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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Matthew Weaver (now) Graham Russell, Kevin Rawlinson, Haroon Siddique and Elle Hunt (earlier)

Met confirms 17 dead with further fatalities expected from Grenfell blaze – as it happened

Grenfell Tower fire: ‘This has shown how much people care’

Summary: here's what we know so far

  • At least 17 people have died in Wednesday’s fire at Grenfell Tower. Police have said the death toll is likely to rise.
  • Sniffer dogs are being sent into the burnt-out tower to search for bodies, while structural engineers work to make the building safe for firefighters to search. The search operation could take weeks, according to the Met commander Stuart Cundy.
  • A ruptured gas main hampered efforts to quell the fire overnight. It was finally brought under control at 1.14am on Thursday.
  • Theresa May visited the scene where she met members of the emergency services. She was criticised for failing to meet residents during the visit. Jeremy Corbyn also visited the scene.
  • Nine firefighters were hurt in the rescue and there are concerns for their mental health. The fire commander Dany Cotton said: “I’m more concerned longer term about the mental impact on a lot of people who were here. People saw and heard things on a scale they have never seen before.”
  • Labour is demanding a special Commons session to question a senior minister about what the government plans to do in the wake of the fire and ask why it failed to act on coroners’ concerns about two previous tower block fires. The Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, said that what happened amounted to “corporate manslaughter”.
  • There is growing frustration from the families of the missing about the lack of information about their loved ones. The names of at least 24 people have been circulated by friends and family. Police say they cannot give figures on the number of people missing.
  • A total of 37 people are still being treated in hospital, with 17 in critical care. They are in six hospitals across London.
  • The Queen has issued a message of condolence and paid tribute to the bravery of firefighters.
  • A huge relief effort has swung into action, with charity workers and volunteers providing aid for those affected. Residents have voiced their anger at a lack of coordination from the council and other authorities. More than £1m to help displaced residents has been raised via online donations in just over 24 hours.
  • Experts said the fire spread at unusual speed and raised concerns whether the cladding may have contributed to this. The tower, which was built in 1974, recently underwent a major refurbishment.
  • It also emerged the cladding used in Grenfell Tower was behind a rapidly spreading blaze at a tower block in Melbourne in 2014. An eighth-floor fire raced up 13 floors to the roof of the 21-storey building in 11 minutes. The spread was “directly associated” with the external cladding, said the fire brigade.
  • The Grenfell Action Group, a residents’ association, repeatedly warned about the risk of fire and claimed a major blaze was narrowly averted after a power surge in 2013. The group said its concerns were dismissed.
  • Witnesses described screams of terror and people jumping out of flats in an attempt to reach safety. A baby was caught by a member of the public after being dropped from the ninth or 10th floor, a witness said.

Updated

The Home Office has now confirmed that Nick Hurd, whose ministerial brief takes in the fire service, will be making a statement to MPs at 1.30pm.

As parliament is not yet sitting it will be in what is known as the Grand Committee Room, by Westminster Hall.

Hurd will make a statement and answer questions from MPs, we’re told.

Labour had already called for a statement to MPs on the fire, while the Lib Dems have this morning called for the government to publish its delayed review into building regulations connected to fire safety.

Here’s a gallery of the latest images of the fire and its aftermath.

Corbyn visits the scene

Jeremy Corbyn has also visited the scene of the fire. He was photographed talking to Matt Wrack of the Fire Brigades Union.

Jeremy Corbyn visits the scene of the Grenfell Tower fire
Jeremy Corbyn visits the scene of the Grenfell Tower fire. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Updated

Missing following the fire at Grenfell Tower in west London: Clockwise from top left: Khadija Saye, Mariem Elgwahry, Ali Yawar Jafari, and Jessica Urbano Ramiez.
Missing following the fire at Grenfell Tower in west London: Clockwise from top left: Khadija Saye, Mariem Elgwahry, Ali Yawar Jafari, and Jessica Urbano Ramiez. Composite: Social media/Handout/PA

Here’s what we know about those people still missing.

Khadija Saye

Saye, 24, is a photographer who recently exhibited her work at the Venice Biennale, and is believed to have been living in a flat with her mother, Mary Mendy. David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, a friend, has appealed for information, tweeting to say the young photographer was a “dear friend, a beautiful soul and emerging artist”.

Saye was last heard from at 3am when she messaged on Facebook that she was unable to get out of the flat as the smoke was so thick.

Mary Mendy, 53, has been registered as living in the tower block for at least 20 years. She is believed to have been living on the 17th floor of the building.

Jessica Urbano

Jessica, 12, lived on the 20th floor and became separated from her family. Ana Ospina, a makeup artist, said she had visited a number of hospitals trying to find out about her niece. She was also reported to have been put into an ambulance. Another aunt, Sandra, told the Mirror “somebody gave her a phone and she rang her mum at 1.29am and at 1.39am”. She was believed to be a with a group of people on the fire stairs.

Farah Hamdan, her husband Omar Belkadi and six-month-old daughter Leena Belkadi

The family, including two other children who have since been found, were on the 20th floor. Farah called her sister at around 1am. She was told by the family to leave, but said she had been told to “stay put”. Her cousin, Adel Chaoui, said the two children found were in hospital, but one was in a coma. “No one knows what will happen. The other one is traumatised and sedated but otherwise OK.”

Mariem Elgwahry

Friends appealed for information about the 27-year-old, who is believed to have been living on the 19th floor. One woman posted she had last been heard from at 2.30am and was with her mother when she called. According to records, a man called Ahmed Elgwahry was also living in the property.

Abdulaziz Wahabi, wife Faouzia, and children Nurhouda, Yassin and Medhi

All lived on the 21st floor of the tower, according to Wahabi’s sister, Hana, who spoke to him on the night. “He said he had been told to stay inside, stay in one room together and put towels under the door. I told him to leave.” But he said there was too much smoke. “The last time I saw him they were waving out the window. The last time I spoke to his wife, he was on the phone to the fire brigade.”

Ali Yawar Jafari

His son, Hamid Ali Jafari, appealed on Twitter for information. He said the 82-year-old was living on the 10th floor of the building. He said his father had lost contact with his mother and sister who lived with him. “He was with my mother and sister in the lift and she said the lift stopped on the 10th floor and he said there was too much smoke and he couldn’t breathe and he got out of the lift and then the door shut and it didn’t stop again till the ground floor,” he told the Telegraph.

Mohamednur Tucca

He is missing along with his wife Amalahmedin and his three-year-old daughter after visiting relatives. His manager, Mike Morgan, chief executive of the Soho-based PR agency the Red Consultancy, told Sky News: “Mo is part of the family. He will have been with us for 10 years next month and is due to be awarded his decade milestone. We all just want to hear he is OK.”

Gloria Trevisan and Marco Gottardi

The young Italian couple recently moved into the 23rd floor of the block. “I don’t have news from them since last night and their mobile phones are off,” Gottardi’s cousin wrote on Facebook. “I’m praying to God they make it out safely.” Trevisan, 26, called her mother in Italy at roughly 3.30am to say their building was ablaze, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere del Veneto. They have not been heard from since.

Raymond “Moses” Bernard

A family friend told the Press Association that Raymond Bernard, 65, known to friends as Moses, was missing. He was registered at flat 201, along with Karen Bernard, 53. They had lived there since at least 2003.

Rania Ibrham

Believed to be the mother of two small children, aged three and five, the 30-year-old uploaded a Facebook Live video as she appeared to be stuck at the top of the tower block, and has not been heard from by friends since. In the footage, she can be seen seeking help in the smoke-filled corridor before going back into her home and looking down on the street below from her balcony. Her husband was reportedly not at home because he is on holiday.

Hesham Rahman

Noha Baghdady shared a picture of her brother Hesham Rahman, 57, on social media, saying he lived on the 20th floor. His nephews were searching hospitals. Sky News reported that his last contact with family was at around 3am when he told them he could smell smoke. He reportedly has diabetes, making it difficult for him to walk down stairs.

Dennis Murphy

Stevan Racz shared a post seeking information about his uncle Dennis Murphy, who he said had called while trapped on the 14th floor of the building. “We haven’t heard anything since.”

Tony Disson

His son Lee Disson posted on Facebook to say: “If anyone has seen my dad, Tony Disson, could they let us know.” He is believed to have been living in flat 194. Another relative tweeted: “My cousin is desperate to trace his dad. Tony Disson. He lived on the 10th floor. We are hearing terrible news from neighbours.” The 66-year-old lived with his wife Cordelia.

Mohamed “Saber” Neda

A friend of Neda, Ariana Neumann Rodger, posted on Facebook that “his family are severely injured and in hospital and desperate to find out where he is”. Zia Popal, who described him as his uncle, posted: “He was on the top floor of the building trying to help [people] and went missing since.” He added that none of the hospitals had him registered.

Zainab Dean

Francis Dean, 47, said his sister Zainab had called him to say firefighters had instructed her to remain in her 14th-floor flat, with her two-year-old son Jeremiah. That was in the early hours of Wednesday. He said he feared the worst.

Sheila Smith

Adam Smith appealed for information about his 84-year-old mother, Sheila. She is believed to have been living at flat 132 in the building.

Nadia Choucair

Council records showed that Nadia and Malak Choucair were living in flat 193. Nadia, 33, worked as a nursery officer at the Avondale Park primary school. She is understood to have lived on one of the top floors with her husband, three daughters and mother-in-law. A resident, called Hulya, who lives close by told the Telegraph: “Nadia’s daughter rang a friend saying: ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it.’ It’s heartbreaking.”

Nura Jamel

Friends said she had contacted them from the building as the fire took hold. According to records, Jamel was living at flat 192. Hibo Yussuf, 35, a friend of the missing woman, told the Telegraph: “We’ve heard that Nura’s daughter is in hospital but hasn’t been able to get hold of her mum. Nura called one of her friends to say: ‘Forgive me, the fire is here, I’m dying.’”

Updated

Farah Hamdan
Farah Hamdan

Adel Chaoui from London is desperately looking for his cousin Farah Hamdan, her husband Omar Belkadi and their six-month-old daughter Leena Belkadi.

The family, including two other children who have since been found, were on the 20th floor of Grenfell Tower when the fire happened.

Chaoui said his family were being kept in the dark about what was happening and called for authorities to give out more information. He said: “I was trawling hospitals and yesterday morning I found two of Farah’s children in St Mary’s. It’s not because authorities contacted us but because we begged and cajoled a nurse who took pity and said there was a child upstairs who matched our description.”

He added: “When we went we noticed that her sibling was a few beds down. No one even knew they were related … Police are not identifying people … they are using protocols for terrorist incidents to manage civil disaster. ”

Chaoui said the two children they had found in hospital were safe but one was desperately ill in a coma. “No one knows what will happen. The other one is traumatised and sedated but otherwise OK.”

Farah called her sister at about 1am asking what to do as the fire engulfed the tower block. She was told by family to leave but said she had been told to “stay put”.

Chaoui says he is not sure who gave this advice to his cousin. He thinks they eventually tried to get out. “We just need the police to start sharing information with relatives,” he said.

Updated

Experts believe the void between the cladding on Grenfell Tower and the fabric of the building may have acted like “a chimney”, helping the rapid spread of the fire on the outside of the building.

The forensic architect Chris Miers told the trade magazine Construction Enquirer: “I was surprised to see the extent of fire and its rapid spread. The risk is if the void is not adequately subdivided it would act as a chimney.”

The magazine reports that the building was clad with “Aluminium Composite Material cassette rainscreen. This consists of two thin aluminium sheets sandwiching a core material. The panels are available with polyethylene or less flammable mineral cores.

“The cladding system employs a void behind the panel to vent moisture. An intumescent strip is designed to be installed at regular intervals to expand in the event of fire to become a cavity barrier.”

Experts including Miers have said the cladding will have had limited combustibility and fire safety regulations require a firebreak to exist horizontally between floors up to and including the cladding to prevent fire jumping levels.

Construction Enquirer is also reporting that the cladding contractor Harley Curtain Wall and contractor Rydon, which were responsible for the cladding on Grenfell Tower, also delivered a bigger project on the Chalcot Estate in north London where five blocks were reclad.

Harley Curtain Wall went into administration shortly after the Kensington refurbishment and Rydon has said “all required building control, fire regulation and health and safety standards” were met.

“In the UK cladding has to be of limited combustibility. I’m sure it will be questioned what exactly this means and what these types of cladding systems are adding to the fire load of a building,” Russ Timpson of the tall building fire safety network told Construction Inquirer.

White cladding pictured on the Grenfell Tower during the fire
White cladding pictured on the Grenfell Tower during the fire. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Updated

Here are the main points of the press conference:

  • 17 people are now confirmed dead. The number is expected to rise.
  • Sniffer dogs will be sent in to search for bodies.
  • The search operation is expected to take weeks.
  • Internal shoring will be built inside the tower to make it safe for the search to take place.

Here’s audio of that press conference.

Cundy said it was too early to say whether the refurbishment project on the tower had anything to do with the fire.

He urged concerned families to call 0800 0961 233.

Updated

Cundy said the search and rescue operation was going to take a long time. He said there was nothing to suggest the fire had anything to do with terrorism.

He could not give figures on the number of people missing.

Cotton said the search operation could take weeks. The upper floors are expected to be especially challenging, she said.

Updated

17 confirmed dead

The fire commissioner, Dany Cotton, is giving another press briefing. She confirms plans to deploy search and rescue teams to the building. Internal shoring will take place to make sure the building is safe to search, she said.

Sniffer dogs will be sent in before firefighters, she said.

The rescue work will take many days.

The Met police commander Stuart Cundy said 17 people had been killed. That number is set to increase, he said.

Updated

The fire minster Nick Hurd is due to give a statement in the grand committee room of the House of Commons at 1.30pm, the Speakers Office has confirmed, according Andy Bell from 5 News.

Updated

Theresa May is facing growing criticism for failing to meet residents during her visit to the scene.

The management company responsible for Grenfell Tower had been served with enforcement notices from the fire brigade following a blaze at a neighbouring high rise block, accounts show. PA reports:

Following a fire at Adair Tower, put down to arson, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) was ordered by the London fire brigade to provide self-closing devices “on all flat front doors and to improve fire safety in the escape staircases”.

Fire authorities also issued the same enforcement notice for the nearby Hazelwood Tower, according to KCTMO’s latest published accounts.

Accounts for the year to 31 March 2016 also show Grenfell underwent a £10m refurbishment, with the cash used for the installation of insulated exterior cladding, double glazed windows and a new communal heating system.

However, the documents also show the project was delayed because “two subcontractors went into liquidation”.

Updated

Theresa May has left the area apparently without meeting residents.

Before the visit Downing Street said the prime minister was planning to talk to the emergency services to ensure they had the resources they needed to deal with the situation.

Theresa May speaks to Dany Cotton, commissioner of the London fire brigade, with members of the fire service as she visits Grenfell Tower
May speaks to Dany Cotton, commissioner of the London fire brigade, with members of the fire service as she visits Grenfell Tower Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Updated

Just as Theresa May was visiting the scene, Labour confirmed that Jeremy Corbyn would do the same later this morning.

The Labour leader will meet firefighters and those caught up in the disaster at 11am, the shadow housing minister John Healey told the BBC at the scene.

May was photographed speaking to the London fire commissioner, Dany Cotton.

May speaks to Dany Cotton.
May speaks to Dany Cotton. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Updated

People deliver supplies to St Clements Church
People deliver supplies to St Clements Church. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

The bishop of Kensington, Graham Tomlin, spent much of yesterday providing pastoral support to emergency crews in the shadow of the tower.

He praised the “extraordinary professionalism” of the “brilliant, amazing people” from the crews he met, but added: “They were also conscious that some of the things they saw and had to deal with were pretty distressing.”

He continued: “At the time, you switch off, but they are also aware that in the coming days some of those sights will come back to them.”

