In the news

how fucking low

Have you actually read the articles? They have a neighbour who says it was started in his flat by a faulty fridge and he warned people. The caption on the picture of him drinking a nice cold lager is:
"Mr Kebede, pictured, banged on his neighbour's door, potentially saving hundreds of lives – after flames took in the kitchen of his fourth floor flat"

I'd take issue with them both calling him an Ethiopian taxi driver - especially if it turns out he's British, which seems quite possible - but not sure I understand the outrage?

No I haven't because honestly, I'm not going to look at the Sun or the Mail.

Just trying to parse what you've read for clarity - do you mean Mr Kebde was the neighbour of the person who's kitchen caught fire? Or that he went door to door once the fire had started trying to alert other people.

It still all sounds like speculation which I'm not sure what the benefit of publishing is

Know your enemy... but seriously if you're going to get angry at things you should really at least read them through a proxy such as Google. Getting angry in ignorance is never good (not having a pop, but you know what I mean).

Mr Kebede was allegedly the person whose kitchen caught fire and tried to warn his neighbours.

not having a pop

Would have been justified in this instance (always good to be reminded).

But I still feel that its similar to the rider down threads. So far that is speculation from one source, but now almost certainly that will become the narrative most people remember, even if it is later clarified or turns out he had nothing to do with it

It still all sounds like speculation which I'm not sure what the benefit of publishing is

They have it from two sources (a friend and a neighbour whose door he knocked on) so I take back what I said about it being single sourced. If you have two credible sources saying they know what caused a major tragedy (in the started a fire sense, not what made it so bad) that does seem legitimate.

This is being reported by various outlets now who say Mr Kebede is devastated and in shock and I appreciate the media coverage won't help but I think it could be argued that knowing what started the fire is in the public interest.

In other news

http://bangordailynews.com/2017/06/14/news/midcoast/maine-woman-attacked-by-raccoon-drowns-rabid-animal-in-puddle/

I think it could be argued that knowing what started the fire is in the public interest

We'll have to agree to disagree on that detail - but that's just my personal opinion. Everything else is a fair cop though

.

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If this is another Beko fridge fire; that's 10 years they have been catching fire now.

C4 News was very good tonight, local community got a voice, a relative who lost someone in the fire was interviewed sensitively and told a heartbreaking story, and Lily Allen took the media to task for helping Govt downplay the loss of life, off the record estimates being between 100 - 150

Fucking hell . 150?!

Surely that kind of number was expected, sadly? There were 120 flats in the building, the fire occurred at a time when most of them would have been asleep, the advice they'd been given was to stay in their flats in the case of fire, and by the time that advice was shown to be nonsensical, the fire had taken hold and people couldn't get out of the building.

It's utterly horrifying.

The recently quoted occupancy of the building is around 500. Approximately 80 were reported admitted to hospital so I would imagine the loss of life to be no more than that. Obviously I don't know who's making these off the record estimates but without knowing the reasoning behind them, it's very difficult to assess their credibility.

The big issue with a complex metropolitan area like London is that it is very easy for people to disperse quickly to stay with friends and family without notifying local services. It's an issue that response teams from local authorities regularly face. It'll be at least a few more days before current lists can be collated and assessed and maybe a week before the full scale of the tragedy is properly understood.

I guess so but when you read '12 dead' as terrible as that still is you don't think it will be much higher, or else they would say 'x dead, x missing'... I can see how the under-reporting thing is applicable in this situation.

How utterly utterly tragic.

I saw a comment, I think from the met, saying that they hope the fatalities from it don't run into three figures but they don't know yet.

That advice - to stay in their flats in the case of fire - ?
Where did that come from ?
The first thing that is drummed into you from workplace fire drills is drop/stop everything you are doing and evacuate immediately.

Each flat should be self contained for fire and should stop it for 30 minutes or so. The fire brigade don't want people trying to get out whilst they're trying to get up the staircase to put the fire out.

Obviously workplaces aren't isolated in the same way.

Because compartmentalisation in a modern building should isolate any standard fire giving firefighters plenty of time to get to the source.

You still have fire doors etc. Even in a hospital with patients the plan is to move sideways through each set of fire doors away from a fire before having to move down

Right - this

This is fairly standard advice for people living in purpose-built blocks of flats.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/lily-allen-sensationally-claims-150-10630690

They've cut off Jon Snow saying he'd heard the same numbers

if i was living in one of these things I'd be buying a fucking parachute, a full face mask with aspirator, and a few fire extinguishers/alarms online just so I could sleep at night now.

i saw lily took c4 to task i was glad , jon snow didnt deny it either . finding next of kin to inform might be a problem as she said there are probably none .....

simply the most outrageous fire , wonder what ex local resident dave cameron reckons he didnt show up to help ?

As has been said many times now, the advice to stay in flats probably would have been right had it not been for that cladding (pending a proper investigation) and everything turning into a towering inferno so fast. These were not normal circumstances, they were not planned for, and it is unlikely emergency call handlers, some of whom must be traumatised now, too, could possibly have anticipated what would happen as a result of the advice they gave.

Among the reasons why the number of casualties is given as so low right now is probably that (1) many remains are going to be very hard to identify, with pathologists only able to use dental records in some cases, (2) in the confusion there is every reason not to rush into announcements, and (3) because at this stage it is simply unknown how many people were in the building.

There are so many aspects of this which would make anyone sick to their stomach just on their own, all taken together are nothing but the worst imaginable.