivalent of firelighters to the outside of the building to save a grand total of 5k.

[Mox]

24 minutes ago, Mee said:

I don't actually see this as being a class issue but an issue with building standards. There will be "luxury" apartments up and down the country clad with this material.

The refurb that happened recently in the building was £8.7 million. They just appear to have inexplicable stuck the equivalent of firelighters to the outside of the building to save a grand total of 5k.

I think it is ultimately a class issue without a doubt. I worked for a housing association in Westminster for five years and there is undoubtedly an element of social housing tenants that live within these extremely rich areas that are seen as nothing but a burden on these councils and housing associations. 

Whether there are luxury apartments that do have the same claddings on their buildings is really neither here nor there, the social housing tenants have been forgotten about and treated as second class citizens in their own city and i think that is where the real anger comes from. Housing associations in London in particular don't operate in the way in which they were traditionally set up to help the poorest and most vulnerable in society, they've been sucked into to trying to make as much money as possible, all within the backdrop of cuts, which have fallen on the social housing tenants and not those who own town houses and luxury apartments round the corner.

The whole thing is an utter travesty of gargantuan proportions of which we may never see the likes again. Ultimately, over the last number of years, the under class, the working class in London have basically been programmed to accept that they are the ones who have to suffer as a result of austerity etc and incidents like this are maybe the wake up call they need to show that they do not need to accept this and possibly the only way to display their frustration and anger is by taking to the streets and demanding change. 

Edit: Just to add, if the residents of One Hyde Park had arranged for a petition and written a blog outlining their concerns about fire safety and the potential for a real disaster to occur resulting in huge loss of life, you can be certain Kensington and Chelsea would have a representative round their on Monday morning assuring the residents that they would investigate their concerns ASAP. That didn't and won't happen when social housing tenants raise the same issues and that is why it is a class issue. 

 

Edited June 16, 2017 by Mox

[northernscum]

This £2 a sheet differential in the cladding spec just doesn't ring true to me. Even standard plasterboard and the heat resistant equivalent has more than a £2 price difference per "8x4" sheet.

I just don't see what massive spec differences they could ensure for that amount?

[sbcmfc]

8 hours ago, northernscum said:

This £2 a sheet differential in the cladding spec just doesn't ring true to me. Even standard plasterboard and the heat resistant equivalent has more than a £2 price difference per "8x4" sheet.

I just don't see what massive spec differences they could ensure for that amount?

The expert I heard said a "less flammable" version was £2 more.

Not necessarily fireproof, but that makes a good headline.

Shouldve stuck with Asbestos. ?

[ParisInAKilt]

This is both a class and political issue. Shameful what's happened and will need a thorough independent enquiry to find all responsible. 

[Toepoke]

10 hours ago, Mox said:

I think it is ultimately a class issue without a doubt. I worked for a housing association in Westminster for five years and there is undoubtedly an element of social housing tenants that live within these extremely rich areas that are seen as nothing but a burden on these councils and housing associations. 

Whether there are luxury apartments that do have the same claddings on their buildings is really neither here nor there, the social housing tenants have been forgotten about and treated as second class citizens in their own city and i think that is where the real anger comes from. Housing associations in London in particular don't operate in the way in which they were traditionally set up to help the poorest and most vulnerable in society, they've been sucked into to trying to make as much money as possible, all within the backdrop of cuts, which have fallen on the social housing tenants and not those who own town houses and luxury apartments round the corner.

The whole thing is an utter travesty of gargantuan proportions of which we may never see the likes again. Ultimately, over the last number of years, the under class, the working class in London have basically been programmed to accept that they are the ones who have to suffer as a result of austerity etc and incidents like this are maybe the wake up call they need to show that they do not need to accept this and possibly the only way to display their frustration and anger is by taking to the streets and demanding change. 

Edit: Just to add, if the residents of One Hyde Park had arranged for a petition and written a blog outlining their concerns about fire safety and the potential for a real disaster to occur resulting in huge loss of life, you can be certain Kensington and Chelsea would have a representative round their on Monday morning assuring the residents that they would investigate their concerns ASAP. That didn't and won't happen when social housing tenants raise the same issues and that is why it is a class issue. 