He also met specialists with the grim task of identifying bodies. “There’s a team of people nationally. They did the Manchester attacks, the London Bridge attacks, and now this. One of them was saying this was three one-in-a-lifetime events in one month.”

Tomlin was on his way to St Clements, where many took refuge in the disaster’s immediate aftermath and where clergy worked until past midnight ensuring everyone had a place to stay.

Many were put up by family and friends nearby, while others went to the Westway sports centre. He expected some families would be returning to St Clements today.

“The likelihood is that the death toll is going to rise, and a lot of families will get bad news,” he said. “Today is about providing support and pastoral care for them.” He added: “The church is here. We will be here long after the media circus is gone. The church in this area will be working quite hard to provide support to people who have lost everything.”

Tomlin added he would also be “monitoring quite carefully the debate about what went on here, what led to the fire” as well as housing issues in north Kensington.

“There are clearly real questions to be asked,” he said. “Apportioning blame at this point doesn’t really help anyone, but as time goes on we will be quite interested in those issues and trying to make sure measures are put in place to protect people.”

He said it was vital to ensure “people at the bottom of the ladder don’t get put in danger, the way it’s possible they may have done here”.

Updated

37 people still being treated in hospital

A total of 37 people are still being treated in hospital, with 17 in critical care, NHS England said in a statement.

It issued this table of where the injured are being treated:

NHS England update
NHS England update Photograph: NHS

Theresa May visits scene

As promised, Theresa May has visited the scene of the fire. She was pictured speaking to firefighters and the London fire commissioner, Dany Cotton.

May speaks to members of the fire service as she visits Grenfell Tower
May speaks to members of the fire service as she visits Grenfell Tower Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Updated

A firefighter called Mick has attained cult following after posting a picture on Twitter of a telling detail about the fire and then refusing the Sun permission to print it.

The firefighter, who tweets under the name Crispymick, posted a picture of his helmet with his name on it, with the comment: “You know it’s not going to be good when you’re told to write your name on your helmet before you go in!”

The Sun’s picture desk asked to use the photo. Mick refused in no uncertain terms.

Updated

Queen: thoughts and prayers are with families of victims

The Queen has issued a message of condolence and paid tribute to the bravery of firefighters.

In a statement she said:

My thoughts and prayers are with those families who have lost loved ones in the Grenfell Tower fire and the many people who are still critically ill in hospital. Prince Philip and I would like to pay tribute to the bravery of firefighters and other emergency services officers who put their own lives at risk to save others. It is also heartening to see the incredible generosity of community volunteers rallying to help those affected by this terrible event.

Updated

An Italian couple are among the many people missing, according to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

It says Gloria Trevisan and Marco Gottardi, both 27, had moved to Grenfell Tower three months ago. Gottardi recently graduated in architecture at the University of Venice, with excellent grades.

Trevisan had told her friends of the fantastic views across London from her new home.

There is more on those missing here.

Lammy says the fire was 'corporate manslaughter'

The Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, said that what happened amounted to “corporate manslaughter”.

Lammy said that a close friend of his family, Khadija Saye, and her mother Mary were missing in Grenfell Tower. Saye, a 24-year-old artist, worked for Lammy’s wife, who is also an artist. Lammy said she was “a beautiful young woman with an amazing career ahead of her”. He had heard nothing from her, he said. “Obviously as the seconds pass we grow more sad and bleak at every second,” he said.

He was hoping she was in hospital, he said, “and not perished in the building as I suspect hundreds will have done by the end of this count”.

He also said that the fact that those living in the tower block were predominantly poor was a factor in what happened.

This is the richest borough in our country treating its citizens in this way and we should call it what it is. It is corporate manslaughter. That’s what it is. And there should be arrests made, frankly. It is an outrage.

Many of us across the country have been caught up in an election knocking on housing estate doors, travelling up to the top floors of tower blocks, and we know as politicians that the conditions in this country are unacceptable.

We built buildings in the 70s. Those 70s buildings, many of them should be demolished. They have not got easy fire escapes. They have got no sprinklers. It is totally, totally unacceptable in Britain that this is allowed to happen and that people lose their lives in this way. People should be held to account.

There is more of the political fallout on Politics Live.

Updated

Ruptured gas main hampered efforts to control fire

A ruptured gas main hampered efforts to quell the fire, according to London Fire Brigade. In its latest update it said:

Firefighters worked with the gas authority to isolate a ruptured gas main in the block and once this work was completed they were able to extinguish the fire with the help of a 40 metre aerial appliance brought in to assist from Surrey Fire and Rescue Service. The fire was under control by 1.14am

It also confirmed that search and rescue teams will be deployed today.

Firefighters will be at the scene throughout today, with around 60 firefighters and eight fire engines and other specialist resources still in attendance. Our Urban Search and Rescue teams will also be working with local authority contractors to shore up the building to make it safe to continue with the next phase of the operation.

The Grenfell Tower fire was under control at 1.14am on Thursday morning
The Grenfell Tower fire was under control at 1.14am on Thursday morning Photograph: Matthew Chattle/Barcroft Images

Updated

Under the Westway there’s a makeshift outdoor centre where volunteers have been inundated with piles of donations.

At the gates, Imran Khan, who lives in White City, is making up flat-pack boxes and turning away people arriving with new donations. Here, the team desperately needs people to help sort the goods, volunteers say.

“I brought loads of clothes and stuff and I ended up staying,” Khan said. “When I came there were two of them [volunteers] and look at this.”

He waves towards bin bags full of clothes piled to above head height, household goods and hundreds of bags of food – tinned goods, boxes of crisp bags, palettes of water bottles and trolleys of fresh fruit. Khan returned this morning at 4am.

Mohammed Khanji, another volunteer, said: “I’m a doctor, so I came to see if there was any medical help [needed]. They seemed to be well covered so I just came to see what else they would need.” He has been sorting donations since 6pm yesterday. “There’s a surplus of donations and it needs to be sorted first before people bring other things.”

Satta Badham, another volunteer from west London, usually runs a homeless charity. He said nobody was in charge of the sorting effort – it was entirely ad hoc.

Once goods are sorted they are being driven to the centres around the area where people made homeless in the fire are being housed.

“The amount of stuff that’s come here is enough for thousands of people. More than anything they need housing: where are they going to go?” he asked. In the medium and long term, it’s money people will need to get back on their feet, he said. “There’s only so much of this stuff we can keep bringing and moving,” he added.

Like others, Badham is concerned about the lack of central coordination. “There should be a different system if something like this happens for people to be taken care of,” he said. “It’s the poorer people in the richest place. You’re in the richest council in the country and you’re telling me you can’t house 600 people?”

Updated

Tower too unsafe to search

The fire commissioner Dany Cotton says firefighters have done a “brief search” of all 24 floors of the tower but a thorough search is being delayed because of concerns about the safety of the building.

Speaking to BBC News she said: “On the upper floors there are still some very small pockets of fire remaining. Due to the nature of the building at the moment we are not sending firefighters in there, because it is not structurally safe for them to go right out to the edges of the building now.”

Here are the other key points from the interview.

Urban search and rescue teams will be deployed today

Our plan for today, along with structural surveyors and the local authority, I have got my urban search and rescue team who are coming down to make an assessment of the building, to look at ways we can shore up the building to enable ourselves and the police to carry on the search in the building.

It will be a very difficult and painstaking process.

There are still a number of floors that will require a thorough search for us to make sure there are no further people involved in this fire. However, we do anticipate that on some upper floors there may still be people involved in there.

Cotton paid tribute to the bravery of firefighters

Early on in the fire my firefighters battled through intense heat to reach some of the very higher floors. We were specifically targeting flats where we were getting calls where we knew where people were. It was a very stressful and difficult time. I was committing hundreds of firefighters into a building that to lot of people looked terribly unsafe. My firefighters were desperate to get in there and desperate to rescue people. We committed crew after crew into a very dangerous, very hot and very difficult situation, because we had a passion to do as much as we could to rescue the people in there. It was a very traumatic event for everyone involved.

Nine firefighters were injured

Up to nine of my firefighters suffered minor injuries, including burns and heat exhaustion. There was debris falling everywhere.

Concern for mental health of firefighters

I’m more concerned longer term about the mental impact on a lot of people who were here. People saw and heard things on a scale they have never seen before. Going forward one of my main concerns about my firefighters is about their mental wellbeing, and about doing trauma and care counselling for them.

Number of missing is unknown

We are unaware of how many people are in the building. There are some people who might have lived alone who we are not sure if they are in there or away. There are people who are reported missing who subsequently might have been in rest centres or hospitals. As soon as we can we will go into the building and do that painstaking fingertip search.

Too early to speculate on the cause

I have never seen a fire like this in my career. The fire did spread very quickly. It is far too early to speculate about the cause of that. There will be a thorough investigation. Here and now we are still in the rescue phase.

Updated

Siân Berry
Siân Berry. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

The chair of the London assembly housing committee has called for residents to be “much more involved in the management of their blocks”.

The Green party’s Siân Berry told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that residents at Grenfell felt “alienated” from the property owners “in many, many ways”, and said they had raised “all kinds of issues, not just fire safety, and it seems like that relationship had broken down”.

She added: “Who knows these buildings better than the people who live in them? And when they raise fire safety, when they raise life-threatening issues, they need to be listened to, and there just currently isn’t the structure for that to happen - that’s a structural issue, it’s not just about this block, it’s about residents across London.

“There are many, many groups, like the Grenfell Action Group, who are getting involved in trying to make their homes better and they are treated with suspicion by the authorities – they are regarded as troublemakers as this group was – and I think we need to change that at a much bigger level.”

Updated

Even when the charred shell of Grenfell Tower is out of sight, there is still a lingering burned, chemical smell that’s detectable from Ladbroke Grove and beyond.

A thin cloud of smoke – or possibly dust and fine ash – is emerging from the side of the tower block closest to the Westway.

Locals making their way to work through the Lancaster West estate have to navigate a warren of police cordons and make their way past television crews, and homemade signs directing those affected to emergency accommodation, offering free food or support with banking.

Street sweepers are clearing away discarded water bottles and food containers from the thousands of donations, interspersed with chunks of black ash from the tower.

Grenfell Tower in west London after a fire engulfed the 24-storey building yesterday morning.
Grenfell Tower in west London after a fire engulfed the 24-storey building yesterday morning. Photograph: Rick Findler/PA

Updated

Labour demands special Commons session

John Healey
John Healey Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Labour is demanding a special Commons session to quiz a senior minister about what the government plans to do in the wake of the fire and ask why it failed to act on coroners’ concerns about two previous tower block fires.

The shadow housing minister, John Healey, said: “We are demanding now a minister comes to the House of Commons for a special statement session.”

Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, he added: “Overnight we have asked the government: get a minister into parliament today, let parliament recognise how serious this tragedy is. It is the sort of thing that allows us to pay respect to the victims, but importantly it helps provide some of the answers that people are asking about what went off, what’s being done and most importantly what’s not being done to learn the lessons and act after the last tragedies that we saw now nearly eight years ago.”

Healey also called for an immediate fire safety review of tower blocks. He said: “What it really needs now is for a very senior cabinet minister to show they are getting a grip of this and reassuring tenants in other tower blocks that they will get to the bottom of the problems. They should commission an independent, immediate review so that the clear lessons must now be taken seriously.”

Healey said the work of government should not be delayed by negotiations with the DUP on securing a working majority. “One of our problems is our parliament is paralysed by the paralysis in Downing Street, because nothing can be done in parliament till after the Queen’s speech and we still don’t have a debate,” he said.

He accused ministers of rejecting or ignoring key recommendations of coroners’ reports into tower block fires in south London and Southampton. He said:

The coroner after that [2009] Lakanal fire in 2013, and the coroner who did the same sort of inquiry into a fire in a tower block in Southampton reporting at the same time, did a rule 33 letter. This is where coroners take the unusual step of recommending to government things that can be done to prevent future fire deaths. Two of the recommendations were simply rejected: that’s information on site about complex blocks like this for firefighters and also encouraging the wider use of sprinkler systems in similar high rise blocks. The final important recommendation about reviewing the building regulations should be reviewed. That was four years ago and that has simply been neglected. So there are some serious questions to answer now …

The recommendation to encourage the wider use of sprinklers in such blocks was rejected by the housing minister in front of a select committee. The important recommendation to review the building regulations specifically looking at questions of cladding and potentially compromising the fire safety of the building itself, drawn attention by the coroners at that time, is simply being put to one side. So there are some very serious questions for ministers to answer now, that residents are asking at Grenfell Tower, and very important reassurance to give to many, many people who live in similar tower blocks throughout the country.

Four years on from two coroners’ reports we are still waiting for even a plan to review building regulations that government said they would.

Updated

Summary

Hello, if you have just joined us, here is an update.

  • At least 12 people have died after a huge fire engulfed a tower block in west London at about 1am on Wednesday. Police have said the death toll is likely to rise.
  • A huge relief effort has swung into action, with charity workers and volunteers providing aid for those affected. Residents have voiced their anger at a lack of coordination from the council or other authorities. More than £1m to help displaced residents has been raised via online donations in just over 24 hours.
  • NHS England said 34 people remained in hospital, including 18 in critical care. Initially, 74 patients were treated in six hospitals across London.
  • Pockets of fire were still burning in the 24-storey block on Wednesday evening and firefighters remained on the scene overnight.
  • Worried family and friends appealed via social media for help to find the missing. Several hundred people would have been asleep in the block when the fire took hold.
  • Experts said the fire spread at unusual speed and raised concerns whether the cladding may have contributed to this. The tower, which was built in 1974, recently underwent a major refurbishment.
  • It emerged the cladding used in Grenfell Tower was behind a rapidly spreading blaze at a tower block in Melbourne in 2014. An eighth-floor fire raced up 13 floors to the roof of the 21-storey building in 11 minutes. The spread was “directly associated” with the external cladding, said the fire brigade.
  • The Grenfell Action Group, a residents’ association, repeatedly warned about the risk of fire and claimed a major blaze was narrowly averted after a power surge in 2013. The group said its concerns were dismissed.
  • The Circle and Hammersmith and City Tube lines between Hammersmith and Edgware Road have now reopened, as has the A40 Westway. However, bus diversions are still in place. Check here for the latest transport updates.
  • Witnesses described screams of terror and people jumping in an attempt to reach safety.
  • A baby was caught by a member of the public after being dropped from the ninth or 10th floor, a witness said.
  • More than 200 firefighters tackled the blaze at its peak with more than 40 engines. Sixty-five people were rescued.

Updated

More than £1m has been raised in just over 24 hours for people affected by the fire at Grenfell Tower, Press Association reports.

An appeal on JustGiving launched by Karolina Hanusova raised £286,437 while another set up by Haley Yearwood has generated £431,910. The Evening Standard launched an appeal on a dedicated website, dispossessedfund.org.uk, raising £282,939 as of 6am.

In addition to PA’s tally, there is a council fund, the Grenfell Tower Appeal, which has raised £198, 571.

Emergency crews look out of a window in Grenfell Tower.
Emergency crews look out of a window in Grenfell Tower. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

A photographer who took the photo of the burning block that appears on the front of the Evening Standard has said it was one of the most traumatic events he had ever witnessed. Jeremy Selwyn has previously covered the war in Bosnia, the Troubles and the Lockerbie bombing.

“It was a scene of total devastation,” he said. “It just got worse in front of my eyes. I felt useless as you could hear screams from people inside the building. After about an hour it all went quiet. When it all went quiet was the worst part for me.”

