fire in London tower block

[polybear]

That's probably the best and most succinct summary of the current media and political circus I've read. The tragedy of the tower fire is unspeakably heart breaking, I am finding the media and political circus reprehensible and nauseating.

 

Agreed.  Whilst I've no doubt that many/all reporters, camera teams etc. etc. are shocked by such events, I do have a nagging suspicion that such events are what the great media circus feeds on.  I'd find it very interesting to see a day-by-day breakdown of newspaper sales - I have a suspicion that events such as this, Manchester, London bridge put a significant spike in sales, and therefore income. If I'm correct then it's all a bit distasteful, to say the least. Report the facts by all means, but to keep dragging it out as much as possible is a step too far.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

It's a hard call to make, when unrestricted media coverage exceeds the bounds of decency. The fact is that unfettered media means that very little can be successfully brushed under the carpet, by those whose interest might be of the 'nothing to see here, move along now' persuasion. I believe that keeping this disaster in the public view is in all our interests: the pressure needs to be kept on full strength, to determine very quickly just how many people might be living in a potential funeral pyre. I'll wince at the tasteless intrusions, but would rather that, than risk of any concealment.

[Nearholmer]

34C

 

Very much agree, to the extent that you've use the exact "nothing to see here" phrase that I had in mind.

 

Kevin

['CHARD]

It's to do with identification of the casualties.

Stu

 

If you mean formal identification of human remains, that doesn't seem to be the case.  

 

As I suspected, we've had five officially identified now, and yet the official death toll is predicted as 79, increased by 21 since yesterday.

 

It seems that at last the electoral roll, evidence of residents and families' pleas for information have featured in calculation of the officially 'accepted' figure.

 

It felt over the past few days that whilst the community pretty much knew the identities of those who were never coming home, the authorities were exhibiting a state of denial as to the severity of the casualty list.

Edited June 19, 2017 by 'CHARD

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

In defence of which position, 'the authorities' in such an incident face dual jeopardy, by incorrectly identifying those who were not present as probable victims. People can be anywhere in the world these days, and some of them possibly 'off the grid' and thus not readily contacted. It takes time to collate all the incoming evidence and assess it for reliability.

[Titan]

 

It felt over the past few days that whilst the community pretty much knew the identities of those who were never coming home, the authorities were exhibiting a state of denial as to the severity of the casualty list.

 

This is so blatantly untrue it beggars belief that people think it let alone say it. Not only have the authorities not denied anything, at every announcement they have stated 'this number will increase' i.e. they knew that it was not going to be the final number and telling everybody so, the exact opposite of the denial that they seem to be accused of!

 

It would seem that the only way anyone could think that is

 

a) selective deafness

b) such a poor command of the English Language that they cannot understand the meaning of the phrase "this number will increase"  or "confirmed dead" and therefore take the number given as a final number.

[Horsetan]

....whilst the community pretty much knew the identities of those who were never coming home....

 

"Pretty much" is still not good enough when everyone is after 100% certainty. That in itself may be difficult if, in some cases, there may be little left except ashes.

[Reorte]

The number of people unaccounted for (which may well not be everyone who was in there if some were in without anyone else in other flats or authority knowing about it) might give a reasonable estimate but no more than that. It's certainly not beyond the realms of possibility that there were people living there who haven't been accounted for but are alive and well elsewhere, the last thing that should be done is to declare them publically possibly dead.

['CHARD]

This is so blatantly untrue it beggars belief that people think it let alone say it. Not only have the authorities not denied anything, at every announcement they have stated 'this number will increase' i.e. they knew that it was not going to be the final number and telling everybody so, the exact opposite of the denial that they seem to be accused of!

 

It would seem that the only way anyone could think that is

 

a) selective deafness

b) such a poor command of the English Language that they cannot understand the meaning of the phrase "this number will increase"  or "confirmed dead" and therefore take the number given as a final number.

 

 

I'm sorry.  I didn't wish to upset anyone.  

 

I think we may have different views of how media works so it's probably best left there.

[Rivercider]

Regarding working out who may have been present on the night of the fire it may well be very complicated. 

