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Fire at Grenfell Tower in London Kills at Least 12 Fire at Grenfell Tower in London Kills at Least 12
(about 3 hours later)
LONDON — A fire transformed a high-rise apartment tower in West London into an inferno early Wednesday morning, sending at least 78 people to hospitals and raising fears that others might have been trapped inside. The Metropolitan Police said that 12 people had died and warned that the figure would almost certainly rise. LONDON — Adib Abbas, an observant Muslim, was preparing an early morning Ramadan meal in a ninth-floor apartment at Grenfell Tower when he suddenly smelled gas. On the same floor, Hanan Wahabi woke up and realized that something was terribly wrong. The night air had the stench of smoke and ash.
“In my 29 years of being a firefighter, I have never, ever seen anything of this scale,” said Dany Cotton, commissioner of the London Fire Brigade. From those terrifying moments, residents found themselves in a nightmare: Their 24-story building, with 120 apartments, was gutted by flames early Wednesday, in what authorities called London’s worst building fire in years.
By late afternoon, firefighters from all over London were still searching for victims and working to extinguish the remnants of the blaze, which was reported at 12:54 a.m. in Grenfell Tower, in the North Kensington area. A police commander, Stuart Cundy, called the fire London’s worst “in many, many years” and said it would be “a long operation” to locate and identify the victims. The high-rise, in the North Kensington section of West London, was left a charred and smoking ruin. At least 12 people were killed and 78 others were treated at six hospitals.
The fire was the latest tragedy in a country that has seen three deadly terrorist attacks since March, two in London and one in Manchester. The office of Prime Minister Theresa May said she was “deeply saddened” by the disaster and would convene a 4 p.m. meeting to coordinate the government’s response. For a country that has endured three terrorist attacks this year, and that is in the midst of political uncertainty after national elections produced a hung Parliament, the predawn blaze was another painful tragedy, raising pointed questions about whether the building was unsafe. Residents had complained about fire safety for several years, and experts were already questioning whether the materials used on the exterior of the building might have helped spread the flames.
At at 1 p.m. news conference — 12 hours after the fire broke out — Mayor Sadiq Khan confirmed that some residents were still missing. “If you are somebody who lives in the building and has left safely, please let us know you are safe,” he said. “Obviously, we want to make sure that everyone is accounted for.” Prime Minister Theresa May convened a meeting on Wednesday to coordinate the government’s response, as safety checks were ordered for other high-rise buildings. Beyond the dead and injured, firefighters rescued 65 people and announced that there were no more survivors.
Constructed in 1974, Grenfell Tower has 24 stories, with 120 apartments across 20 residential floors; it is owned by the local government and managed by an outside company. A refurbishment was completed last year. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but a tenant group had complained for years that the management company was inattentive and that the building was at risk of a deadly fire. Many people escaped down the staircases, but the authorities grimly predicted that the death toll would surely rise as bodies were found and identified.
Adib Abbas was visiting a cousin who lives on the ninth floor of the building. He said he was preparing a meal before their daily Ramadan fast when he smelled gas and then heard people in the floors below shouting. “In my 29 years of being a firefighter, I have never, ever seen anything of this scale,” said Dany Cotton, the commissioner of the London Fire Brigade.
“I opened the door and everyone was shouting ‘fire, fire, get back in,’” Mr. Abbas said. “Then a neighbor called my cousin and told us to wait for the Fire Brigade. We were terrified and thought about trying to get out the window. There were people dangling out the windows trying to get out.” The cause remained under investigation, though several residents say it started on the fourth floor and quickly spread to the top of the building with a ferocity and speed that stunned the 250 firefighters who responded.
“My cousin had his kids with him, and they started crying and screaming when the smoke started coming in. There was no way out, we were stuck, and no one was coming to help us,” Mr. Abbas added. “I don’t know how long it took, but it felt like ages before we got out. I could see people lying on the floor as we were being pulled out. I think a lot of people died. It’s a nightmare.” Their work was complicated by an active gas pipe — a utility was asked to shut it off — and by wreckage so dense that drones were deployed to analyze some of the hardest-to-reach areas of the building. Grenfell Tower was constructed in 1974 and underwent a renovation costing 10 million pounds, or $12.8 million, that was completed in May 2016.