The local council has no more space to accept donations, but there is a Grenfell Tower appeal that is taking financial donations (and has already raised £194,000)

Summary

If you are just joining us, here is the latest:

  • At least 12 people have died after a huge fire engulfed a tower block in west London at about 1am on Wednesday. Police have said the death toll is likely to rise.
  • A huge relief effort has swung into action, with charity workers and volunteers providing aid for those affected. Residents have voiced their anger at a lack of coordination from the council or other authorities.
  • NHS England said 34 people remain in hospital, including 18 who are in critical care. Initially, 74 patients were treated in six hospitals across London.
  • Pockets of fire were still burning in the 24-storey block on Wednesday evening and firefighters remained on the scene overnight.
  • Worried family and friends appealed via social media for help to find the missing. Several hundred people would have been asleep in the block when the fire took hold.
  • Experts said the fire spread at unusual speed and raised concerns whether the cladding may have contributed to this. The tower, which was built in 1974, recently underwent a major refurbishment.
  • It emerged the cladding used in Grenfell Tower was behind a rapidly spreading blaze at a tower block in Melbourne in 2014. An eighth-floor fire raced up 13 floors to the roof of the 21-storey building in 11 minutes. The spread was “directly associated” with the external cladding, said the fire brigade.
  • The Grenfell Action Group, a residents’ association, repeatedly warned about the risk of fire and claimed a major blaze was narrowly averted after a power surge in 2013. The group said its concerns were dismissed.
  • The Circle and Hammersmith and City Tube lines between Hammersmith and Edgware Road have now reopened, as has the A40 Westway. However, there are bus diversions still in place. Check here for the latest transport updates.
  • Witnesses described screams of terror and people jumping in an attempt to reach safety.
  • A baby was caught by a member of the public after being dropped from the ninth or 10th floor, a witness said.
  • More than 200 firefighters tackled the blaze at its peak with more than 40 engines. Sixty-five people were rescued.

People gathered on Thursday night for a vigil held outside Notting Hill Methodist church the Evening Standard has reported. Reverend Mike Long invited people to light candles before playing Amazing Grace on his flute as the crowd sang along.

He is reported as saying:

There are times when all the words we can say are not adequate and sometimes words fail us because no words can do justice to how we feel, or what we have seen or what has happened. Today is one of those days.

“What we can simply do is look to all that we have seen today which is good, which is fabulous – people getting together.

“Let light triumph over all that is rotten, that is desperate and that defies our understanding.”

Adele has been spotted mingling with the crowd at late-night vigils near Grenfell Tower.

Updated

A man reads messages of condolence on a wall.
A man reads messages of condolence on a wall. Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters

Clothing and refreshment are laid out near Grenfell Tower.
Clothing and refreshment are laid out near Grenfell Tower. Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters

Work continued into the night to bring the scene under control.
Work continued into the night to bring the scene under control. Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters

A woman lights a candle outside a church near the site of the disaster.
A woman lights a candle outside a church near the site of the disaster. Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters

Here is the full read on the problems previously linked to the cladding used in Grenfell Tower. It is worth noting that the cladding has not yet been established by authorities as the cause of the swift spread of the fire but it is likely to be the focus of the investigation.

A woman writes a message of condolence on a wall near Grenfell Tower.
A woman writes a message of condolence on a wall near Grenfell Tower. Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters

Matt Wrack, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, told the BBC’s Newsnight that people living in Grenfell Tower “have the right” to ask questions about whether alterations to the cladding compromised the safety of the building. “The starting point is there needs to be an absolutely thorough investigation,” he said. “The truth is this should not be happening in the UK, one of the wealthiest countries in the world.”

When questioned about advice given to residents to stay in their properties in case of fire, Wrack said: “The logic of construction of tower blocks is to compartmentalise the fire, so a fire should be restricted to the flat or floor of origin.

“If during the course of renovations – I’m not saying this has happened because we don’t know – if during the course of renovations fire-resistant walls, doors, ceilings have been compromised, then clearly the whole basis on which that advice has been based falls apart.

“This should not be happening, that’s the horrible aspect of this incident.”

Kensington and Chelsea Council’s deputy leader, Rock Feilding-Mellen, was asked on BBC’s Newsnight about residents’ worries about fire safety at the block. He said: “My understanding is that their concerns were looked at and officers and the TMO [tenant management organisation] made inquiries and felt we had done what was necessary.”

We reported earlier that Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) – which was paid £11m by the council to manage social housing in 2016 – had been reviewing fire safety procedures after previous incidents.

It had previously suffered a fire that affected its Adair Tower, also in north Kensington – the result of arson – which saw residents suffer from smoke inhalation and forced some to be rehoused.

The London fire brigade issued an enforcement notice, telling the organisation to install self-closing devices on the front doors of flats in that tower and the nearby Hazlewood Tower, which was built to the same design.

The cladding used as part of the Grenfell Tower refurbishment has been pinpointed as the source of high-rise apartment fires in Australia and other countries.

A fire in 2014 at the Lacrosse building in Melbourne’s Docklands was strikingly similar to Wednesday’s disaster. Sparked by a cigarette on an eighth-floor balcony, the fire raced up 13 floors to the roof of the 21-storey building in 11 minutes.

In a report into the investigation of the Lacrosse fire, the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) said the rapid vertical spread of the fire was “directly associated” with the external cladding.

“Had the external wall cladding been of a non-combustible type, the likelihood of fire spread beyond the level of ignition would have been greatly reduced,” it said.

“Those of us that have been around for 30 years or more have never seen a fire develop in this way,” David Youssef, deputy chief fire officer for the MFB, said at the time. “We never expected to see a high rise fire, particularly one in a new building, that would spread so quickly from the eighth floor to the 21st floor.”

The same type of cladding – an aluminium composite – was installed on the Grenfell Tower in 2016, as part of a £10m renovation.

A remarkably broad relief effort is underway. The local council has said it needs no further offers of accommodation but a disaster fund has been set up. You can contribute here.

The Times focused on the speed with which the fire took hold and spread.

Thursday’s front pages have almost exclusively focused on the safety questions arising from the disaster.

Summary

  • At least 12 people have died after a huge fire engulfed a tower block in west London at 1am on Wednesday. Police have said the death toll is likely to rise.
  • A huge relief effort has swung into action, with charity workers and volunteers providing aid for those affected by the fire. Residents have voiced their anger at a lack of coordination from the council or other authorities.
  • Transport for London suspended services on the Circle and Hammersmith and City tube lines between Hammersmith and Edgware Road. The A40 Westway is closed in both directions and there have been bus diversions. Check here for the latest transport updates.
  • The tower is 24 storeys high and contains 120 flats. A local councillor said it is home to between 400 and 600 people.
  • More than 200 firefighters tackled the blaze at its peak with more than 40 engines.
  • The London ambulance service said 68 patients were taken to six hospitals across London, 18 of whom are receiving critical care, while a further 10 patients self-presented at hospitals.
  • London fire brigade said it had reached the top of the tower block by early evening on Wednesday. No more survivors are expected to be found. Emergency services used drones to access the flats on the highest levels.
  • Pockets of fire were still burning on Wednesday evening and firefighters will remain on the scene overnight.
  • Witnesses described screams of terror and people jumping in an attempt to reach safety.
  • A baby was caught by a member of the public after being dropped from the ninth or 10th floor, a witness said.
  • Streets around the tower have been sealed off and residents in their houses told to move out.
  • Falling debris also caused nearby flats to be evacuated.
  • The fire brigade has called it an “unprecedented incident” and said the cause of the blaze is unknown.
  • The Grenfell Action Group, a residents’ association, repeatedly warned about the risk of fire in the tower and claimed that a major blaze was narrowly averted after a power surge in 2013. The group said its concerns were dismissed.
  • Experts said the fire spread at unusual speed and raised concerns whether the cladding may have contributed to this. The tower, which was built in 1974, recently underwent a major refurbishment.
  • The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, declared the fire a major incident.
  • The Met has an emergency number for anyone concerned for loved ones. The Casualty Bureau number is 0800 0961 233.

Updated

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has just issued a reminder that the Westway sports centre is open – a site that has been the scene of some confusion.

And here are a list of emergency numbers if you have been affected by Wednesday’s events:

  • For anyone concerned for loved ones, please call the casualty bureau on 0800 0961 233.
  • Residents displaced due to the fire please call 020 7361 3008.
  • If you would like to volunteer to help with the support effort please contact 020 7361 3008 and let the council know your skills.

Kensington leisure centre remains closed because it is being used as a rest stop and staging area to support the emergency services and the local community.

Graham Russell here, taking over the liveblog from Kevin. Amid the continuing uncertainty and heartbreak in west London, residents have shown incredible resilience. In this video, one woman reserves praise for the younger generations in particular. She says: “I am so proud of the young people in this community. They have all come out and brought water, juice, clothes, nappies, everything.”

Grenfell Tower fire: ‘This has shown how much people care’

If you have any updates as we go along, you can find me on Twitter @G_J_Russell

George Clarke, an architect and TV presenter and a local resident who lives 50 yards from the tower, said the cladding had was “peeling off ... like a banana”.

I walked out the door and I couldn’t believe what I saw. All the way to the top was on fire on the corner. I’m assuming the fire started on the other side, the side I couldn’t see, the east side of the tower.

I’ve never seen a fire spread like that in a building in my life. The biggest problem is the outside. That building was re-clad last summer in 2016, spend £10m on it. I don’t care what anyone says, there’s no way that fire should spread that quickly on a newly refurbished building.

I saw those cladding panels, the cladding on the outside and the insulation was just peeling off, like you’d peel a banana.

It was fully on fire. I could see the flames behind - there’s a new cladding system put on the outsides that looks like a new skin, there’s an air gap an insulation behind that, to me that looks like a fantastic chimney for the fire to rage around.

Scotland Yard says a 43-year-old man has been arrested over allegations he posted pictures of a Grenfell Tower victim on social media.

Images were posted of what appear to be a partially-covered body. The Metropolitan Police said a man was arrested on suspicion of sending malicious communications and obstructing a coroner. Officers confirmed the arrest relates to the fire at Grenfell Tower and the man is in custody at a west London police station.

The charity commission has urged people wanting to help to give to registered charities. Its registrar of charities, David Holdsworth, said:

We are saddened to hear of the tragic events in West London. There are many registered charities on the ground doing what they do best to assist those who have been affected. We are urging members of the public that wish to make donations to check that they give to a registered charity in order to best support those affected, and also importantly to check with those charities what support they need – whether that is money, time or other essential supplies.

Updated

Companies, individuals and charities have sprung into action to offer help to anyone affected by the Grenfell Tower fire, with crowdfunding pages raising more than £670,000 in less than 24 hours. The Press Association has summarised some of the efforts being made:

Crowdfunding

Individuals offer up homes

People used Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to offer accommodation and transport help to those affected.

Local businesses

  • Businesses at the nearby Notting Dale Village brought trolleys of refreshments including sandwiches and fruit to the emergency services working at the cordons.
  • The phone company, EE, said people were welcome to use their stores in the local area if they need to contact anyone or use social media.
  • And TalkTalk, whose headquarters are on Evesham Street, close to the tower block, said it had thrown open its offices to affected residents in need of refuge.
  • Retailer Monsoon, which is based next door, is also offering refreshments to those affected.
  • The London Evening Standard has launched an appeal on a dedicated website dispossessedfund.org.uk.

Football clubs

Queens Park Rangers and Fulham rushed to support those left homeless. QPR said it had opened its doors and facilities to those affected by the fire, but also said it could not accept any more donations, while Fulham also helped with the collection drive.

Kensington and Chelsea council has taken charge of operations at the Westway Sports Centre.
Westway trust’s head of communications, Alex Russell, said about 10 to 15 families had already availed of the 300 bed emergency shelter they had set up.

The absence of the council on the street as hundreds of families were homeless was concerning, said Judith Bakeman, a Labour councillor at Kensington and Chelsea. “There’s been so many cuts, there aren’t enough people to deal with this.”

Referring to Notting Hill Methodist church’s Rev Mike Long, she said: “Mike has been running this centre giving people food and water all day and not a single person from the council has been here.”

As we spoke, a volunteer from the Harrow Club and Latimer AP Academy came to tell the councillor she had 138 beds available. He said that no one official had been to the centre and he didn’t know what to do with that information.

Updated

Dozens of people have gathered for a vigil in the shadow of the Grenfell Tower.

Many were moved to tears after a moment of silent contemplation outside the Notting Hill Methodist Church in west London.

The Rev Mike Long invited those present to light candles to place on the steps of the church on Wednesday evening. He then played Amazing Grace on his flute as members of the crowd sang along. He said:

There are times when all the words we can say are not adequate and sometimes words fail us because no words can do justice to how we feel, or what we have seen or what has happened. Today is one of those days.

What we can simply do is look to all that we have seen today which is good, which is fabulous – people getting together.

Let light triumph over all that is rotten, that is desperate and that defies our understanding.

Updated

Here’s the full text of a statement from the prime minister:

I have just received the latest update on the appalling tragedy at Grenfell Tower. Twelve people have been confirmed dead in this terrible fire that has taken place, and sadly, the police expect that number to rise further.

My thoughts are with the victims, their families and all of those who had their homes destroyed. It’s impossible to comprehend the horror of what they’ve been going through.

The response of people living nearby, who have provided help, compassion and support has I think, once again, shown the fantastic spirit of London.

Earlier today, I ordered a cross-government meeting to ensure that every assistance was being given to manage the emergency service response, and that group will meet again tomorrow.

Once again, our emergency services – the fire service, ambulance, NHS and police - have shown incredible bravery, working in truly appalling conditions.

Their work will continue for some time, and I know everybody will want to join me in thanking them for their amazing bravery.

Many people will be working around the clock in the NHS to treat those who have been injured, and working elsewhere to provide help and support to those who have no home to return to.

Of course, once the scene is secure, once the recovery is complete, then an investigation will take place into the cause of the fire and if there are any lessons to be learned.

Until then, our focus must be on ensuring that the emergency services have what they need to continue with their harrowing work, and that help and support is being provided to all those who have suffered as a result of this tragedy.

May promised a “proper investigation”, that any possible lessons would be learned, and “action will be taken”.

She paid tribute to the efforts of the emergency services and said support should be given to the hundreds affected by the fire.

Asked about what action was taken to prevent such an incident – and what other action should have been – she said:

There are people tonight who have no home to go to, they have lost absolutely everything, so our focus must be on support to them.

In due course, when the scene is secure, when it’s possible to identify the cause of this fire, then of course there will be proper investigation and if there are any lessons to be learnt they will be, and action will be taken.

Updated

The prime minister, Theresa May, is speaking to reporters now. She has been asked about why checks on buildings undergoing refurbishment work have not already been carried out and whether the government has put in place sufficient safeguards. She says the focus is on dealing with the immediate problems people affected by the fire are facing.

GPs across north-west and north-central London have been asked to come forward to help manage the response to the fire, the London Central and West Unscheduled Care Collaborative has said.

London Fire Brigade has confirmed it is using a drone to enter the upper floors of the building to assess the damage and potential further fatalities.

The unmanned device could be seen flying into the gutted apartments on Wednesday evening, with footage being transmitted back beaming pictures of the wreckage back to firefighters on the ground.

As the sun set, the block was still smouldering with a see-through building frame all that was left in parts of the upper floors. Flames could still be seen burning on at least one floor at 6pm.

London Fire Brigade confirmed that it was using the drone for “observation purposes”.

Updated

Besides the 44 families already being temporarily housed in hotels, the local council said it would be placing people either in the Westway sports centre, where emergency accommodation centre for 300 has been established, or in other hotels.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, says the response from the community had been an “extraordinary sight”. He told the BBC:

As we’ve seen, and we saw in Manchester as well of course, is just everyone coming together when there is a tragedy on this scale. And just outpouring of the most extraordinary love and generosity and people just getting stuck in – putting their own interests aside. It’s just incredible.

Updated

I was in bed asleep when my phone rang at 2.39am with an automated message from the King’s switchboard. It just said ‘major incident declared, King’s is a receiving hospital’, the same as it did after the Westminster Bridge and London Bridge terror attacks. My first fear was: is this another terror incident? Oh God, what’s happened this time? But my wife quickly told me from looking at the BBC News website on her phone that it wasn’t that; it was a major fire.