Though I suspect the situation regarding the occupancy of 'council' flats may have changed since the 1990's.

 

However in the 1990's a mate of mine who lived in London moved into a council flat that had been vacated by a 'friend of a friend'.

my mate never advised the council he was the tenant, the previous tenant was also not the one on the council register (how far back this went I have no idea)

As long as the rent and council tax was paid no-one seemed to care, or be any the wiser.

 

To further confuse the issue he did not know at all well the occupants of the neighbouring flats, so if he was away for the weekend no-one would know.

Also on occasion me and several mates would stay over for the weekend in the flat, none of the neighbours would have the faintest idea who we were or where we came from,

 

 

cheres 

[Horsetan]

Regarding working out who may have been present on the night of the fire it may well be very complicated. 

Though I suspect the situation regarding the occupancy of 'council' flats may have changed since the 1990's.

 

However in the 1990's a mate of mine who lived in London moved into a council flat that had been vacated by a 'friend of a friend'.

my mate never advised the council he was the tenant, the previous tenant was also not the one on the council register (how far back this went I have no idea)

As long as the rent and council tax was paid no-one seemed to care, or be any the wiser.

 

That basically means loads of subletting.

[Nearholmer]

Subletting; otherwise homeless people "kipping on sofas"; flats that have been sold-off under various right-to-buy schemes; extended family borrowing your flat while they stay over for a few days visiting London while you've gone to Corfu for the week; that old guy that lives on his own, barely speaks to anyone, and sometimes disappears to his sister's in Glasgow for weeks on end; that nurse who is usually working nights, but not always etc etc.

 

A block of flats is an urban street standing on end, so who is 'in' at any given moment is going to be blooming complicated.

 

I certainly wouldn't be able to tell you who is 'in' right now, among the twenty houses in the street where we live, and thinking about it, I've actually lost track of who currently lives in the several houses that are rented-out, often to Japanese families on "overseas posting".

 

K

Edited June 19, 2017 by Nearholmer

[The Stationmaster]

It's a hard call to make, when unrestricted media coverage exceeds the bounds of decency. The fact is that unfettered media means that very little can be successfully brushed under the carpet, by those whose interest might be of the 'nothing to see here, move along now' persuasion. I believe that keeping this disaster in the public view is in all our interests: the pressure needs to be kept on full strength, to determine very quickly just how many people might be living in a potential funeral pyre. I'll wince at the tasteless intrusions, but would rather that, than risk of any concealment.

 

Having had to deal with the 'media' face-to-face in the aftermath of a serious fire involving fatalities there seem to be various 'rules' to which they work, viz:-

 

1.  They are after 'personal stories' which means names they can weave into their story to 'personalise it.  Plus any details they can harvest to go with the names and they will go - from what I have seen and experienced - to whatever lengths they see fit, inclding bribery and trespass (to mention those at the minor end of the scale of what they'll do) to get what they want.

 

2.  They want information about anything and everything they can get their hands on; doesn't matter if it isn't entirely relevant or they don't understand it as they just need words and terminology to weave into the story they want to tell.

 

3. The press, in particular loves a scapegoat.  They are not looking for those who might have borne some responsibility or who might perhaps have erred but those they can blame - accurately or not.

 

4. And above all they crave 'exclusives' and 'an expert has said' type of approach to add both something special to their story or give it what the reader will take to be some kind of implied authority about its veracity and content.

 

A lot of it, especially in the early stages, is a heck of a long way from any effort to expose things that are being brushed under the carpet - although they might well add that sort of twist to their tales in order to give themselves some moral ascendancy.  But never forget at the beginning and in the immediate aftermath with almost every British newspaper it is about one thing and one thing alone - outselling their competitors.  And its one reason why I opened a news conference I had to take with the press with some very harsh words about their aims and methods - and the sensible ones supported me and told those from various other newspapers to shut up and listen and then ask polite questions, which they did; top marks on that occasion to The London Evening Standard whose reporter carefully checked everything with me before he wrote his copy.  Top marks for bribery went to 'the Sunday Times' - a very good offer had I been able to take it up  .  Top marks for crass stupidity and getting very close to arrest went to a photographer working for 'The Daily Mail'.

