A teenage boy was rushed to the hospital suffering burns to his torso and lips after a fire broke out in his Battersea tower block last week.
According to a neighbour who helped the boy, the fire was caused by a deodorant getting too close to a candle. Another woman was also taken to hospital and 50 of the residents had to be evacuated before 70 firefighters and ten fire engines arrived. At one point glass rained down from the building, and several people sustained minor cuts.
Claire Walsh, who lives on the third floor, said, “Everyone was screaming” and “banging down neighbours’ doors…” as they tried to evacuate. “There’s no sprinklers, there’s no fire alarm system, there’s no nothing, so we literally relied on each other to get out of the building,” she said.
The allegation regarding lack of sprinklers reminds us that despite the Grenfell tragedy that killed 72 people in 2017, there are many towers in London that need more protection against fire. So, following the Fire Safety Bill implemented in March 2020, how have things progressed?
This Gov.UK site states that Tower Hamlets has the highest number of high-rise buildings with dangerous cladding across all of England, and this weekend protests will take place all over the country to ask the government why they are not doing more about it.
Initiatives that followed Grenfell included the establishment of “waking watches” – which basically means someone walking around in case there is a fire.
But many residents are not impressed. Back in May an East London resident of New Providence Wharf near Blackwall told The Guardian after a fire at the tower: “The waking watch proved completely useless, The whole point is to prevent and detect a fire before it gets out of control. They didn’t alert anyone.”
Housing secretary Robert Jenrick announced the allocation of £3.5 billion to remove flammable cladding back in February. And Rishi Sunak ‘s budget has just promised a new tax on property developers to help raise £5 billion more.
But as this week’s planned protests indicate, in the minds of many the cladding scandal is not over. So tomorrow Rising East will visit one of the protests to ask people what they think has to happen now.