Dr Malcolm Tunnicliff, the clinical director for emergency and acute care, tells Denis Campbell how south London’s King’s College hospital dealt with 12 casualties from the fire.

Emergency accommodation has been provided to 44 of the households affected by the fire, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council has said. Families with young children, elderly residents and those who are vulnerable have been given “immediate priority”.

The authority said it was helping anyone who needed emergency accommodation and had offered “financial assistance to cover their immediate needs”, adding that housing officers would work through the night to provide support.

People unable to return to their homes will be offered emergency accommodation at Westway Sports Centre in Crowthorne Road, north Kensington.

The council’s leader, Nick Paget-Brown, said:

This is a terrible day for Kensington and Chelsea and we are doing all we can to support the victims and their families. At present all our focus has to be on supporting the rescue and relief operation. But the cause of the fire will need to be fully investigated and we will keep people informed.

A council spokesman also thanked people who made “generous donations of food, clothing and other items”, but added: “We would ask you to please hold off for now as we have been inundated with useful items. When we need donations again we will update via our website and social media”.

A casualty bureau has been set up with the number 0800 0961 233, while residents displaced by fire have been asked to call 020 7361 3008. Volunteers who wish to help with the support effort can contact 020 7361 3008.

Updated

Robert Black, the chief executive of Kensington and Chelsea tenant management organisation (TMO), which manages Grenfell Tower, has said he is devastated by observations that the cladding on the tower may have added to the speed and intensity at which the fire spread.

He told ITV News London:

We had no expectation this would happen, we are absolutely devastated by it. And we are trying to work out – now at this stage I can listen to what people say but I don’t have any information and therefore it’s really difficult for me to comment.

We will be working with the fire brigade and the police and as you can imagine their ongoing investigation isn’t even finished yet.

Asked whether it was the TMO’s responsibility to keep people safe he responded: “Absolutely”. He added:

It’s a huge responsibility [to keep people safe] which we take seriously – what I have to work out now, along with the investigation, and find out what happened - is everything we have done is in line with the building controls laid down.

Updated

My colleague, Lisa O’Carroll, is at the scene of the fire and has details on what people there are saying they still need:

More than £100,000 has been pledged to a series of appeals launched to help the people affected by the tower block fire, a crowdfunding website says. The campaigns on GoFundMe can be viewed here.

The British prime minister, Theresa May, has released a statement after the fire:

‪I am deeply saddened by the tragic loss of life at Grenfell Tower. My thoughts are with all those affected and the emergency services.‬

Updated

Here’s what we know so far about the Grenfell Tower fire:

Following a meeting of the government’s Civil Contingencies Secretariat, the policing and fire minister, Nick Hurd, refused to be drawn on reports that ministers had been warned that building regulations were in urgent need of updating.

I hope people will understand that the priority of the government at the moment is to manage the emergency response, to deal with the security, to deal with lives to be saved, lives to be rebuilt, and to make sure that we have got the support in place for this emergency response.

That will then move into recovery phase and then we will move into a phase where we seek to answer the questions that people quite understandably have, so we really understand what happened here, what went wrong, so we don’t find ourselves in this situation, because I don’t think that anybody wants to go through another night like last night.

Hurd said that whatever resources were needed to deal with the situation would be made available.

Everyone I have spoken to on the frontline - the fire, the police, the ambulance services - resources have not been the issue. People arrived very quickly in good numbers and with the right equipment to deal with an unprecedented situation last night.

The government is absolutely determined to make sure we are there to support the emergency and support services but also the people who have been caught up in this tragedy.

The Westway sports centre, near the tower, has been converted into an enormous emergency shelter following the Grenfell disaster.

Alex Russell, the director of communications for the Westway trust, the charity behind the centre, said they could accommodate 300 people tonight. The basement sports hall was covered with hundreds of airbeds, mattresses and duvets donated by local people from early this morning. Russell, speaking as the acrid smell from the still-smouldering 24-floor charred shell hung in the air, said:

We have been told to expect people not from the Grenfall Tower but the houses around the area that had to be evacuated. We are expecting several hundred and are welcoming people from now.

The reception area was full of tables full of donated essentials including bread, water, milk, cereals and other food.

The Westway operation swung into action independently of Kensington and Chelsea Council, said Russell.

The trust owns the land here and this morning we just thought we have an opportunity to help and the gym is a large, very safe place.

Updated

Housing activists have called the tower block fire a tragedy that was the result of a “combination of government cuts, local authority mismanagement, and sheer contempt for council tenants and the homes they live in”.

The statement was released by a network that counts among its members the Grenfell Action Group, which had warned about the danger of such a tragedy and claimed the local council was ignoring its concerns.

The statement from the London-wide Radical Housing Network demanded that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea offered Grenfell residents “secure, long-term local housing”.

The fire at Grenfell is a horrific, preventable tragedy for which authorities and politicians must be held to account. Grenfell’s council tenants are not second-class citizens – yet they are facing a disaster unimaginable in Kensington’s richer neighbourhoods.

This government, and many before it, have neglected council housing and disregarded its tenants as if they were second class. Nationally and locally, politicians have subjected public housing to decades of systematic disinvestment – leaving properties in a state of disrepair, and open to privatisation. Regeneration, when it has come, has been for the benefit of developers and buy-to-let landlords, who profit from the new luxury flats built in place of affordable homes. Across London, regeneration has meant evictions, poor quality building work, and has given tenants little meaningful influence over the future of their estates.

The chronic underinvestment in council housing and contempt for tenants must stop. It is an outrage that in 21st-century Britain, authorities cannot be trusted to provide safe housing, and that people in council properties cannot put children safely to bed at night.

The group also called for Gavin Barwell to resign as Theresa May’s chief of staff after he was accused of sitting on a report warning about the dangers of fire in high-rise blocks during his time as housing minister.

We support demands for a public inquiry into this disaster – there must be justice for Grenfell. We call for the immediate resignation of Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s chief of staff, alongside anyone else whose negligence has contributed to this tragedy.

All Grenfell Tower residents must be offered secure, long-term local housing by RBKC, and the estate must be fully rebuilt so that no social housing is lost – this should not be an opportunity for the council to privatise homes, or for someone to make a quick buck.

Updated

Tensions have erupted in clashes with the police outside the Rugby Portobello trust, which is acting as a centre for dispossessed people.

The road outside the club was packed with people, some in tears and some wailing. A fracas broke out, apparently over a journalist trying to film a distraught woman. Some men moved to protect the woman and, within seconds, a large contingent of police officers were jostling with the crowd amid shouting and screaming.

One onlooker said the police and media were acting insensitively towards people whose loved ones were missing following the fire. “Emotions are running very high,” he said.

Superintendent Graham Price told the Guardian it wasn’t entirely clear what had caused the “disorder”, but he had reports that people in the local community could not get through on casualty helplines and had congregated at the trust.

“Some felt the media was being overly intrusive and that led to a bit of disorder,” he said.

Calm was swiftly restored but the incident was an indication of rising levels of anger and distress among locals.

Supt Price said the police were dealing with a very complex situation. “There are 24 floors [in Grenfell Tower] and around 200 residents and a lot unaccounted for. This is a very difficult time.”

Updated

Kensington council has swung emergency accommodation plans into action with hundreds of stranded families being put up tonight in a local gym.

A spokeswoman said it had three “rest centres” open during the day for residents who had lost their homes and residents from neighbouring streets who had been evacuated overnight.

The three rest centres, where emergency housing officers are on hand are: the Rugby Portobello trust, Walmer Road, W11 4EY; St Clement church, Treadgold Street, W11 4BP; and the Westway sports centre, Crowthoren Road, W10 6RP, which will also provide emergency overnight accommodation.

“We are attempting to house everyone affected,” said a spokeswoman. “Anyone who is affected can call us on a special number 0207 361 3008.”

A short distance from the Grenfell Tower, the Tabernacle Christian centre was inundated with donations of food, clothing, and toiletries.

By 5.30pm, it was asking the public not to bring any more clothing but said nappies, toothbrushes, women’s sanitary wear and clean or new underwear for both men and women would still be accepted.

“We have taken so much we have to overspill into the garden. We need gazebos now to shelter the donations,” said senior pastor Derek Wilson.

Checks are to be carried out on other tower blocks going through similar refurbishment to Grenfell Tower, the policing and fire minister Nick Hurd says.

Julian Redhead is an A&E consultant at St Mary’s and medical director of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He was called into work on the night of the fire at Grenfell Tower.

I was at home fast asleep when I heard about the fire – my phone went off at about 1.30 to 2am. I’m hazy on the exact time. I was disorientated at first. I grabbed my clothes and headed to the car, my wife had to help me find my car keys. In those situations you don’t wait for anything else, you go into work.

I live almost next door to Grenfell Tower, so I got to the hospital about 15 minutes later. On my way in, I could see the entire block engulfed in flames and it hit home – it was so clear that something horrific had happened.

As I drove, I thought about the type of injuries I could see. I ran through scenarios in my head. I was preparing myself mentally.

Of all the 16 patients we saw, the primary problem we treated was smoke inhalation. Three of those patients needed critical care. I cannot say too much more at the moment as our concern is for the relatives and making sure they know about injuries first.

But, when I arrived, the hospital was calm. The triage centre was set up ready to receive patients. All the areas were prepared and, within about 20 minutes, a large group of patients arrived. From then on, the flow of patients was steady but spread out over a longer period.

The patients were very scared and disorientated but relieved to be in a safe position now. We talked to them and offered support but the stories from the night tend to come out later.

I was leading my team, so making sure the right decisions were being made and people were getting the best care. We have a strict system in place: you check people’s airways to begin with; check how they are breathing and their circulation. You make sure they haven’t lost blood and then look at their neurological status and any other injuries.

I am still in hospital now and have been here since 2am. The main thing for me today is to go home and get some sleep. Going home to family and being with them is important as we live nearby. Tomorrow is often when things start to hit home, that is when emotions start to come through.

I have seen large fires before in my career but nothing on this scale. I have been involved in lots of major incidents in my career but it does make a difference when it’s so close to home. When you can look out of the window and see that tower block. It’s a landmark I can see from my house but it will look very different when I get home.

When Paula Lewis, a staff nurse in the NHS, heard about the Grenfell Tower fire, she went to Tesco and bought as many food supplies as she could. Struggling to the affected area with her bags, she flagged down a woman in a car who happened to be heading there with her own donations.

“The response has been amazing,” said Lewis, completely surrounded by thousands of bags and dozens of volunteers in the basement of the Methodist church on Lancaster Road. “There was nothing here at 9.30am. But, all day, it’s been non-stop: bedding, clothes, food. Human beings have just come together. It doesn’t matter what race, religion you are.”

There was no sense of an overarching official responsibility at the church, or at St Clement’s, another local church that was being used as a makeshift reception centre. At the Methodist church, volunteers said they had not had official contact about organising supplies or people left homeless by the fire. And, by the end of the day, churches and halls were overflowing with donations. “We’re splitting essentials into bags and then volunteers are going to drive to try and give them to the people who need them,” she said. “The community response has just been amazing. [But] it is chaos. No one really knows what they are doing.”

Forty casualties have been discharged from the six London hospitals treating them but 18 remain in critical care, the NHS has just announced.

A total of 34 of the 74 people injured in the fire are still being cared for in hospital, and the number of those receiving critical care has fallen from 20 to 18, NHS England said in a brief update on the condition of those injured in the fire.

Dr Vinod Diwakar, the medical director of NHS England’s London region, who has been co-ordinating the medical response to last night’s tragedy, said:

Across London, we are continuing to respond to the tragic incident at the Grenfell tower block in Kensington. We would like to thank staff across the NHS who have been pulling out all the stops in caring for the patients affected. The commitment, professionalism and outstanding care they have shown is something to be really proud of.

The hospitals receiving patients continue to be busier than normal and we encourage Londoners to use NHS services wisely and turn first of all to sources of advice such as NHS 111 and local pharmacies.

Of the 34 patients 11 are being treated at St Mary’s hospital, 10 at King’s College hospital, seven at the Chelsea and Westminster, five at the Royal Free and one at St Thomas’s. Charing Cross has discharged the four it was initially caring for.

Updated

Steve Apter, director of safety and assurance at London Fire Brigade, spoke before Cundy.

He said firefighters have “searched almost all the building”. They have managed to get to the top floor.

They rescued 65 people who were handed over to London Ambulance Service.

There are still pockets of fire yet to be extinguished in particularly difficult areas to reach.

He said firefighters would definitely be there overnight.

Updated

Met Commander Stuart Cundy said he expects the figure of 12 people dead to rise and they are not expecting to find any more survivors.

Updated

Met commander Stuart Cundy, breaking the news that the death toll has doubled, said:

It’s very, very challenging to put a number on those unaccounted for.

12 people have died

The Met police say the death toll has risen to 12.

Updated

Ines Alves, 16, managed to reach her GCSE exam despite she and her family being burned out of their home on the 13th floor of Grenfell Tower, she told the Guardian.

She escaped after her father, returning home late from work, noticed the fire just after it started.

Ines and her father, Miguel, 49, were collecting supplies from Notting Hill Methodist Church on Wednesday afternoon. Despite losing everything, Ines said she still went to Sacred Heart school to complete her maths exam. “But I missed my history exam in the afternoon,” she said.

Miguel and Ines Alves, who fled their flat in Grenfell Tower
Miguel and Ines Alves, who fled their flat in Grenfell Tower Photograph: Damien Gayle for the Guardian

Miguel, a chauffeur, said he noticed the fire as he returned home from work early in the morning.

I just arrived when the fire started. I was in the lift, I pressed 13 and somebody pressed four. When the doors opened at the fourth floor, smoke billowed into the lift.

I just came out of the lift because I didn’t know what was going on, and I just went up by the staircase to wake up my son and daughter.


Ines said that firefighters at the bottom of the tower had told her mother, who got down earlier, to pass on a message that they should stay in their flat.

They told my mum to tell my dad, for us to stay up in our flat safely, just close the windows and all the doors. But she didn’t tell us in time so we ended up coming down anyway. Obviously they never knew it was going to get to this extent.

Miguel said that when they arrived back downstairs, the fire looked small. Ines continued:

We were one of the first people. The fire started at about 12.55am, and we were out by ten past (one).

She said they went down the staircase to escape.

Like many, Miguel complained that residents had repeatedly warned the council that their block was not safe. “Many times we make a lot of points, and nobody cares; they ignore us,” he said.

The Harrow Club youth centre on Freston Road has been open since 3am to help people displaced by the fire

Les Roberts, chair of the trustees, said it was acting as a depot for donations and its sister organisation, the Portobello Club, was accommodating the homeless or people unable to reach their homes. Room after room is filled with food, nappies and baby equipment, clothing, shoes, bedding, toys and toiletries brought by individuals, community groups and local businesses. One room is entirely filled with bottled water. Roberts said:

It’s mind boggling. The whole community has simply come out to help. People are bringing things, and then staying to help sort them. People in Grenfell Tower have simply lost everything, and they are unlikely to be insured.

By late afternoon, the Harrow Club was one of the few community centres in the area still accepting donations as others simply ran out of space. The club expects to accommodate displaced people overnight in its its upstairs sports hall.

Roberts said:

This area is a little nodule trapped in the midst of some quite affluent areas. It’s one of the most deprived parts of west London, and that’s especially true of the people who live in the tower blocks.

The rescue effort had become more organised as the day had gone on, he said. “Considering the scale of what’s happened, the police and the local authority seem to be on top of it.” But, he said, “it’s a real disaster. I’m afraid it’s going to be much, much worse than anyone imagines.”

Updated

Residents at the block were so concerned about fire safety after the recent refurbishment works in March that they requested an independent fire safety assessor to come in to review the safety of the building, but their request was rejected, the Labour councillor responsible for the block said.

