Anger, sadness and passion here.
The Metropolitan Police have announced that the the number of fatalities following the tragic fire that engulfed Grenfell Tower has risen to 12. They also "believe this number will sadly increase."
At the present time, the London Ambulance Service have stated that they're treating 68 patients and took them to six hospitals across London, where 18 people are currently in critical care.
In what has been described as an unprecedented fire by the London Fire Brigade, the authorities have stated that forty fire engines and more than 200 firefighters and officers were called to battle the blaze.
London Fire Commissioner
Dany Cotton said: "In my 29 years with London Fire Brigade I have never seen a fire of this nature. London Fire Brigade’s Control room took multiple calls, with the first being received at 00.54am The first fire crews arrived on the scene in under six minutes and were faced with a rapidly developing and incredibly complex fire. Crews wearing breathing apparatus have been working tirelessly in extremely difficult conditions to rescue people and to bring this major fire under control."
Regarding the cause of the fire, Cotton was unable to confirm: "The cause of the fire is not known at this stage and clearly we will be here all day and will be providing further updates, working with the Metropolitan Police and London Ambulance Service. There will be an investigation but at this stage I do not want to speculate about the cause of the fire or what has caused it to spread in the way that it did. We will be working with all agencies, including the local authority to support all of those affected by this incident.
If you're concerned about a loved one, the Casualty Bureau can be reached at: 0800 0961 233.
Throughout the day, we've seen countless
harrowing accounts from people that were at the horrific scene, but this resident has raised serious questions about the recent regeneration work that was done on the building, and other buildings in the area.
Speaking with the BBC he said, :"I do know, they did regeneration last year to that building, they've also been talking about doing that to all of these buildings. £10m they're taking about. They shoved plastic things on there that set up alight because they want more reasons to knock these blocks down."
He adds: "There's two options. Regenerate the blocks or knock them down. After that (fire), I'm not so sure that was an accident. I'm not even going to lie. The whole situation in this area, they don't want us here."
This gentleman also raised questions about the recent regeneration that occurred in the area.
"You're talking about regeneration that happened last year to apparently make these blocks better, and then, these fires have never happened. I've lived here my entire life and these kind of things have never, ever happened. I don't know what they spent £10m on, but the lifts in this block, and all the blocks around, cost £60,ooo to fix and they've still never replaced them. £10m for that! No, no no. I'm not really fucking with the government right now."
Here's his interview in full that has been shared by over 10,000 people.
https://twitter.com/EL4JC/status/874922082576072704