 

Interesting post. I read earlier that half the population of Kensington and Chelsea earn below £30k pa, the other half earn on average over £200k!

 

[sbcmfc]

I suppose it was a class issue that they did the work on that tower so it would look nicer and be less of an eye sore for the rich people.

[Mark frae Crieff]

1 hour ago, ParisInAKilt said:

This is both a class and political issue. Shameful what's happened and will need a thorough independent enquiry to find all responsible. 

Heard legal people on radio this morning stating that there has to be inquests as an inquiry has no input from the families but all the parameters are lead from Government. They also said that there can be no such thing as it being independent. 

I may be a tad cynical but the speed that an independent inquiry was muted by HM Government makes me a tad suspicious. 

All you need do is look where inquiries have got people and i will use Hillsbourgh as a good model. It was an inquest and not a inquiry that got to the truth , lets hope the timescales are quicker. 

[aaid]

2 hours ago, Mark frae Crieff said:

Heard legal people on radio this morning stating that there has to be inquests as an inquiry has no input from the families but all the parameters are lead from Government. They also said that there can be no such thing as it being independent. 

I may be a tad cynical but the speed that an independent inquiry was muted by HM Government makes me a tad suspicious. 

All you need do is look where inquiries have got people and i will use Hillsbourgh as a good model. It was an inquest and not a inquiry that got to the truth , lets hope the timescales are quicker. 

There will have to be inquests regardless, in England there are automatically inquests into any sudden or unexplained death.  As regards Hillsborough, it was the second set of inquests that got to the truth, the first set of inquests in 1989 didn't.

[scoobydoo]

apparently a 100% failure rate of all tower cladding so far in all the other towers that have been tested.

[Toepoke]

13 minutes ago, scoobydoo said:

apparently a 100% failure rate of all tower cladding so far in all the other towers that have been tested.

An absolute scandal that's going to cost millions to sort.

Fortunately we don't seem to have been as badly affected in Scotland.

 

[ParisInAKilt]

44 minutes ago, Toepoke said:

Fortunately we don't seem to have been as badly affected in Scotland.

 

strange thing to say 

[Toepoke]

21 minutes ago, ParisInAKilt said:

strange thing to say 

How so?  It seems thanks to tighter building regulations the cladding in question hasn't been used up here to the same widespread extent.

 

[mariokempes56]

After Scottish fires a few years back the Scottish regulations were tightened,

 

Seemingly Westminster ignored similar reports / warning over a number of years.

[scoobydoo]

3 hours ago, scoobydoo said:

apparently a 100% failure rate of all tower cladding so far in all the other towers that have been tested.

Now confirmed as 137 towers in 41 councils areas. All failed. A disgrace. It would be interesting to see the comparison with private builds.

 

It could be a summer of discontent.

[thplinth]

Was it the Tottenham riots the last one where you had folk going around torching buildings deliberately.

Well since then I understand the Tories slashed the fire services in London and also the police. Really big cuts. So when (not if) it does kick off I am thinking they could lose control of the situation. Sure you cold always bring in the army if goes real bad but the political damage will be immense. Goodbye Tories Hello Jeremy. Maybe that is why the death toll is still so 'low'. Stop it kicking off now. Lilly Allen accused the government of Gaslighting the community I saw.

[scoobydoo]

1 minute ago, thplinth said:

Was it the Tottenham riots the last one where you had folk going around torching buildings deliberately.

Well since then I understand the Tories slashed the fire services in London and also the police. Really big cuts. So when (not if) it does kick off I am thinking they could lose control of the situation. Sure you cold always bring in the army if goes real bad but the political damage will be immense. Goodbye Tories Hello Jeremy. Maybe that is why the death toll is still so 'low'. Stop it kicking off now. Lilly Allen accused the government of Gaslighting the community I saw.

I read that the final death won't be known until next year. possibly due to the forensics needing the whole building isolated and plastic sheeted. It is probably going to be horrific.
 

I think people might be a bit reluctant to go about torching buildings with all the armed polis and SAS roaming the streets but overall the potential for conflict is huge down there.