She said tenants were concerned about the fire risk during and after recent refurbishment works and repeatedly raised their concerns with her.

Judith Blackman, Labour housing spokeswoman and who is on the board of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), which runs the council’s homes, said:

We were constantly being fobbed off. All our concerns were being ignored. Our request for an independent safety adjudicator was turned down. We were told it was unnecessary.

Blackman said she raised the concerns of the residents with colleagues on the board so frequently that the board tried to have her removed from her position. The board said there was no need to employ an independent assessor, told her that their own checks were adequate, and said it “was not necessary to fund or instruct an independent adjudicator at this time”.

Blackman said:

I was treated like I was a nuisance. I raised 19 complaints on behalf of individual residents. Every single time we were told that the board had satisfied itself that the fire safety was fine. We were told that the go inside and wait policy was absolutely right.

In a letter to KCTMO, Blackman shared the residents’ concerns with the group. “I can’t think in all my 34 years on the council of anything that has gone on for so long in such an irresponsible manner and caused such concern to residents,” she wrote.

Updated

Management company 'aware of previous concerns'

In a statement, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, which runs the council’s homes and has been a target for criticism by some residents, acknowledged concerns had previously been raised. It said:

It is too early to speculate what caused the fire and contributed to its spread. We will cooperate fully with all the relevant authorities in order to ascertain the cause of this tragedy.

We are aware that concerns have been raised historically by residents. We always take all concerns seriously and these will form part of our forthcoming investigations. While these investigations continue with our cooperation, our core priority at the moment is our residents

Updated

18 in critical care

In its latest update, London Ambulance says there are now 18 people in critical care, down from 20 earlier.

Earlier, it said it had taken 64 people to hospital but NHS England said 75 were being treated for injuries sustained as a result of the fire.

Updated

A London Fire Brigade firefighter of 17 years, who asked not to be
named, said he had never seen or dealt with anything like the blaze at Grenfell Tower.

Working from a command unit on Ladbroke Grove, he told the Guardian he
had been in the building on the 12th floor and said it was “devastating”.

He started his shift yesterday at 8pm, arrived on the scene at 4am
and is due to start his next shift at 8pm. He said:

Everyone has been going above and beyond. Many of the men have been lining up to work today and assist.

He said the brigade was now working to test the “integrity” of the building.

Parts of it are OK. But we need to test the integrity of the building.

He said he was happy with the resources available to the brigade and
believed they were sufficient.

Firefighters walk away from the burning Grenfell Tower block.
Firefighters walk away from the burning Grenfell Tower block. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Updated

Pictures illustrate how the community has rallied round, inundating collection centres with donations.

At the Pig and Whistle, lunchtime drinkers sat in the garden gazing up at the blackened, smoking tower.
Tejinder Paul Dhillon was in bed with his partner in their nearby flat when he noticed a strange light behind the curtains.

I said to her, ‘it looks a bit orange out there’. I grabbed my boots and ran to the base of the tower. There was debris coming down all over the place.

I saw a couple of people falling from the block. I helped six women out, but they were worried about their father, they said he was stuck in the lift.

No one can say the fire brigade didn’t do their job.

I feel sick. It’s like 9/11 - you know there are bodies cremated in there. There must be a lot more dead than they’ve said so far. Look at it - still smoking and burning now.

Donna Harrington lived in a flat on the 16th floor until 13 years ago, and was worried about her former next door neighbours, Pilly and Nicky, who had not been heard from.
Harrington said there had been a fire at the block 20 years ago.

I woke up one night to the smell of smoke. It was mayhem. There were no alarms, and I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face. They told us to stay in the flats, but my instinct told me to go. If you wait, you’re dead.

Now there’s been a proper inferno. I feel disgusted. This has been going on for years.

Updated

A former Tory housing minister warned MPs against beefing up fire safety regulations, because it could discourage house building, the Mirror reports.

It says that five years after the coroner’s report into the 2009 blaze in Camberwell called for developers refurbishing high-rise blocks to be encouraged to install sprinkler systems, Brandon Lewis told MPs:

We believe that it is the responsibility of the fire industry, rather than the government, to market fire sprinkler systems effectively and to encourage their wider installation ...

The cost of fitting a fire sprinkler system may affect house building—something we want to encourage— so we must wait to see what impact that regulation has.

Lewis is quoted as having previously said that sprinklers are “ an effective way of controlling fires and of protecting lives and property”.

For political reaction to the fire, you can also follow Andrew Sparrow’s dedicated politics blog.

Updated

John Bercow
John Bercow Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images

Speaker John Bercow has offered condolences on behalf of MPs to the victims of the “unimaginable and horrific disaster”.

MPs would normally be expected to have a chance to ask questions to a minister on such disasters in the chamber but Bercow said it was not possible in this instance, as parliament has yet to officially convene following the general election.

A meeting with a minister is expected to take place in the Palace of Westminster to enable questions from MPs, said Bercow.

I’m sure on behalf of each and every one of you in this chamber to offer our condolences to the families and friends of the victims of this unimaginable and horrific disaster.

I want also, I’m sure with your concurrence, to offer the warmest and most effusive thanks to our magnificent emergency services for coping the best they can in this horrendous situation.


Tensions are running high along the edge of the cordon as temperatures soar and people become increasingly tired and hungry.

Outside Latymer community church, a clash between a group of young men and a photographer broke out.

The men appeared to be concerned that the photographer had them on video on his phone and were demanding that he delete the footage.

The men pursued the photographer up Bramley Road where he requested police assistance; he deleted the images and footage in their presence.

The men eventually turned around and left shouting expletives at the photographer and the police. A group of volunteers handing out water and food outside the centre were shouting about the lack of support: “Where’s our MP? Where’s the council? No one understands.”

Updated

More on Stay Put fire notices:

Mike Tobin, the technical director of Security and Fire Experts Ltd in Bury, Greater Manchester, said: “As a rule, the Stay Put policy works but I think this is such a tragic incident there’s so many potential issues that make it a one-off”

Tobin said the ‘Stay put’ policy was the long and short of advice to residents in tower blocks and that it was for someone “far higher than my pay grade” to decide whether it should be reviewed.

He described the inferno as a game-changer for the fire safety industry. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “This will change our industry whether we like it or not. There’s too many deaths for it to go without something coming out of it – they might look at what Scotland is doing, putting sprinklers in all new communal buildings but that would not have stopped this fire.”

A senior firefighter in the north-west of England, who did not want to be named, said he had never seen anything like in his 32 years in the fire service. He said it was so “out of the ordinary and as yet not understood”. “Conventional wisdom may not fit this scenario,” he said.

Niles Hailstones, a local community activist, was standing with other locals around the Verity Close estate, in the shadow of the burning tower.

He said that he believed negligence paid a part in the fire that consumed Grenfell Tower. The tragedy of the night’s events exposed the fault lines of class and privilege that divide the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, he said.

Grenfell Tower had long been a symbol of the resistance to the borough’s gentrification, Hailstones said. “To see it in that condition is symbolic of the communities struggles,” he said.

Hailstones highlighted the work of Ed Daffern, whose Grenfell Action Group blog has warned several times of the fire risk to the block, adding:

“It’s at the very least negligence and some serious questions have to be asked about how this happened.

“Some serious questions need to be asked of the local authorities as to how this block could have been in this condition that it could go up in flames like that in 2017.

“The way I look at it is if the town hall was on fire water would be falling from the sky, but in north Kensington lives are expendable. Once again, like Michael Jackson said, all I want to say is that they don’t really care about us.”


Daniel Renwick, 29, a youth worker at the nearby Harrow Club, said:

“The Grenfell Action Group are probably the strongest advocates for reform in this borough. Grenfell are tireless in trying to bring these issues to light and they said the only thing that would give this issue some recognition is a disaster like this.

“It’s sick, because it exposes just how fucking disgraceful this council is. People who don’t understand why the Tories got kicked out of this place [in last week’s election], this is why. The push back can’t be stopped now because how are people supposed to feel about this? It’s the shock doctrine, that’s what this is.”

Corbyn says lessons should be learned

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said lessons have to be learned from the fire.

In a pooled interview he said the Grenfell Tower fire was “nightmare”. He said the Lakanal House fire, in Camberwell south London, in which three women and three children died in July 2009, showed the need for sprinklers and equipment to fight fires in high rise buildings.

Corbyn said:

Harriet Harman the MP who represented those people that suffered in the fire in 2009 has made the point that if you cut local authority expenditure then the price is paid somewhere.

Today is the day to support the emergency services and residents ... Tomorrow is the time to ask all those question. But today let’s concentrate on dealing with the consequences of this fire and try and bring comfort and safety and safe life wherever possible it can be saved.

The areas one has to look at, are the preventive measures that were available, or not available, in the tower; the facilities available to get in and out of it in an emergency ... and the numbers of people available to the fire service, paramedics and emergency services to deal with a crisis like this. We have to make sure we are properly resourced to deal with this kind of crisis. Today let’s concentrate on saving lives.

A review took place after the fire in Camberwell, and the government has that review. We need to ask questions about what facilities and resources have been given to every local authority that has tower block in their area and, frankly most do. We need people to be safe living in high rise buildings.

Obviously ministers who received those reports must be questions, but today every focus must be on saving and protecting life.

Updated

Fire safeguards in Grenfell were temporarily removed during the refurbishment, according to the trade journal Inside Housing.

Safeguards intended to prevent the spread of fire from floor to floor were temporarily removed from Grenfell Tower during a refurbishment, according to documents from the planning application.

The 2016 refurbishment involved replacing heating pipes which require removing ‘fire stopping’ systems, it said. Their plan was to replace these, but it is unclear whether this took place. The contractors insisted that the refurbishment complied with fire and health and safety rules.

Updated

A man seen waving from one of the upper floors at about 7am is believed to have been rescued.

A man (circled) looks from a window as smoke pours from a fire that has engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London.
A man (circled) looks from a window as smoke pours from a fire that has engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London. Photograph: Steve Paston/PA

ITV showed live footage of the man on Good Morning Britain, hours after the fire broke out. It later reported that he had been rescued.

A man is rescued by firefighters after a huge fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower.
A man is rescued by firefighters after a huge fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Updated

Two workers with the charity Muslim Aid were delivering donations collected from members of the Al-Manaar mosque in Acklam Road.

“We’re also trying to arrange short-term housing and financial assistance,” said Ahmad Teladia. “We’ve got too much stuff, now the best thing for people to give is money.”

His colleague Nosheena Javaid said there were a lot of Muslim residents of Grenfell Tower. “Muslims are fasting because of Ramadan, but we are trying to reassure people from Grenfell Tower that it’s okay for them not to fast in the circumstances, they will get exemptions from their imam.

“We may do iftar [the meal that breaks the fast] on the streets this evening for those have lost or can’t get to their homes,” she added.

Updated

Manchester-based housing association Irwell Valley has written to its tenants to try to reassure them in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire.

It points out that its tower blocks are compliant with fire safety legislation but don’t have firm alarm systems. It will be arranging meetings for residents concerned about safety.

Updated

The “stay put” policy (see earlier) has been a cornerstone of fire safety advice for housing blocks such as Grenfell Tower since the 1950s.

The official guidance states that residents should only evacuate if their own flat is on fire – everyone else, generally, is thought safe to remain.

But that policy is expected to come under intense scrutiny after what fire industry experts called an “unprecedented” inferno that has so far claimed six lives, with the death toll expected to rise.

Darren Baird, a former senior fire safety officer with the Greater Manchester fire service and the managing director of Total Fire Services, said he expected the stay put policy to be reviewed for council blocks that have undergone major refurbishment work, like Grenfell Tower.

“I’ve been to hundreds of tower block fires and every one has been contained in the flat of origin. It very, very rarely spreads beyond even the room of origin,” he said.

“Our general advice would be that unless the fire is in your flat, stay put. Unless you’ve had refurbishment work that you’re unsure of, stay put. It’s been inherent and built into buildings and tower block designs since the 1950s.”

The stay put advice was reviewed following the Lakanal House fire, in south London, in which three women and three children died in July 2009.

The fire service was criticised at an inquest into the Lakanal House blaze for its lack of consistency in telling residents to stay put or get out, but a review of the policy determined that it should not be altered.

Baird, who advises seven major housing groups on fire safety, said the principles of the policy are based on flats that contain a fire for at least 60 minutes, sometimes up to three hours, before the fire service arrives.

However, he said this “60-minute box” principle could go out of the window if major refurbishment works have taken place.

“If it’s your flat that’s on fire you evacuate, if it’s not your flat then you’re ‘normally’ safe to remain where you are,” he said. “The thing that conflicts with that is if there’s been some refurbishment work done and that has altered that compartmentation.”

Baird said major refurbishments could leave a building “like swiss cheese”, full of holes that would accelerate the spread of the blaze.

“If there’s evidence that the floors may have been reconfigured, heating systems may have gone in and external cladding has been fitted – that changes the parameters [of the advice to stay put],” he said.

Updated

Residents in Grenfell Tower were repeatedly reassured about fire safety by their landlord, according to local councillor Judith Blakeman.

She told the Press Association that residents had expressed concerns about fire safety in the block “over several years” and had constantly been reassured by Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), which runs the council’s homes.

Blakeman said: “The residents have expressed concern over several years about the fire safety at the block and they’ve constantly been reassured, ‘No, it’s OK, your flat is secure for an hour unless you’re close to the fire. Stay in your flat and you’ll be rescued within the hour by the fire brigade.’

“The fire brigade have undertaken a recent inspection and said it’s OK, because the residents kept demanding it and we kept demanding it on behalf of the residents.

“Obviously I’ve raised these issues about Grenfell Tower at the board as well. It’s all, ‘Don’t worry, it’s OK.’

“We were told that in response to all concerns raised by residents they had invited the local fire station in to do a safety survey and they were content that everything was in order.”

Blakeman said KCTMO told her both its health and safety officers and the fire brigade had inspected the building and that everyone was “quite happy”.

She said: “But if the cladding was partly responsible for the fire we need to know what the specification for the cladding was and why it suddenly just went up [in flames] in about five minutes, because it should have been fire resistant, surely.”

Updated

Firefighters in their gear at the scene said they could not speak freely but they had been in the fire, rescuing residents. Some had used up four oxygen canisters, known as BA (breathing apparatus), going in and out of the flames. Cuts to the fire service had taken a serious toll on operations, they said.

Put it this way, you’re meant to work on a fire for a maximum of four hours, we’ve been here for 12. Hopefully we’ll get home at some point before we have to come back tonight.

One firefighter said he’d never seen a fire like it.

And I hope I never do again. It would be unlucky to see this twice. It was surreal.

Firefighters rest as they take a break in battling the fire.
Firefighters rest as they take a break in battling the fire. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Updated

Marion Gettleson gives away sandwiches outside a rescue centre for survivors of the London tower Fire
Marion Gettleson gives away sandwiches outside a rescue centre for survivors of the tower block fire. Photograph: Lloyd Jones/AAP

At the Westway sports centre, a steady stream of people are carrying bags of donated supplies through the main entrance which has begun to resemble a refugee camp.

Mattresses are being laid in a sports hall ready for those made homeless by the fire.

Large numbers of volunteers are sorting through food and clothing, although staff are saying they are close to capacity. “It’s a good problem to have,” said one.

Esther Watts, 50, was at her home in an adjacent block of flats, Hurstway Walk, when she was woken in the early hours by her dog barking and someone banging on her door. She opened it to find a police officer saying: “Get out now, go now, there’s a fire.”

She sent her 12-year-old son Aidan ahead of her while she dressed and collected the dog, Rosie. She left her three cats in the flat. “I hope they’re still there,” she said.

Watts said she was worried about a friend who lives on the 18th floor of Grenfell Tower with her two young children, and another friend who lives on the 14th floor with her toddler son. She has not heard from either woman.