 

I have also seen their methods, and gross inaccuracy, at more immediately close quarters following the murder of my cousin.  The rubbish and downright invention published by some national newspapers was utterly amazing.  And oddly the quality of their reporting was largely in inverse ratio to normally held opinions of the various titles thus 'The Sun' (in particular) had the most accurate and least sensationalised extensive report closely followed (not unexpectedly) by 'The Daily Telegraph' while far and away the worst, including a totally false accusation regarding the identity of the killer (who had in fact shot himself after committing two murders) was 'The Guardian'.  The blandest, but quite accurate, report, consisted of three sentences, in 'The Independent' - simply stating the facts as known.

 

So I take everthing in much of the printed press with large helpings of salt although I don't doubt there will be some decent souls among them who strive to do as good a job as their Editors will allow them to do.

[Titan]

I'm sorry.  I didn't wish to upset anyone.  

 

I think we may have different views of how media works so it's probably best left there.

 

Was not upset, just annoyed at what seems to be total disregard to what the police are actually saying. As it is live statements direct from the police, the media and their reporting or the way they work has nothing to do with the actual words used which are plain and absolutely clear, direct from the horses mouth, and in no way in any form of denial.

 

It is bad enough what they have had to go through and to add false accusations of denial is pretty low.

Edited June 19, 2017 by Titan

[Metr0Land]

I wasn't going to add anything as this thread's already into its 8th page.  There's a Panorama special tonight which I was expecting to be a hatchet job  but........

 

The Head of Household has the One Show on and the Panorama guy was talking about the special.

 

If I heard it correctly (the tv is in the next room) he was saying that the initial fire crew who responded in 6 mins, actually put the fire out  - job done.  He was also saying that the fire regs had done their job (or so it was thought) and that each 'box' shouldn't cause the next one/s to catch fire in under an hour, so the original safety advice to stay put on other floors was soundly based and no need to have 20 floors worth of people trying to come down as the fire crew were working BUT.......

 

As the crew left the building, other crews were piling in, pointing out that the outside was well on fire.  I'm certainly not criticising the initial crew but this is an angle I hadn't heard in all the acres/hours of media coverage.

[griffgriff]

Subletting; otherwise homeless people "kipping on sofas"; flats that have been sold-off under various right-to-buy schemes; extended family borrowing your flat while they stay over for a few days visiting London while you've gone to Corfu for the week; that old guy that lives on his own, barely speaks to anyone, and sometimes disappears to his sister's in Glasgow for weeks on end; that nurse who is usually working nights, but not always etc etc.

A block of flats is an urban street standing on end, so who is 'in' at any given moment is going to be blooming complicated.

I certainly wouldn't be able to tell you who is 'in' right now, among the twenty houses in the street where we live, and thinking about it, I've actually lost track of who currently lives in the several houses that are rented-out, often to Japanese families on "overseas posting".

K

There were certainly lots more people in many of the flats in that tower than they were designed for... This level of overcrowding is scandalous in the 21C! Certainly a long way from the standards expected from public housing in years past.

 

I digress. It is impossible to know for certain who was in the block that dreadful night. Strands of evidence is all the emergency services have. Perhaps enough to be sure or perhaps not. It will be a hard job for them to complete.

 

Griff

[Titan]

I wasn't going to add anything as this thread's already into its 8th page.  There's a Panorama special tonight which I was expecting to be a hatchet job  but........

 

The Head of Household has the One Show on and the Panorama guy was talking about the special.

 

If I heard it correctly (the tv is in the next room) he was saying that the initial fire crew who responded in 6 mins, actually put the fire out  - job done.  He was also saying that the fire regs had done their job (or so it was thought) and that each 'box' shouldn't cause the next one/s to catch fire in under an hour, so the original safety advice to stay put on other floors was soundly based and no need to have 20 floors worth of people trying to come down as the fire crew were working BUT.......

 

As the crew left the building, other crews were piling in, pointing out that the outside was well on fire.  I'm certainly not criticising the initial crew but this is an angle I hadn't heard in all the acres/hours of media coverage.