The Fire Brigade said the flames had spread from the second floor to the top of the 24-story building; aerial photographs showed the charred, smoking ruins looming over West London. Experts pointed to the insulated aluminum cladding that was installed to the building’s exterior as part of the renovation as potentially problematic.
Forty fire trucks and more than 20 ambulances were sent to the scene. The London Ambulance Service said it had taken 68 patients to six hospitals, and that 10 others had gone on their own; 18 were in critical condition. Christopher Miers, the managing director of Probyn Miers, a forensic architecture firm that examines buildings that are defective or damaged by fire, noted that such cladding — typically consisting of aluminum sheets sandwiched over insulation — had been a factor in skyscraper blazes in the United Arab Emirates and China.
Alison Evans, who lives near Grenfell Tower, woke to the sounds of sirens and helicopters and watched flames engulf the building from a nearby street. The United States and Britain have tougher regulations on the potential flammability of internal material used in cladding, but other factors — like how panels are made and installed — could come into play, Mr. Miers said.
“It just kept burning and burning for hours, and for hours there were still people at the top of the building screaming for help,” she said. “It was hell to watch.” David King, a building engineer in Maidstone, England, said the cladding might have helped the blaze leap from floor to floor. “I’ve seen how the flames were coming out of the windows and going up the outside, so that’s one possible explanation,” he said.
At dawn, the blaze still burned brightly against the pale sky, with columns of thick black smoke ascending. Ashes filled the air, and small explosions could be heard as helicopters flew overhead. Firefighters on the ground trained hoses on the building. The police were extending their cordon around the building and pushing people back, apparently fearing that the tower could collapse. While police and fire officials said the investigation had just begun, a residents’ association, the Grenfell Action Group, noted that it had warned for years about fire hazards and what it called inattention by the local council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which owns the building, and by the company the council hired to manage the property.
Abdul Kadiri, who stood with his family watching the fire, said he heard sirens about 1:45 a.m. He said a friend who lived on the 15th floor of the tower had escaped. The group warned in 2013 that residents had “experienced a period of terrifying power surges that were subsequently found to have been caused by faulty wiring,” and that “our attempts to highlight the seriousness of this event were covered up” by the management company and the council.
“He was just so happy to be out of there,” Mr. Kadri said. “He was crying thinking of all the children that would have been asleep on the higher floors and probably weren’t able to get out.” In November, the group warned that the management company, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organization, had put the building at risk of “a serious fire.”
Another resident, Hanan Wahabi, said she had spoken by phone to her brother, who was on the 21st floor, and urged him to leave. But he said firefighters had told him to stay in place until he could be rescued. Since then, she had been unable to reach him. The council’s leader, Nicholas Paget-Brown, said on Wednesday that whether the refurbishment had been done appropriately would “need to be the subject of a separate investigation.”
“I have done a lot of crying,” she said. He added, “We need a thorough inquiry into why this fire started, why it spread so quickly and whether there was anything in place to slow down its progress.”
Meriam Antur was asleep on the 19th floor with her two children, her husband away, when she woke to the sound of sirens, followed by shouting in the corridors. When the renovation was announced in 2014, the management organization said in a statement that “residents of the tower have long had to put up with a substandard heating system and poor insulation,” and that a new heating system would allow them to set the temperature in their apartments.
When she opened her apartment door, Ms. Antur said, “my neighbors were running back and forth in the corridor shouting at each other. I didn’t understand until my friend came in and said we had to wait for the firemen and couldn’t go down.” On Wednesday, the company declined to respond to the resident association’s complaints, but it said in a statement, “The fire at Grenfell Tower is devastating and the reports of injury and losses of life absolutely heartbreaking.”
“It took so long, my children were crying, and I’m pregnant,” she said, clasping her belly. “I was so scared. I thought we were going to die.” Rydon, the construction company that carried out the renovation, said in a statement that the project had “met all required building control, fire regulation and health and safety standards.”
Paramedics led Ms. Antur and her children away to be checked at a hospital. In the background, a woman ran barefoot down the street in her nightgown, screaming the name Elsa. Ms. Antur’s cousin said it was a neighbor who could not find her 6-year-old daughter. As investigators began poring over building plans and inspection reports, the survivors of the fire had more immediate concerns: where to spend the night and how to begin rebuilding their lives. Throughout the morning, traumatized victims, some still in pajamas, showed up at reception centers for help.