Justine Bell was also asleep in a friend’s flat in Grenfell Walk, 100 metres from the tower. She said she saw two children on about the 15th floor crying for help, and above them a rope made from bedsheets “like Rapunzel”.

When she started watching, the fire was relatively contained “but it spread so quickly”. She added: “I’m pretty traumatised.”

She was particularly worried about her friend, who has a mental illness and whose medication was in the flat. “We need to get some help,” she said.

Updated

Theresa May’s newly appointed chief of staff promised last year that the government would review fire safety regulations, but the changes have yet to be published.

Gavin Barwell, who was housing minister before losing his seat in last week’s general election, was swiftly made the prime minister’s new main aide, following the departure of the much-criticised Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy.

Following the massive and fast-spreading fire at Grenfell Tower in west London, in which at least six people have died, some fire safety experts have said that delays to the regulations could have made such tower blocks more deadly in a fire.

Barwell told the Commons in October that part B of the building regulations, which cover fire safety, would be reviewed as part of a process following a 2009 fire at a tower block.

The blaze at Lakanal House in Camberwell, south-east London, killed six people, with an inquest finding it spread because botched renovations compromised fire stopping between the flats.

“We have not set out any formal plans to review the building regulations as a whole, but we have publicly committed ourselves to reviewing part B following the Lakanal House fire,” Barwell said. However, since then his department has not published any review.

Dr Jim Glocking, technical director of the Fire Protection Association (FPA), an industry body, said his organisation had been pushing for a review of fire-related building regulations for some time (see earlier).

Updated

Green party London assembly member Siân Berry has called for an inquiry into the fire and spoken of her alarm about claims that residents’ concerns about fire safety were ignored.

She said: “It is striking that there are still no central fire alarms and drills required for residential buildings compared with any office, and it appears that residents’ concerns were not addressed.”

Updated

Here’s the front page of the Evening Standard.

The paper reports that a 12-year-old girl, Jessica Urbano, is among the missing.

She phoned her mother from a fire escape at 1.39am but she has not been heard from since.

Cladding review launched

Dozens of tower blocks from the 1960s and 1970s have been refurbished with new thermal cladding similar to that used on Grenfell Tower and a review of some of those installations is already under way, the Guardian understands.

A construction industry source confirmed that professionals were examining multiple refurbishment projects in the wake of the fire.

One architect, who has been responsible for several re-cladding projects but asked not to be named, said that the common rainscreen system used on Grenfell Tower is designed to include fire-breaks at every floor and around every window.

He said that if installed correctly, flames should not be able to sweep through the cavities behind the panels because of the fire retardant breaks.

“The issue is the cavity between the existing wall and the rainscreen,” he said. “There needs to be firestops at every floor level and around every window.”

It is not yet known what caused the fire or how it spread. Rydon, the contractor said it “met all required building control, fire regulation and health and safety standards”.

The architect added that 1970s blocks such as Grenfell featured “one escape stair which is not designed for a mass evacuation, but is designed for a small number of people to get out whose individual flats are on fire”.

He said the “stay put” strategy which was in place at Grenfell was intended to stop people getting hurt if a small number of flats were on fire.

“The ‘stay put’ strategy clearly wouldn’t work when the fire is roaring up outside the building,” he said. “That is a strategy that would lead to certain death in the circumstances of this fire.”

Proposed North Elevation - 4/6/14 from Studio E Architects showing cladding panels
Proposed north elevation of Grenfell Tower refurbishment Photograph: Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

Updated

People have been offering food, shelter and support to those affected by the Grenfell fire. Here are some of the ways you can help:

  • The Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund has just launched an emergency appeal to raise funds on behalf of residents of the Grenfell Tower. You can donate here.
  • Volunteers are calling for donations, including blankets, food, clothing and other essential items for those who have been affected. Westway Sports Centre posted to call for donations on its Facebook page.
  • You can also send donations to London restaurants Tredwells, The Gilbert Scott and Marcus Belgravia who are dropping off items Thursday and Friday.

Juliette Jowit adds:

After one parent visited a centre for Grenfell residents who escaped the fire, a primary school in west London began what will surely be a widespread trend to collect items to help.

Survivors who have lost all their possessions most need nappies, children’s toys and books, bedding, towels, toiletries - including sanitary products and loo roll - non perishable food and water, said St Mary’s and St Peter’s in Teddington.

Updated

Friends are searching for a mother and daughter who are missing after the fire.

Artist Khadija Saye, 24, who is currently showing her work in the Venice Biennale, was in her flat on the 20th floor, with her mother, Mary Mendy, who is thought to be in her 50s.

Tottenham MP David Lammy tweeted for help in tracing his “dear friend” Saye:

Lammy’s wife, the artist Nicola Green, said:

We’re desperately trying to communicate with all the hospitals. We’re told some people have been rescued up to the 19th and 20th floor. She was on the 20th floor. Nobody has any information at this point.

Green said Saye was last heard from at 3am when she was direct messaging from her flat, as her phone was not working.

She was on Facebook saying she was unable to get out of the flat, that the smoke was so thick. She was saying she just can’t get out and, ‘Please pray for me. There’s a fire in my council block. I can’t leave the flat. Please pray for me and my mum.’

At one point she said she’d just tried to leave again and said it was impossible. She said she felt like she was going to faint. Someone asked, ‘Did you try going down low with towels?’ She said ‘Yes, it’s in my room.’ I’m assuming she meant the smoke.

Green who has her friend and fellow artist for four years, said:

We are all praying for her. She’s got artists and friends and colleagues all praying for her … She’s got a huge career ahead of her. She’s received an enormous amount of attention in her first major exhibition. She’s an incredible, amazing, soulful artist.

Updated

A leading fire safety official has told the Guardian that his organisation has warned ministers for years that building regulations connected to fire needed to be improved, but that reviews were repeatedly delayed.

Dr Jim Glocking, technical director of the Fire Protection Association (FPA), an industry body which carries out tests on fire safety issues, among other things, said a major issue was that insulation underneath cladding on the outside of tower blocks did not need to be fireproof.

Glocking said that while he did not know the situation at Grenfell Tower, the rapid spread of the blaze indicated this could be the case.

He said the association had received increasing numbers of reports about insulation on the outside of buildings catching light.

“They can be slapping on up to 300mm deep of polystyrene on the outside of the building,” he said. “It can be very significant. I have no knowledge of what happened in this particular case.”

Laboratory tests on such cladding carried out by the FPA “found that there was scope for really large-scale fire spread under certain circumstances”, he said.

“The problem with external fire spread is that, obviously, the external envelope is the communicating feature of all areas of the building. It does offer scope for very rapid and large-scale fire spread, on a scale that was unheard of, but we’re starting to hear more of, certainly around the world.”

Glocking said that while having windows open in summer would increase the spread of fire into flats, FPA laboratory tests had shown it could also happen via external wall pipes to bathrooms or kitchens.

He added: “I think the inexcusable element here is that with cladding or insulation there are choices. There will be a perfectly good non-combustible choice that can be made, but somebody is not making those calls.”

The FPA had “lobbied long and hard” for building regulations on the issue to be changed, but nothing had happened, Glocking said: “Various ministers have said over the years that there will be an imminent review, but it keeps being put on hold, in spite of organisations like ourselves campaigning very hard.”

I asked Glocking if the FPA’s message to the government had been that if nothing was done then there could be a very major incident.

He replied: “Sadly, that is very much the case.”

The Material Palette for the Grenfell Tower refurbishment: Cladding Detail Column
The Material Palette for the Grenfell Tower refurbishment: Cladding Detail Column Photograph: Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

Updated

Summary

This is what we know so far:

Updated

The Lancaster community centre was overwhelmed with donations by midday.

Volunteers ferried crates of water, food and other essentials from a stream of cars queueing outside.

Workers at the centre appealed for donations by putting posters on their gates but by noon the signs had been replaced with notices saying: “Unfortunately we cannot accept any more donations of clothes as we have no room.”

Inside the centre, tables were piled with baby food, nappies, toiletries and sandwiches. A separate room was crammed with clothing.

“The community has really come together,” said one of the centre’s

workers. “Local businesses are donating money and supplies. The response is amazing.”

Updated

According to the annual accounts of Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), the group has focused on developing new homes from unused spaces across the borough.

The most recent accounts stated that the £10m Grenfell Tower refurbishment had created new accommodation from “unused spaces” in the building. This created nine “much needed new homes, all providing a good level of accessibility for disabled people.”

KCTMO took over the management of the homes of tenants and leaseholders from Kensington and Chelsea council in April 1996.

Throughout the morning at St Clement’s church, evacuated residents of
Grenfell Tower and surrounding buildings gathered, many in tears. Some
hugged and clung on to each other, others huddled in silence and shock.

Amanda Fernandez, 31, who runs local art organisation FerArts, was
nervously waiting for news of numerous friends who lived in Grenfell
Tower.

I went to primary school just here, I probably know someone living on each floor, some I probably know everyone on the floor. This is a very very tight community, people have been here for generations - it’s tragic.

Fernandez, who lives on nearby Barandon Walk, said she heard sirens around midnight. Told by her mother that there was a fire, she rushed to the scene, as her cousins live in a building at the base of the tower, and got there about 12.45am. She managed to contact them and they and their children had run out of the house wearing only the clothes on their backs.

At that point it looked like there was a string of fire along the stairwell, at that point it looked containable we thought. We were just watching, thinking ‘someone is going to stop it soon’. There’s been fires in that tower before but it’s never escalated like that before. There are these new panels on it, I don’t know what they were made of but it smelt like plastic.

When [the fire] got outside [the building, it] was literally so rapid, like when a hair catches fire. First one side went, then another. Then you are just counting the floors, you can see people hanging out of the windows. And the screams, the constant screams.

Saimir Iieshi, 39, a painter and decorator, came to the UK as a refugee from Albania in 1997 and also lives on Barandon Walk. He watched in horror from his balcony as the tower went up in flames, telling his two sons to go inside.

I didn’t want them to see what I saw. I said there had been a fire but the police had evacuated everybody. I tried to protect them but they could hear the people.

I could hear people shouting: ‘Please, I have got kids, please save my kids.’ It makes you feel useless. You hear that, you have children and it makes you feel so weak, it makes you feel like nothing.

Updated

The London fire commissioner, Dany Cotton, said, thankfully, firefighters, have suffered only “minor injuries”.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the cause of the fire but added:

If there are mistakes made, we want to make sure we learn [from] them.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is at the scene. He says his thoughts and prayers are with with the victims and their friends and families.

He says there are concerns people are still on the premises.

Khan praises the emergency services for “running towards the fire”.

Dany Cotton, the London fire commissioner, says firefighters “continue to work tirelessly”. She adds:

This will of course be subject to a major speculation but at this moment we do not want to speculate about the cause of the fire or the fire spread.

Cotton says these questions will be answered in time. She expects firefighters to be at the scene for the next 24 hours.

The Met police commander Stuart Cundy has confirmed that at least six people were killed in the fire. “I anticipate that the number of fatalities will sadly rise,” he told reporters.

He said he could not confirm how many people were missing. “There may be people in that building who are as yet unaccounted for,” he said.

Cundy confirmed that the building was considered structurally sound after advice from structural engineers.

Updated

74 people injured

NHS England has released a new update to say 74 patients are being treated in London hospitals and 20 are in critical care.

Here’s the breakdown:

  • There have been six fatalities.
  • A total of 74 patients are being treated in London hospitals.
  • 64 of these patients were treated at the scene by ambulance crews and taken to hospital for further treatment. The remainder made their own way.
  • 20 are in critical care.

The six hospitals that have received patients are the Royal Free, King’s College, St Mary’s, Chelsea and Westminster, Guy’s and St Thomas’ and Charing Cross.

Updated

PM 'deeply saddened'

No 10 says Theresa May is “deeply saddened by the tragic loss of life in Grenfell Tower”.

The prime minister has called for a meeting of the civil contingencies secretariat at 4pm.

Updated

The police and fire minister Nick Hurd has expressed his condolences to the families affected and thanks to the emergency services. In a statement, he said:

My thoughts are with the residents and families of everyone caught up in this dreadful event. London fire brigade and the Metropolitan police have confirmed there have been fatalities and I extend my condolences to their loved ones.

The search and rescue operation is still going on and I wish to commend the brave actions of firefighters and other emergency responders who arrived at the scene within minutes and have been at the scene throughout the night.

I should like to stress that this is an ongoing incident and I would urge anyone in the area to stay away from the scene and follow the directions of the emergency services.

Updated

Contractors said refurbishment met fire regulations

Rydon, the contractors who carried out the £9.7m refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, insisted it met fire and health and safety standards.

In a statement it said:

We are shocked to hear of the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower and our immediate thoughts are with those that have been affected by the incident, their families, relatives and friends.

Rydon completed a refurbishment of the building in the summer of 2016 for KCTMO (Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation) on behalf of the council, which met all required building control, fire regulation, and health and safety standards. We will cooperate with the relevant authorities and emergency services and fully support their inquiries into the causes of this fire at the appropriate time.

Given the ongoing nature of the incident and the tragic events overnight, it would be inappropriate for us to speculate or comment further at this stage.

Updated

Christopher Miers, an architect and the founder of the construction dispute resolution group Probyn Miers, said he was surprised how fast the Grenfell Tower blaze had spread.

He said the panels on the outside of the building should not have been able to catch fire, and fire compartmentation and firebreaks should also have stopped the spread of flames. He said:

Nowadays, in the UK, we don’t use materials with this degree of combustibility. They are sandwich panels which are two sheets of aluminium with a core, and the core can be made of different materials. In other parts of the world, in the Middle East and in China, the core material was still being made of combustible plastic product, but that is no longer permitted and has not been permitted in the UK for a long time. The panels are not likely to have a combustible element to them. It’s much more likely that the fire spread is not the panels themselves, but it’s more likely to have spread by other means.

Miers said Grenfell Tower appeared to have undergone fairly standard renovations: “The exterior of this building was clad in a rainscreen cladding system. What you see on the outside are aluminium composite panels. Behind that there is a void, to allow air to circulate, and behind that again is normally insulation.”

Miers said the renovation would have been carried out to improve the insulation of the building.

There are very specific regulations which limit the combustibility of the materials. Once a building is over 18 metres, all the materials in the exterior have to be of limited combustibility. One would expect that we will find that the exterior walling itself is not what we would think of as combustible. Having said that, most materials in intense fires can ultimately can show some degree of burning. Even when we think of material as of limited combustibility, in certain extreme situations, it can still burn.

Updated

Graham Fieldhouse, a fire and safety expert, said “prima facie the cladding has been the cause of the spreading [of the fire] up the building”.

He said this was based on the speed at which the fire spread, which should not have happened so quickly along concrete. But Fieldhouse said questions also needed to be asked about fire doors and warning systems.

Speaking to BBC News, he said:

People reported that they came out of their flats minutes after the fire started on the fourth floor and it was already smoke filled … Were the fire doors working properly? … Is that one reason that caused smoke to get into the means of escape?

Fieldhouse said the fire should have been contained within the flat where it broke out for half an hour, which would have given people the opportunity to escape.

There are loads of questions that still need to be answered. It [the fire] should be contained first of all in [the] flat of origin, then the next containment level should be fire doors, all the escape routes, the stairwell … and if these two things are done then these people have got time to get out if they need to.

Updated

64 people injured, including 20 in critical care

The number of people injured in the fire has increased to 64, including 20 in a critical condition, according to an update from the London ambulance service.

Its director of operations, Paul Woodrow, said:

Following this morning’s fire at Grenfell Tower, west London, we have treated and taken 64 patients to six hospitals across London, where 20 people are currently in critical care. Our thoughts are with everyone affected.

Over 100 of our medics have been working hard to respond to this incident, including ambulance crews, advanced paramedics, advanced trauma teams from London’s air ambulance and those staff managing the incident in our special operations centre. Our hazardous area response teams are also on scene, who carry specialist equipment including breathing apparatus. We’ve been treating patients for a range of injuries, as well as for smoke inhalation.