[thplinth]

4 hours ago, scoobydoo said:

I read that the final death won't be known until next year. possibly due to the forensics needing the whole building isolated and plastic sheeted. It is probably going to be horrific.
I think people might be a bit reluctant to go about torching buildings with all the armed polis and SAS roaming the streets but overall the potential for conflict is huge down there.

As bad as the fire was it takes a lot to completely cremate a body. I don't understand why they are not able to give a rough but true figure now based on what they have seen even without full identification. Count the skulls FFS. They must have a ball park number at least.

[Toepoke]

So 300 grand was saved by changing cladding type from the kind specified in the plans...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40453054

 

[aaid]

15 hours ago, thplinth said:

As bad as the fire was it takes a lot to completely cremate a body. I don't understand why they are not able to give a rough but true figure now based on what they have seen even without full identification. Count the skulls FFS. They must have a ball park number at least.

There was a forensic pathologist on Victoria Derbyshire in the week, who I think is involved in the investigations.  

She was explaining the difficulties in firstly coming to an accurate busy count and then positively identifying victims.  It didn't sound like it was as simple as counting all the skulls.  She was talking about having to go through all the remains looking for any fragments that they could still get DNA from and then once you've done that you can work out how many different DNA samples you have and then you have a minimum number of fatalities.  It will only ever be a minimum though as there will be cases where no DNA could be obtained.  

Then even once you have the DNA sample you need to be able to match that to either something the person has used, such as a hairbrush or toothbrush - next to impossible given the circumstances - or from a relative.  In this case that's made more difficult because complete families will have been killed and in a lot of cases relatives will be in other countries. 

She said the only comparable example she could come up with was the Twin Towers on 9/11 where around 40% of victims have never been formally identified and while techniques and technology have advanced since then she was setting the expectation that not everyone would be positively identified. 

She was clear to state that 79 was a minimum and that that would rise which, tbf, is what the Police have been saying all along. 

[sbcmfc]

Surely they must have an idea of who is unaccounted for? Obviously they can't say exactly who was in the building, but they know who should have been there, and is unaccounted for.

Anyone who escaped, or wasn't home would've surely made themselves known by now, unless they were holidaying on the moon...

Likewise, you'd think people who disappeared off the face of the earth would've been noticed by employers, friends, teachers or family who didn't live in the tower.

[jailender]

There may also have been people in the tower who shouldn't have been there, or are in the country illegally, and don't want to be accounted for.

[sbcmfc]

28 minutes ago, jailender said:

There may also have been people in the tower who shouldn't have been there, or are in the country illegally, and don't want to be accounted for.

Or people perhaps upto their eyes in debt for example who are quite happy to disappear.

Regardless, it will be known that the number of fatalities is in a range of say 80-200. Normally that would be reported as "upto 200 feared dead" whereas we appear to be getting drip fed 68,79,80...

Edited June 30, 2017 by sbcmfc

[aaid]

22 minutes ago, sbcmfc said:

Or people perhaps upto their eyes in debt for example who are quite happy to disappear.

Regardless, it will be known that the number of fatalities is in a range of say 80-200. Normally that would be reported as "upto 200 feared dead" whereas we appear to be getting drip fed 68,79,80...

The police are in a no-win situation here. If they release an estimate number - which will be guesswork - then they'll be criticised for that.  If they do what they're doing and releasing facts that can be verified  as they are doing then they're accused of covering up.  In the past the Police - and the Met in particular- have been rightly criticised for putting out false or misleading information.  I think it's better that they release accurate rather than quick information.

I suspect they've actually formally identified very few victims. The number of 80 will most likely in the main be people they can verify were definitely in the tower at the time and are still unaccounted for.   

 

[scoobydoo]

If it was what it was like when i was there then I reckon some of those flats had about 10 people in them, and are probably sub-let a couple of times.

 

People don't turn up for work ever again all the time, and in the black economy in a place the size of london its probably not crossed bosses minds that their cash in hand employee has perished. Maybe it has and but they prefer to keep quiet, lest it opens a cans of worms for them.

 

As for people noticing you are missing, again it can be hard in such a large city, and the way society is now, for people to care if they never see someone you barely know again. Maybe you think they've moved on.

From that part of London you can get easily get to a huge number of places to work, socialise or whatever. Its not like much smaller places.