Mohammed Bouya, who lives nearby, said he could hear people screaming for help from their windows. Firefighters told them to stay where they were, he said. “I looked out of the window, and the flames were rising up the building,” Ms. Wahabi, of the ninth floor, said a few hours after she had escaped. “The flames were unbelievable. Pieces of the exterior were breaking off. Cladding was flying through the air.”
Mr. Bouya said he heard a friend talking by telephone to his sister, who lives on the 11th floor. “He put the police officer on to her on the phone, and he told her to put wet towels on her head until they can try to reach her,” he said, adding that later the man was unable to make contact with the sister. Ms. Wahabi said that she had spoken by telephone with her brother, who was on the 21st floor, and urged him to leave, but that he had been told by firefighters to stay in place until he could be rescued.
In the early hours of the fire, witnesses said they could see lights — thought to be flashlights — blinking at the top of the building. She said she had not been able to contact him since, adding, “I have done a lot of crying.”
A residents’ association, the Grenfell Action Group, had been warning for years about fire hazards, and what it called inattention by the landlord. The building was populated by many immigrants, from countries that included Eritrea, the Philippines, Somalia and Sudan. Many were observing Ramadan and preparing or eating suhoor, the predawn meal.
According to the Get West London website, the Grenfell Tower block completed a renovation costing 10 million pounds, or $12.8 million, in May 2016. The upgrade — which included the installation of insulated exterior cladding, double-glazed windows and a new communal heating system — was financed by the local council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, as part of a multimillion-dollar improvement project in the area. Among them was Mr. Abbas, who was visiting his cousin.
In November, the Grenfell Action Group warned that Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organization, the entity hired by the borough to manage the property, had allowed the risk of “a serious fire.” “I opened the door and everyone was shouting, ‘Fire, fire, get back in,’ ” he recalled. “Then a neighbor called my cousin and told us to wait for the Fire Brigade. We were terrified and thought about trying to get out the window. There were people dangling out the windows trying to get out.”
In a blog post, the group wrote that in 2013, residents “ residents experienced a period of terrifying power surges that were subsequently found to have been caused by faulty wiring,” and that “our attempts to highlight the seriousness of this event were covered up by the KCTMO” and by borough officials. He added: “My cousin had his kids with him, and they started crying and screaming when the smoke started coming in. There was no way out, we were stuck, and no one was coming to help us.”
The management organization’s chief executive, Robert Black, said in a statement: “The fire at Grenfell Tower is devastating and the reports of injury and losses of life absolutely heartbreaking. Along with my colleagues, I have been supporting residents since the early hours, working with the emergency services and the community.” He did not address the complaints raised by the Grenfell Action Group. “I don’t know how long it took, but it felt like ages before we got out,” Mr. Abbas said. “I could see people lying on the floor as we were being pulled out. I think a lot of people died. It’s a nightmare.”
Rydon, the construction company that carried out the renovation, said in a statement that the work “met all required building control, fire regulation and health and safety standards.” Abdul Kadiri, who lives nearby, was reunited with a friend who lived on the 15th floor of Grenfell Tower, and who called Mr. Kadiri as flames licked the building. “I told him to grab his family and get out, and he hung up,” Mr. Kadiri recalled.
Kensington and Chelsea is one of 32 boroughs that make up London, along with the City, London’s financial district. Another neighborhood resident, Alison Evans, woke to the sound of sirens and helicopters and watched flames engulf the building from a nearby street. “It just kept burning and burning for hours, and for hours there were still people at the top of the building screaming for help,” she said. “It was hell to watch.”
Another resident, Mohammed Bouya, said he could hear people screaming for help from their windows. Firefighters told them to stay where they were, he said.
The so-called stay-put policy is not uncommon for British high-rises, but the resident association had complained about it, saying that it would hinder escape in the event of a fire. Nonetheless, the management company had recently posted fire safety instructions — including the stay-put policy — at the building’s entrance and outside elevators on every floor.
The intensity and power of the fire led to fears that the building might collapse, but rescue workers and investigators were able to enter after the flames had been beaten back.
Donations of food, water, clothing, diapers and toiletries poured in to the reception centers, including the Rugby Portobello Trust, a charity, where the volume of items — including pillows and a cooling fan — was so great that volunteers had to place them in boxes on the sidewalk to take to other locations. A gym opened its showers for displaced residents, and the Westway Sports and Fitness Center provided mattresses.