[Mhiz Rebecca]

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said questions will need to be
answered over the safety of tower blocks after several
people were killed on Wednesday when a fire engulfed a
24-storey building.
Some residents said they had been advised they should
stay in their flats in the event of a fire, while the block’s
residents association had previously warned it was
worried about the risk of a serious fire.
“These questions are really important questions that
need to be answered,” Khan told BBC Radio.
“Across London we have many, many tower blocks and
what we can’t have is a situation where people’s safety
is put at risk because of bad advice being given or if it is
the case, as has been alleged, of tower blocks not being
properly serviced or maintained.”
Fire engulfed a 24-storey block of flats in central London
on Wednesday, killing some people, injuring at least 50
more and trapping some residents asleep inside the
towering inferno.
Flames licked up the sides of the block in the north
Kensington area as 200 firefighters, backed up by 40 fire
engines, fought the blaze for hours.
Plumes of black and grey smoke billowed high into the
air over the British capital hours after the blaze broke out
at the Grenfell Tower where several hundred people live.
Residents rushed to escape through smoke-filled
corridors in the housing block after being woken up by
the smell of burning. Some said no fire alarm sounded.
Witnesses said they saw trapped residents desperately
shouting for help from windows on upper floors as
flames enveloped the building.
London Fire Brigade said the fire engulfed all floors from
the second to the top of the block which contained 130
apartments.
“In my 29 years of being a fire fighter, I have never ever
seen anything of this scale,” London Fire Brigade
Commissioner Dany Cotton told reporters
“I am very sad to confirm that there have been a number
of fatalities, I cannot confirm the number at this time
due to the size and complexity of this building.”
London Ambulance Service said more than 50 people had
been taken to hospital.
A witness told Reuters she feared not all the residents
had escaped the fire.
Some were evacuated in their pyjamas.
“I looked through the spy hole and I could see smoke
everywhere and the neighbours are all there. There’s a
fireman shouting ‘get down the stairs’,” one of the
block’s residents, Michael Paramasivan, told BBC radio.
“It was an inferno.”
“As we went past the fourth floor it was completely thick
black smoke. As we’ve gone outside I’m looking up at
the block and it was just going up. It was like
pyrotechnics. It was just unbelievable how quick it was
burning.”
The cause of the fire, which broke out just before 1 a.m.
(0000 GMT), was not known, the Fire Brigade said.
Residents said repairs had been made recently to the
exterior of the block.