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Police fear they will not be able to identify all victims of Grenfell Tower fire Police fear they will not be able to identify all victims of Grenfell Tower fire
(about 2 hours later)
Police have said they fear they may not be able to identify everyone killed in the Grenfell Tower disaster, as they embark on what could be several months of retrieving and identifying the dead. Police have said that some of the dead from the devastating blaze that destroyed a tower block in London may never be identified as officers warned that the painful process of retrieving the victims could take months.
Commander Stuart Cundy, of the Metropolitan police, said the death toll would rise from the 17 already confirmed as dead as of Thursday afternoon. Detectives added that they were combing through scores of reports of missing people who lived in Grenfell Tower block in west London as they attempted to end the agony of those who were waiting for news of friends and relatives.
He said six of the 17 dead had been found outside the tower in west London. Another 11 bodies were inside the charred remains of the building. Among the missing are entire families, a six-month-old baby, a young Italian couple, and a five-year-old boy who lost hold of an adult’s hand as his family struggled through thick smoke to escape the blaze.
He would not be drawn on estimating the final death toll, but said it was not “inevitable” that the final number of fatalities would bemore than 100. “I like to hope it is not going to be triple figures,” he added. Commander Stuart Cundy, of the Metropolitan police, said the absolute priority was retrieving bodies and identifying the dead, as part of an ongoing investigation carried out with the fire service. The death toll of 17 would rise, he said, and some victims may never be formally identified. A further 30 people remain in hospital, 15 of whom are critically ill.
Cundy said the inquiry was a criminal investigation but he could not yet say that a crime had been committed. The senior officer said that 5,000 missing person calls had been made to the police casualty bureau, many involving multiple reports concerning one individual; one person was reported missing 46 times. As a result, it was hard to be sure precisely how many remained to be accounted for.
Police said 5,000 calls had been received concerning people feared to have been inside when the fire ripped through the flats. The senior officer said he hoped the number of fatalities would not reach more than 100, although he would not give any more precise estimate as to how many had died. Responding to questions, Cundy said: “I like to hope it [the fatality count] isn’t going to be triple figures, I really do,” he said.
The scale of the task faced by the emergency services was laid bare by the city’s leading fire officer, Dany Cotton, who said it could take weeks to retrieve all the bodies inside the building. Six of the 17 confirmed dead had been found outside the tower block, and 11 were still inside the charred remains of the 24-storey building. Police have been able to make preliminary identification of six people so far; one was identified from a passport found by the body, but Cundy warned this could take several months to conclude. “I anticipate that is going to take a considerable period of time,” said Cundy.
Meanwhile, families seeking information about missing loved ones carried photographs to hospitals and to support centres in the hope of finding news. “Not just the immediate recovery of the bodies we have found, but the full search of that whole building – we could be talking weeks, we could be talking months. It is a very long process. There is a risk that sadly we may not be able to identify everybody.”
Among the missing are entire families, a six-month-old baby, a young Italian couple and a five-year-old boy who lost hold of an adult’s hand as his family struggled through thick smoke to escape the blaze. As the grim operation began to put names to those whose lives were lost in the worst tower block fire in the capital for many years, Theresa May made a low-key visit to the scene in north Kensington. She was pictured talking to fire officers and staring up at the blackened remains of the block, but left without talking to residents.
The identification process will use dental records, DNA and fingerprints and – where possible – documents. Of the 17 dead, police have the identities of six people so far. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, spent time at the scene and spoke to people at St Clement’s church, one of the centres coordinating the community response, where he was seen putting his arm round some of the affected residents. “We have to get to the bottom of this,” he said. “The truth has got to come out, and it will.”
Police said they had used a passport found near one body to gain a preliminary identification. A police officer who worked on identifying victims of the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami is part of the police team. Later, the prime minister, in a televised recording away from the scene, announced that she was launching a public inquiry into the fire, which spread with a ferocity and speed that firefighters had not expected. “We need to know what happened,” she added. “We owe that to the families, to the people who have lost loved ones, friends, and their homes in which they lived.”
