Wednesday 14 June 2017

Grenfell Tower Fire

A huge fire has ripped through a block of flats in London. It broke out at about 1 AM this morning at Grenfell Tower in Kensington and quickly tore through the entire building. At the time of writing it is still burning slightly. Six people have been confirmed dead and over seventy in hospital. I'm very sorry to hear that people have died. Deepest condolences to their loved ones. Also I'd like to pay tribute to the emergency services, of which I used to be a part, who did their best to save those lives and then they will have the traumatic task of clearing up afterwards. The local community have rallied together and all helped Blitz-style. The cause of the fire is not yet known, but this is not the first time a major fire has happened in that building. There was also one in 2009 which killed six people. So there must have been safety concerns. Grenfell Tower was completed in 1974 so it is much newer than most buildings of its kind, but this hasn't stopped it being more hazardous. Even though it has just had a ten million pound refurbishment it was not enough to prevent the blaze. The architectural trend towards cheap and ugly high-rise accommodation in Britain began soon after World War II and faded through the 1960's, but enough blots on the landscape were thrown up in those few years to affect our city skylines to this day. The council tower block has become an icon of urban poverty. In Oxford there are plans to demolish the four that ring our city; perhaps it's time to rid ourselves of these brutalist concrete sky-dungeons forever and give people proper homes. As today has shown, when fire breaks out they are also death-traps.

The London fire brigade is searching as much of the building as they can and they have said that there is no danger of major structural collapse. This inevitably raises questions over 9/11 and the fact that this incident is a tragedy does not excuse us from thinking about any such discrepancies, nor does it make it immoral. As you can see from the newscast still above, fourteen hours after the fire started, the entire block was consumed by the fire and a lot of the panelling has burned away, but the central structure of the building is more or less intact. Conversely, on 9/11 far smaller fires in only some parts of the three towers of the World Trade Centre burned for a fraction of the time yet the buildings all completely disintegrated. Fatefully, on Sunday there was another towering inferno which the building survived. This time I'm pleased to report the whole block was successfully evacuated and there were no fatalities when flames engulfed the skyscraper in Lanzhou, China, see: https://www.rt.com/viral/391877-fire-building-china-video/. These two events are just the latest in a series of 9/11 no-shows; see the background links below for more. Will we ever see the destruction of the WTC repeated again due to a normal disaster?
And: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/programme-181-podcast-andrew-johnson.html.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

I was saying the very same thing to my Dad today Ben. Twin Towers, both, collapsed, within two hours at most of the very start of the fires. They even had sprinklers I think in both! Yet this one, has not collapsed and it is very telling indeed! Condolences to all families involved this. I work less than a mile away from the building as it happens!

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Hopefully it will get people thinking, Neil.

Anonymous said...

Great peace again Ben. The thing about your twin towers to be fair you had two planes weiging hundreds of tons travelling several hundred miles an hour smashin into em. As well as thousands of gallons of fuel. Surely thats the difference here Ben? I dont know much about your phisics and all that but big difference I would say mate. Anyway cheers mate Baz

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Hi Baz. The thing is the two planes were aluminium-framed airliners filled with fuel. It would have taken far more than that do do the necessary structural damage that, together with the fires would have caused the towers even to fall normally, like Ronan Point did in 1968. The WTC towers didn't even fall, they literally disintegrated. Three of the biggest buildings on earth transformed almost entirely into a cloud of dust. All the best. Ben

the junglesurfer said...

Another hoax no one died no one hurt

the junglesurfer said...

No planes at 911 just CGI

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

JS, I agree with you over 9/11, but Grenfell Tower was REAL. I have friends who live just a mile away.

Clive said...

JS, are you for real? I'm going to have to assume you are a Poe because no-one could stoop as low as that. If you do sincerely believe it to be a hoax then could you explain why that is? Are you suggesting it was all staged? Was the fire that raged throughout the tower just our collective imagination? If you think that then you are a cunt of the highest order. Shame on you.

Clive said...

JS, why would anyone want to hoax the fire? Who would gain out of it because the organisations and companies involved are shitting themselves now they realise the cladding was cheap and nasty and extremely dangerous. And also, there is no way even Kubrick could have staged that so the mind boggles that people like you have the capacity to actually think. And if they were all actors, all the firefighters and police et al, must have been paid a fortune to keep quiet. And how do you account for death toll so far and the people yet accounted for? Sorry, so many questions for someone with a mind no bigger then then ball bags of a dung beetle.

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

JS, I've seen Grenfell Tower with my own eyes. I filmed it in my latest video.