Updated

Five hospitals in London are receiving patients, including a special burns unit at Chelsea and Westminster.

Guy’s and St Thomas’ trust said it was treating four patients in A&E, one of whom had been admitted.

The Royal Free hospital published a statement on its website saying it was also treating patients. In a statement it said: “Our A&E department is extremely busy and we would urge people to attend only if it is an emergency. Please use your local walk-in centre or GP if possible for all non-emergency issues.”

St Mary’s hospital is treating 16 patients, three of whom are in a critical condition. Charing Cross is treating four people, according to the BBC’s Lucy Todd.

Updated

David Collins of the Grenfell Tower residents’ association said residents’ concerns about fire safety had been ignored.

Speaking to BBC News he said:

We repeatedly reported concerns to the tenant management organisation of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, including fire safety concerns which were not investigated during the regeneration works. Concerns over locations of boilers, concerns about escape, concerns about fire escape lighting, the list goes on. I spoke to councillors and they refused to investigate. They wouldn’t believe that the residents were concerned. 90% of residents signed an independent petition asking for there to be an investigation into the organisation that runs this building because they were so incompetent. And the council turned it down.

Updated

The Guardian’s graphics team takes a closer look at what happened at Grenfell Tower in this visual guide.

Updated

Julian Redhead, medical director at Imperial College healthcare NHS trust, said the majority of those injured were suffering from smoke inhalation.

He asked members of the public to only attend to the trust’s A&E departments in an emergency.

Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital trust has said it is treating four of the 50 people wounded in the fire.

Updated

Angus Law, from the Building Research Establishment Centre for Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, says buildings regulations are in place to prevent this kind of fire.

In a statement he said:

Early media reports suggest that this event has similarities with other fires that have occurred recently around the world; it appears that the external cladding has significantly contributed to the spread of fire at Grenfell Tower.

The UK’s regulatory framework for tall residential buildings is intended to prevent the spread of fire between floors and between apartments. If spread of fire does occur, as has happened at Grenfell Tower, the consequences are often catastrophic.

The details and causes of what happened at Grenfell Tower will emerge over coming days, weeks and years. The BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Edinburgh will provide any support and expertise that we can to this ongoing investigation.

Updated

Paul Littlejohn, 41, a Big Issue seller, lives in a smaller block next to Grenfell Tower and said he witnessed “terrible things”.

He said: “There were people sliding down sheets tied together trying to get down from at least the ninth floor. There were windows being blown out. We saw fridges falling.”

Littlejohn, who has lived next to the block for two years, said he grabbed what he could and left home at about 2am with his friend, Justine Bell, who was staying with him, and his dog Rollo.

The pair loaded Littlejohn’s television, clothing, food and water into a trolley they found and have been wandering the streets since they left.

He said: “It was horrible. Everyone was so confused, so upset, so distraught. Why did this happen?”

Updated

Keith, 42, a former resident at Grenfell Tower said the fire alarms didn’t work properly when he lived there.

I grew up in Grenfell Tower; it was my home until I joined the army at 16. It was only four years ago that my mum sold her flat there and moved in with my sister. She’s now living up in Watford.

When I lived there we’d had a few fires over the year – nothing on a large scale, but the fire alarms did not work properly. If you were in your flat even with the telly off you wouldn’t have heard anything. It was so quiet. After a fire on the sixth floor when we lived there, my mum had asked me to speak to the other leaseholders on her behalf. It was a small fire but afterwards we would try and engage with the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation but nothing changed with them.

Updated

The minutes of a board meeting held in November last year by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) confirm that during the Grenfell Tower refurbishment, residents were told to “stay put” during a fire.

The minutes also said that “further progress has been made with the installation programme of hard-wired automatic smoke alarms in tenanted dwellings”.

Updated

Michael Paramasivan, 37, a builder, lives on the seventh floor of the tower and managed to escape. He lives with two others in the flat who fled with him.

“I’ve lost absolutely everything,” he said. “The most chilling moment was when I suddenly realised it was a fire.

“Between 1am and 1.30am, I was dozing in and out of sleep. I then smelled something. I got up and looked around to see if it was an electrical fault but there was nothing. Then I looked through the spyhole. There was smoke and people running past. We just ran straight out down the stairs.”

Paramasivan said the material on the outside of the building went up in flames rapidly. “It just went up like that,” he said, gesturing wildly. “There’s no fire alarms in the corridors, no sprinklers, nothing. There’s only smoke detectors in the flat and they didn’t go off.”

Updated

Many people have been told to leave their homes in blocks neighbouring Grenfell Tower.

Alice, who lives in Barandon Walk, watched the fire as it spread quickly up the highrise. She said she saw one person jump from the building.

“It started on a corner, but it was one side near the corner, and then it just went up,” she said. “After a few hours, maybe 3am, that’s when people told us to get out. They kind of started slowly blocking the roads.”

Alice said the fire spread at an unbelievable speed. “Things were just falling off, the debris, it was shocking how fast it spread. I think it was new material – it’s just been renovated. There’s been fires there before and that’s never happened.”

Updated

At least 50 people injured in the blaze have been taken to five hospitals.

In a statement NHS England said:

Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the tragic incident at the Grenfell Tower block in Kensington. Our priority is to continue to work closely with the NHS services involved. We have tried and tested measures in place to manage this but we would also encourage Londoners to use NHS services wisely and seek advice from NHS 111 in the first instance.

It confirmed that the five receiving hospitals are St Mary’s, Chelsea and Westminster, Royal Free, St Thomas’ and King’s College hospital.

Updated

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has urged members of the public to donate clothes, food, blankets and toiletries to St Clement’s church, which is offering shelter to people from Grenfell Tower.

Updated

Alisha, 25, who lives five minutes away from Grenfell Tower, was out late with her brother to get something to eat, because of Ramadan, when they saw the fire.

She said:

I was there from 1.45am, the fire was getting wild and out of control. There were 50 people there, families that were screaming, especially one family that I was comforting as she had her aunty and her kids on the 23rd floor. The police was standing there telling us to move back and had no information.

The fire trucks and ambulances didn’t come till about 2.15am or 2.30am and we only saw three, though there could have been some around the other side. A car had been left in the middle of the road and nobody knew who the driver was, so the fire engines and ambulances couldn’t get through. People were telling us that there was no fire alarm, people said they were knocking on doors shouting ‘Get out of the house, get out out of the house.’

I was at the front watching debris falling, there were loud explosions. I felt useless, I couldn’t do anything, just watching a building burn and hear people screaming. We tried to comfort people who were crying for their families, we were just telling them it would be all right.

Updated

Six people are confirmed to have died

The Met has confirmed that six people were killed – and the number is expected to rise.

Commander Stuart Cundy said: “Our thoughts are with everyone involved in this truly shocking fire at Grenfell Tower.

“I can confirm six fatalities at this time, but this figure is likely to rise during what will be a complex recovery operation over a number of days. Many others are receiving medical care.”

Updated

At Latymer Christian Centre, the team running another makeshift rescue centre say they have been overwhelmed with donations of food, water and clothes. They are now turning people away, asking instead for cash donations.

“What we want is £500,000 to give these people a roof,” said Tim Burke, a community arts organiser in North Kensington who woke up to news of the fire and headed straight out to help.

“There are people there who’ve woken up with their savings and life over.” A fundraising page has been set up. “When all this is finished people need a place to stay,” said Danny Donaldson, wearing a smoke mask, one of several donated by the New Lines tool shop.

At the Christian centre, teams of volunteer doctors and trauma nurses are working with about 50 people. They are asking people who are arriving with donations to head to the Maxilla Club.

“We’re coordinating with the other centres to try and find out what they need but there’s no one on the ground from a professional emergency response level,” he said.

Updated

There are almost 7,000 fewer firefighters in England than five years ago, leading to longer response times and a 25% fall in the number of fire prevention visits, according to the latest Home Office figures published last month.

The reduction in the number of firefighters and staff employed by the fire rescue services to 42,300 has been more than matched by a long-term fall in fire deaths from more than 750 a year in the early 1980s to 264 in 2014-15.

However, the number of fire-related deaths rose to 303 last year – a 15% increase – bringing the downward trend to an end.

The number of uniformed firefighters stood at 34,400 in 2015-16 compared with 41,202 in 2010-11 – a fall of 6,802.

The Home Office figures show that the fire service carried out 581,000 home fire risk checks in 2015-16 - 25% less than five years earlier. The 63,000 fire safety audits of non-domestic premises last year, also down 25% compared with five years ago.

A firefighter reacts after battling a huge blaze at the Grenfell Tower.
A firefighter reacts after battling a huge blaze at the Grenfell Tower. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Updated

Conservative MP Mike Penning, a former firefighter and fire minister, told BBC News the UK had never seen a fire like this before.

He also said questions needed to be asked about the safety requirements, including in relation to the cladding which he described as “inert”.

He said: “The cladding was clearly spreading the fire … We need to find out what went on.”

Harley Curtain Wall, the firm that provided the cladding for Grenfell went bust after the refurbishment.

Updated

The tower is not in danger of collapse, according to an update from the London fire brigade.

Our specialist urban search and rescue crews and a structural engineer have checked the building and said that it is not in danger of collapsing and that it is safe for our crews to be in there.

Fire crews are still in the building. Some have had to use riot shields to protect themselves from falling debris.

Residents in the tower were evacuated and a number of people were treated for a ‘range of injuries’.
Residents in the tower were evacuated and a number of people were treated for a ‘range of injuries’. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Updated

Notting Dale ward councillor Judith Blakeman, who lives across the road from the block, said that between 400 and 600 people live in the building.

Updated

Dozens of residents, some tearful and distraught, have come to Latymer community church, which is providing shelter and support for affected residents and their families.

Positioned just north-west of Grenfell Tower, volunteers have arrived at the church in droves to help.

As the Guardian arrived, a man collapsed in his chair in tears before becoming faint and needing medical assistance. A doctor rushed to help and a wheelchair was provided to take him into the church.

On the doorstep was Tim Burke, a North Kensington resident who runs a community arts project. He rushed down in the early hours to help. Describing the scenes inside the church and gesturing towards the man who fainted, he said: “Everywhere you look, it looks like this.”

He estimated about 60 people were inside being helped. “This is a close, mixed community,” he said. “We desperately need financial support to help people who have lost everything.”

Carol, who lives nearby and volunteered to hand out masks and water, said: “People have just lost everything they own. Their lives have been ripped apart. Who’s going to help them? Who is going to rebuild that.”

Carol said she would do what she could to help. “These are my people, this is my community and I care about my community.”

About 200 metres away, the burning shell of the tower continued to billow smoke. Fist-sized chunks of blackened debris was spread across the road. The Rev Steve Divall, from nearby St Helen’s church, prayed with some residents in the street outside Latymer community church.

“The community response is very moving,” he said. “People are just trying to do everything to help their neighbours. There’s food being brought, clothing being brought.” As he spoke, two cars pulled up and people started to unload drinks, food and blankets from the boots and carried them into the community centre.

Updated

The fire risks of combustible cladding on tower blocks is documented in detail in this blog post by Probyn Miers.

Police and firefighters had to use riot shields to protect themselves from falling debris as they rescued people from the blaze, according to this image from the Evening Standard.

More than 250 firefighters have been involved.

A man who escaped from the 17th floor with his aunt said he heard no fire alarms. “The cladding was flammable, it just caught up like a matchstick,” he told Channel 4 News.

Baby caught after being thrown from window

A baby was caught by a member of the public after being dropped from the burning Grenfell Tower, a witness has said.

Samira Lamrani said she saw a woman try to save a baby by dropping it from a window “on the ninth or 10th floor” to waiting members of the public below.

She told PA:

People were starting to appear at the windows, frantically banging and screaming. The windows were slightly ajar, a woman was gesturing that she was about to throw her baby and if somebody could catch her baby.

Somebody did, a gentleman ran forward and managed to grab the baby.

I could see people from all angles, banging and screaming for help.

Us members of the public were reassuring them, telling them we’ve done what we can and that we’ve phoned 999, but obviously the look on their face was death.

My daughter’s friend said she observed an adult who made some sort of homemade parachute and tried to lower himself out of the window.

The more I looked up, floor upon floor, [there were] endless numbers of people. Mainly the kids, because obviously their voices, with their high pitched voices – that will remain with me for a long time. I could hear them screaming for their lives.

A resident called Zara said she saw a woman throw her son, who was about five, from a fifth or sixth floor window.

She told LBC: “One woman actually threw her son out of the window. I think he’s OK. I think he might have just had some broken bones and bruises.”

She said she thought it was the fifth or even the sixth floor. “There was another woman screaming ‘My baby, my baby, I need to get out, I need to save my baby’. But we were just looking up. We couldn’t do anything. There was nothing we could do.”

Updated

Notices reportedly inside Grenfell Tower advised residents to stay put unless there was fire in their flat.

Updated

Tony Devenish, Conservative London assembly member for Kensington and Chelsea, has added to calls for answers about questions over safety concerns. In a statement he said:

My heart goes out to all of those caught up in the horrendous blaze at Grenfell Tower overnight, especially to those who lost their lives and lost loved ones.

I’d like to thank the firefighters and emergency services for their tireless work trying to bring the incident under control in what must have been very difficult circumstances.

I have been stunned by the scale and ferocity of the fire and of the heartbreaking stories emerging from the scene.

Rightly, questions are already being asked about the safety measures in place to prevent this kind of tragedy. I am keeping up to date with all of the latest developments and in time I will be seeking answers to these questions.

Updated

The Rev Mark O’Donoghue, area dean of Kensington, has been busy organising volunteers to help the Grenfell Tower evacuees at St Clement’s church. He says:

We’ve had volunteers here with the doors open since 3.30am, receiving people evacuated from their homes because of the tragedy you can see behind you.

We are giving people a shoulder to cry on, a space for them to rest away from the chaos out here, tea and coffee and the Christian compassion you would hope to receive from the church.

St Clement’s has helped about 100-200 people and he put a call out to supermarkets for donations of bedding so they could offer evacuees a roof over their heads tonight.

He said the church had been inundated with offers of help and donations, with food deliveries from Tesco and Whole Foods arriving unbidden. A chef who feeds Stella McCartney’s staff also reached out and will cook lunch for people at the church today, he said.

“It’s London doing what London does best,” he said. “We saw it after the terrible events in London Bridge and we see it again today. When push comes to shove London comes together, it stands together – it’s that Blitz spirit.”

Updated

Sadiq Khan says there will be a “great many questions as to the cause of this tragedy”.

In a new statement he adds: “I want to reassure Londoners that we will get all these answers.”

Updated

Plans and drawings lodged with the local planning department show details of Grenfell Tower and the refurbishment project. One cross section purports to show a single stair access to the upper floors.

Updated

At the impromptu rescue centre in the Rugby Portobello youth club, residents, many in their pyjamas, are waiting for news and the next steps.

Some are in tears, while others seem dazed. A missing person’s register was being passed around.

Sajad Jamalvatan, a biomechanical engineering student who lives with his mother and sister on the third floor, said he was returning from the cinema at about 1.30am and could see the fire from the station.

Police officers wouldn’t allow them near the building. “I could see it wasn’t safe,” he said. “They pushed us back and pushed us back.”

He believed the fire started on the floor above his flat, and his mother got out very fast. “She smelt the fire and got out of the house. She could see stuff coming from the floor above her so she was panicking.”

She left with only her passport and Jamalvatan’s sister’s passport.

Like several other residents of Grenfell Tower, he told the Guardian: “There were no fire alarms at all.”

Jamalvatan said he saw someone jump from the 17th or 18th floor between 2.30am and 3.30am.

He added that the fire appeared to spread quickly up the cladding, which he described as plastic and which may be PVC, on the outside of the building.

“The fire hit the outside of the building … and as soon as it did that it went straight up,” he said.