The recovery of bodies could take months, Cundy said, adding: “We can only do it when it is safe to do so.” Writing in the Guardian, David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, said that arrests and prosecutions should follow the deadly blaze. “Don’t let them tell you it’s a tragedy. It’s not a tragedy – it’s a monstrous crime. Corporate manslaughter. They were warned by the residents that there was an obvious risk of catastrophe. They looked the other way,” he wrote.
Police and firefighters, who have been taking advice from urban search and rescue experts, have not yet been able to thoroughly search some of the block’s higher floors. Police described the operation to search the gutted, blackened and unstable remains of the tower as one of most difficult operations the Metropolitan force had faced. The process of identifying the bodies will be carried out by forensic teams and involve experts who worked on identifying victims of the south Asian tsunami in 2004.
Cundy refused to be drawn on whether detectives would examine corporate manslaughter charges, stressing they were just starting and the scene was still too dangerous to thoroughly examine. Dany Cotton, the London fire brigade commissioner, said firefighters had to withdraw from the building on Thursday because it was unstable. Special search dogs were sent in to search during the day, but the full search could not take place until firefighters and the local authority had built structures to shore up the tower so that it was safe to enter.
Theresa May made a low-key visit to the remains of the Grenfell Tower on Thursday, where she was pictured talking to fire officers and staring up at the blackened remains of the block. Cotton added that firefighters had identified the flat where the fire had begun and carried out initial investigations. “I want to be realistic: it is a very slow and painstaking process.”
She left without talking to local residents. In contrast, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, spent time at the scene and also at the nearby St Clement’s church, one of the centres coordinating the community response. Throughout the day, details began to emerge of heartrending last moments of those who had died. The family of an Italian architecture student, Gloria Trevisan, and her partner, Marco Gottardi, said there was “no hope” of finding them alive. Maria Cristina Sandrin, the family’s lawyer, said that in a last phone call to her mother at 3am from her flat on the 23rd floor, Trevisan said goodbye. “She said: ‘Thank you, mother, for what you have done for me.’”
“We have to get to the bottom of this,” he said. “The truth has got to come out and it will.” The mother of five-year-old Isaac Paulos described how she had wrapped a wet towel around his head as the family tried to escape with neighbours from the 18th floor. As they were being led to safety through the darkness by a neighbour, his hand somehow slipped from her grasp. “When I got outside, I realised Isaac wasn’t there,” said Genet Shawo.
May later released a statement announcing the setting up of a public inquiry into the fire. In support centres and at the scene of the fire, the anger and frustration of residents began to bubble over. A small protest broke out beneath the tower block, and one man was led away by police during a visit to the scene by the London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
At St Clements church, local residents Eve Wedderburn and Dayo Gilmour tried to speak to Corbyn, but were blocked by volunteers. “We want to tell him that we fear a cover-up over the fire, and that the council will use this as an opportunity to move people out of the borough,” said Wedderburn.
Rock Fielding-Mellen, the deputy leader of the Kensington & Chelsea council, where the tower is situated, said: “There will obviously have to be important questions and we understand the anger … My understanding is, very few councils and housing associations working on renovating 1960s and 1970s tower blocks have retro-fitted sprinklers, but that will have to be looked at in much greater detail.”
Many residents of blocks close to Grenfell Tower were still excluded from their homes on Wednesday, although a few were allowed back under escort to collect personal items. One family of six, who declined to give their names, said they had slept in their car on Tuesday night after waiting for hours for the council to provide accommodation. “We just got too tired waiting. We’d been up since 1am, when we were evacuated,” said one of them.
Other people turned on the media under the Westway flyover, where boxes of donations from the public sat crammed on to the pavements.
Kirstie Allsopp, the television presenter, who lives in the area, said the number of donations had been overwhelming. She echoed messages from the Royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea, who said the public should stop donating because the centres could not cope with the sheer scale of the generosity.
“People have been so generous … There has been staggering generosity. It is so heartwarming, but physically we cannot cope with any more donations in the area,” she said.
The borough said it had rehoused 103 households, 49 of whom had lived in Grenfell Tower, and 54 others whose homes were inside the police cordon. The families were being put up in hotels in west and central London. Housing minister Alok Sharma also told MPs that the government guaranteed that every single family would be rehoused in the local area, not moved out.
If you are concerned about anyone you know who might be missing after the fire, please call 0800 0961 233.