 

Interesting. The normal method of fire fighting for tower blocks is from the inside out. Something like the pump gets plugged in to the dry riser and pressurises it with water, the fire crew go up inside to the affected floor and attach hoses to the dry riser outlets, and fight the fire from there. This is a very quick and effective method of deployment and fighting a fire contained in a flat, which is what normally happens.  Not very suitable for fighting an external fire though, trying to dangle a hose out the window won't work particularly well especially if the fire is already moving up. Once it has got out of reach of any hoses that can be deployed outside it is pretty much game over as far as containment is concerned.

 

So it could be the case that the original fire was extinguished within a few minutes, but unfortunately it was already established on the cladding by then. 

[PhilJ W]

The reaction (or inaction) of Kensington and Chelsea council to this event has been rightly deplored but I can't get over the feeling that they are being set up to be the 'fall guys' by central government.

[jjb1970]

At the risk of speculating myself, I'll venture to suggest that this tragedy is the result of a series of failings and that responsibility will not be restricted to a single party.

 

There is an old saying that if you know the story behind anything in the media you realise how much nonsense the media peddles. I've witnessed it a few times myself, and in one particular case I was involved with it was either darkly comic or evidence of staggering ineptitude that they were completely oblivious to a blindingly obvious major failing as they chased various weird and wonderful theories that were irrelevant to the incident. And of course there is a small cottage industry for rent-a-gob "experts" who appear in the media every time they need a few catchy words to spice things up.

[Oldddudders]

The initial report that this was public housing was taken at face value by most of us - of course it was. But in fact things I have read indicate a number of flats were owner-occupied, while others were let privately. I understand that one of these was let, or on offer to be let, at £2200 p.c.m.

 

When we are told that the residents gave the thumbs down to a sprinkler system, I wonder who was actually consulted - council tenants, owners, or both?

[Zomboid]

At the risk of speculating myself, I'll venture to suggest that this tragedy is the result of a series of failings and that responsibility will not be restricted to a single party.

 

This kind of tragedy almost always takes many factors to line up, to blame a single party/ occurrence would be too simplistic.

[Nearholmer]

PhilJW and JJB

 

My gut feel is that as the enquiry/inquiry progresses, cans of worms will be found at all levels. As JJB implies, incidents such as this are very rarely the result of one failing in one place.

 

I'm surprised that the role of The LFEPA still doesn't seem to have come into discussion publicly.

 

Perhaps, despite its title, it actually has no duty to plan for emergencies, or perhaps only a duty to plan for very limited aspects of them, or a limited range of emergencies. Or perhaps it's considered to be a 'dead duck' because it is intended to be wound-up, to give The Mayor more direct control of the LFB.

 

If the LFEPA does come into the discussion, that will put all three layers, Borough, GLA/Mayor, and Government 'in compass'.

 

Kevin

[62613]

This kind of tragedy almost always takes many factors to line up, to blame a single party/ occurrence would be too simplistic.

The old 'Swiss Cheese' scenario

[polybear]

 

So I take everthing in much of the printed press with large helpings of salt although I don't doubt there will be some decent souls among them who strive to do as good a job as their Editors will allow them to do.

Whilst extending my shed some years ago I discovered the front end of (what later turned out to be) an anti-aircraft shell. Police, Brigade, Bomb Squad.....

 

Then, later that evening, a journo + photographer from the local rag. I explained I'd been digging out foundations etc. etc. and, no, they most definitely could not have a photo of me leaning on a shovel.  (I believe my exact response involved the word "OFF").

 

The article in the paper was headlined "Keen Gardener Tending His Tomatoes....".  Bollox.

 

 

 

The number of people unaccounted for (which may well not be everyone who was in there if some were in without anyone else in other flats or authority knowing about it) might give a reasonable estimate but no more than that. It's certainly not beyond the realms of possibility that there were people living there who haven't been accounted for but are alive and well elsewhere, the last thing that should be done is to declare them publically possibly dead.

 

Sadly I suspect that the Police etc. will also be wary of people using the tragedy as a means for disappearing, life insurance fraud etc. etc.

[Zomboid]

The old 'Swiss Cheese' scenario

Exactly what I had in mind