Another witness from a neighbouring building, who asked not to be named, said: “If you had been here at 1.30 you would see it spreading rapidly … I’ve never seen a fire spread as quickly like that.”

A man who gave his name only as Taz said he lives in the block immediately below Grenfell Tower. “I heard screaming and shouting and looked out of my window,” he said. “You could see kids waving from the windows. You could hear, ‘Mummy, daddy’ … I just ran down the street. The police were telling us the block’s going to collapse.”

People were crying outside for their family,” he added. “It wasn’t a good sight to see.”

His uncle, Abdul Wahabi, lives on the 18th floor and hadn’t been heard from. “My uncle’s still stuck up there,” he said. “We haven’t heard anything from him. We’re still waiting.”

Taz added that the only immediate support was being organised by the local community. “I don’t see any local authorities, I don’t see the council,” he said. “It’s just local people getting together helping each other out. Some people have lost their homes.”

Updated

A team of British Red Cross volunteers are supporting residents at a nearby rest centre.

Jon Pewtner, senior emergency response officer for the British Red Cross said: “The atmosphere here is tense – people are worried about loved ones and many are coming to the realisation that they have lost their homes.

“The community is rallying round, with residents collecting food, drink and clothes, and everyone is asking each other if they can help, or if they need food. There is a good, strong community spirit.”

Organisations have been offering shelter to residents. Latymer upper school said: “Partner schools and organisations contact @LatymerUpper and we will help with premises if we can.”

The Al-Manaar centre has also been opened and used as a temporary shelter for those affected.

Updated

Two residents from Grenfell Tower have been in touch to say they are safely on holiday. They did not give their names but gave an address in the tower and their ages as 44 and 54. They claim the council was told about fire concerns.

We are alive and well, but not able to report ourselves as alive because the emergency phone number is very slow, and the town hall number is also constantly busy. During the refurbishments we already knew that a disaster like this could happen any time, but corruption thrives at an alarming level in K&C. It’s all about whitewashing money through ‘projects’ at the cost of people’s lives. We are abroad on holidays, lucky escape.

Updated

Here’s an aerial view of the fire at dawn.

Grenfell Tower fire
Grenfell Tower fire Photograph: Jason Hawkes/jasonhawkes.com

Cotton can’t give any details on the number of victims. She says fire crews are making steady progress up the building. She says they have reached the 21st floor.

She would not answer questions about the safety concerns of residents before the blaze.

Updated

Fire commissioner Dany Cotton is giving another statement.

She says a structural engineer is monitoring the safety of the building. It remains safe for fire crews to enter, she says. She can’t speculate on the cause because of the “dynamic nature” of the incident.

Paul Woodrow, from the London ambulance service, says 100 medics are working at the scene. He confirms that 50 people have been taken to hospital.

Stuart Cundy, of the Met, urges people to keep away from the area. He says people should call 0800 0961 233 if they have concerns about people in the area.

Updated

Francis Dean, from Middlesex, was at the missing persons centre on Freston Road looking for his sister Zainab Deen, who was with her two-year-old son in her flat in Grenfell Tower last night.

She called me around about half past one, going two, saying that there was a fire, so I had to drive back here. I was on the phone to her, she was on the 14th floor. She came out of the flat and they told her to stay, but because that flat was on fire she went into the next flat, 113. She was in 115.

I was telling her to use the stairs. She was a bit frightened, a bit afraid. But the firefighters were telling her to go back in.

Their response was too slow; and besides the building burned too fast. This is a new building, when she got the flat they were still renovating it. I don’t think it’s been two years yet, and now fire. Somebody’s got to be held accountable for this.

It’s not looking good because I was chatting to her about 4am and she was trapped and there was smoke. At one point the son collapsed because of the smoke and I told her: you have to give him mouth to mouth.

Dean has not spoken to his sister since and is still looking for her. Staff at Freston Road told him to move on to a rescue centre at the Rugby Portobello Trust.

A woman said she had come with her son to look for his friend. From her home in Kingsnorth House, opposite Grenfell Tower, she had watched the fire as it developed through the night. “I was just praying that my friends and families that I know are out of there,” she said. “I heard the screams.”

Updated

At St Clement’s church on Sirdar Road some of those who had been evacuated stood on the street in shock as helicopters hovered overhead.

I spoke to Mahmoud, a 25-year-old refugee from Syria who had come to the UK seeking safety. He lived in Grenfall Tower and was waiting for news of his friend Mohammed, whom he last spoke to at 3.30am when he was still trapped in the flat next to the one they shared, desperately trying to escape.

Mahmoud said he lives with two brothers, Mohammed, 24, andOmar, 25, who is in hospital.

Mahmoud had been working and was out when his friend called him to say the tower was on fire.

When Mahmoud, who lives on the 14th floor with the brothers, got back the fire was small and not on their side of the building, but he watched as it grew and wrapped around the tower.

I spoke to my friend at about 3.30am. He was saying, ‘Help me.’ My friend who escaped went to one flat and he went to another. They lost each other. I have been friends with them since I was six years old, I don’t know what to do. I am waiting. I hope he is alive. I last spoke to [Mohammed] at 3.30am. He was saying, ‘Please help me. Please tell my family I love them.’ He sounded very scared.

The last time Mahmoud spoke to Mohammed he believes he was in the next-door flat with two adults and a baby. Mahmoud said he last saw his friend Omar, who was on the phone to his trapped brother, at Latimer Road station.

“He was talking to his brother on the phone. He was saying, ‘Go downstairs. Don’t listen to anyone, go downstairs.’ I think he was waiting for the firemen to get to him.

Updated

London mayor: questions need to be answered about fire advice

London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, said questions needed to be answered about the fire advice given to residents.

Asked on Radio 4’s Today programme about advice to residents to stay inside their flats in the event of a fire (see earlier) Khan said: “Thankfully residents didn’t stay in their flats and fled to safety.

“One of the concerns that we have is it’s a 24-storey building but for obvious reasons, with the scale of the fire, our experts weren’t able to reach all the way to the top, so of course these are questions that need to be answered as soon as possible.”

He added: “It’s very distressing, not just for those of us watching as lay people, but also very distressing for the emergency services.

“We declared a major incident very early, which meant not just the fire service but also the London ambulance service, the police and the others were involved at the scene.”

More than 100 police officers were on scene, alongside 100 medics and 250 firefighters, he said.

Updated

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Updated

Witnesses have described screams of terror and people jumping in a bid to reach safety, PA reports.

One witness described hearing a neighbour screaming for help before apparently jumping out as flames engulfed his seventh-storey flat.

Speaking from an evacuation centre on Freston Road, the woman, who asked not to be named, said: “There was a woman stood behind me who was shouting to someone she knew on the seventh floor. She was on the phone trying to speak to him, she was obviously very emotional because the flats were blazing at this point.

“He looked like he was screaming to her. Police said for anyone at the windows to wave a rag or something so the firemen could rescue them, but we thought: How are they gonna do that?

“I saw the woman later and she was hysterical. She said her friend jumped. The whole of his window was on fire.”

A man identified as Methrob, who lived on the 17th floor, told LBC Radio: “I heard the fire trucks and so I was alerted that something was going on. There was no fire alarm in the building, we don’t have an integrated fire alarm system.”

He said the fire was inside one apartment but added the “real issue was when it caught fire to the cladding outside.”

“That’s when I noticed the fire from outside when I looked out the window. The cladding went up like a matchstick.”

Methrob said residents had been concerned about safety, adding there had been warnings “for over a year”.

Another witness, Samira, told BBC News: “It escalated really quickly.
“Around midnight the fire was only around the third floor and then, before you know it, the whole 23 (sic) floors of the building were all on fire and there were people screaming for help and throwing kids out. “I think everyone felt really helpless because no one could get to them.

“Everyone was really scared and they didn’t know what to do and it was really sad to see. There were a lot of people there, children, elderly people and disabled people; my family members, who thankfully made it out. But there are still a lot of people who are unaccounted for.”

Joanna O’Connor, a local resident, told Sky News: “One of our neighbours, her sister, husband and children were in the building, it was their neighbours’ flat that caught fire.

“So it’s very close to us, we’ve got neighbours whose families are in that building.”

Local resident Tamara told BBC News:

Around 12.30/1am my mum called me and said there was a fire outside. By the time I got there the whole right side of the building was on fire, the whole thing was engulfed in flames.

“We could hear people screaming ‘help me’ so me and my brother, with some other people who live in the area, ran over to the estate to where you could still get underneath it and there were people just throwing their kids out saying ‘save my children’.

“The fire crew, ambulance and police couldn’t do anything, they couldn’t get in, and they were just telling them to stay where they are, and we’ll come and get you.

“But things quickly escalated beyond measure and they couldn’t go back in and get them.

“My brother has a lot of school friends who are still wondering if their friends have made it out, they haven’t got in contact with them or heard anything.”

Residents in Lancaster Road watch as smoke billows from a fire that has engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower.
Residents in Lancaster Road watch as smoke billows from a fire that has engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Updated

Line Sterring, 23, from Denmark, and Isabel Afonso, 22, from Portugal, live in Testerton Walk, next to Grenfell Tower.

I spoke to them as they sat on the pavement after being evacuated from their building. They had been given water by the emergency services.

Sterring said she thought noises she heard at about 1.30am came from neighbours. “My first thought was who is having a party, it was noisy but not screaming and shouting at that point. But then we looked out of the window and everyone was looking at the building.”

Afonso, her flatmate, said they ran downstairs and were told there was a fire. “There were people in the tower sitting on the window saying I’m going to jump down, and people yelling at them ‘don’t jump they are coming’. This is like 1.30 and I didn’t see anyone being evacuated.

“A lot of neighbours were trying to help, some of the apartment have access by a kind of bridge to our building so people were helping people over the gate between them. Some people were helping a family of four people with a baby.”

Sterring said she saw the flames gradually wrap around the building: “at first the fire was on the opposite side of the building to us. The firemen moved into the main road. We couldn’t really see flames but then the fire started on the front and it just started consuming the building.

“We could see people waving fairy lights and flags to show their position. At first people seemed calm but then you could see smoke coming out of the windows. When they saw the smoke they started panicking.

“We saw people in the second top window of the tower. There were four people screaming and shouting and then the window went completely dark from the smoke and that part of the building was covered in flames.

“The worst thing was seeing people stuck and you feel so useless. You are just watching people probably dying and the feeling of not doing anything, you just can’t do anything...”

Afonso added:“We could see people banging on their windows screaming for help. It was horrific.”

Updated

Smoke from the fire has been visible across the London skyline.

Smoke pours from Grenfell Tower on the Lancaster West Estate - scene of a huge fire at a tower block near White City, London
Smoke pours from Grenfell Tower on the Lancaster West Estate - scene of a huge fire at a tower block near White City, London Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/LNP

Rydon, the company responsible for the cladding and retrofitting refurbishments at Grenfell Tower have scraped all references to the refurbishment from their website.

But a cached summary of the refurbishment is here.

Screenshot 2017-06-14 at 08.27.01
Screenshot 2017-06-14 at 08.27.01 Photograph: Screengrab

The company that provided the external cladding panels for Rydon has since gone bust.

Updated

The fire safety advice to Grenfell Tower residents was to stay in their flats unless told otherwise.

A newsletter to residents published in 2014 said:

Our longstanding ‘stay put’ policy stays in force until you are told otherwise. This means that (unless there is a fire in your flat or in the hallway outside your flat) you should stay inside your flat. This is because Grenfell was designed according to rigorous fire safety standards. Also, the new front doors for each flat can withstand a fire for up to 30 minutes, which gives plenty of time for the fire brigade to arrive.

50 injured

The number of people taken to hospital has increased to 50, according to the latest from the London ambulance service.

Updated

The Met has confirmed a number of people have been killed in the fire. In its latest statement it also said the cause of the blaze was likely to take some time to confirm.

Updated

Estate resident Ahmed Chellat, who spoke to Alice Ross earlier, has been told that his relatives are safe after they were told to stay in their 21st-floor flat with wet towels under the doors.

His sister, brother-in-law, and their two children were advised to stay in the flat and that help was on its way. He told ITV they were safe.

Chellat confirmed that residents of the estate have had concerns about fire safety for years. He said: “It has been going on for quite some time regarding the safety of the tower. I live in the estate. The safety of the blocks has been a concern for a long time, not just now.”

A £9.7m refurbishment project on Grenfell Tower was completed last year.

A summary of the project before it began said:

The large scale works … includes an upgrade of the cladding to the exterior of the building, new windows, a totally new heating and lobby smoke ventilation system all of which will greatly enhance the energy efficiency of the tower and contribute to reducing resident’s living costs ...

The lobby smoke ventilation system has been designed to provide the existing stairwell with protection from the ingress of smoke from a fire within a dwelling by means of a mechanical extract system.

Chellat said the new cladding appeared to contribute to the blaze.

He said: “I’m not an expert but I think the plastic [cladding] they put outside really triggered the fire. By the time I went out, the plastic was exploding. Half the building was in flames and all the plastic which was bubbling and blowing.”

Cladding and burning debris falls off Grenfell Tower.
Cladding and burning debris falls off Grenfell Tower. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Here is Cotton’s statement:

This is an unprecedented incident. In my 29 years of being a firefighter I have never ever seen anything of this scale. Firefighters are working very hard at the moment.

This is a major fire that affected all floors of this 24-storey building from the second floor upwards. I have over 200 of my firefighters and officers attending this incident, with 40 fire engines and a range of specialist vehicles, including 14 fire rescue units. We declared this a major incident very early this morning … the first call coming in at 12.54. Our first fire engines were on the scene in under six minutes.

Crews wearing breathing apparatus and extended duration breathing apparatus have been working in extremely challenging and very difficult conditions to rescue people and bring this major fire under control.

London ambulance service have confirmed that 30 people have been taken to five hospitals.

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. It would clearly be wrong for me to speculate further.

Equally, the cause of this fire is not known at this stage.

We are working very closely with our colleagues in the Metropolitan police and the London ambulance service to bring this situation under control.

Further information will be made available shortly including advice for those concerned about those who are working here and people who live here.

Updated

Fatalities confirmed

London fire commissioner Dany Cotton is giving a statement. She said fire fighters arrived within six minutes.

She confirms that there have been a number of fatalities. She could not confirm numbers because of the complexity of the building.

Updated

What we know so far

If you’re just waking up, here’s what you need to know about the devastating blaze at Grenfell Tower.

  • The apartment block on the Lancaster West estate in north Kensington continues to burn after the fire brigade was alerted shortly before 1am Wednesday.
  • Forty fire engines and over 200 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze through the early morning, “working extremely hard in very difficult conditions” to tackle the “large and very serious incident”.
  • Though many witnesses said they saw people trapped inside their homes, emergency services gave no further details beyond saying that 30 patients were taken to five hospitals.
  • The fire brigade is expected to give an update soon; areas of the building are still on fire, prompting concerns it may collapse.
  • About 30 flats in the surrounding area have been evacuated and emergency rest centres have been set up for those told to leave their homes.
  • Police have set up an emergency number for people concerned for friends and families on 0800 0961 233.
  • A resident group repeatedly warned of a fire risk at the tower, claiming that a major fire had been narrowly averted after a power surge in 2013.
  • The building recently underwent significant, multimillion-pound renovations that concluded in early 2016.
  • The borough of Kensington and Chelsea said the cause of the fire will be investigated, but for now the focus is on supporting emergency services in their rescue and relief operation.

Updated

Residents repeatedly warned of fire risk

A resident group repeatedly warned of a fire risk at Grenfell Tower and claimed a major fire was narrowly averted after a power surge in 2013.

The Grenfell Action Group says its concerns were dismissed by Kensington and Chelsea council, which owns the block, and and the local tenant management organisation [KCTMO], which runs the borough’s homes.

In a blogpost last November, it wrote:

It is our conviction that a serious fire in a tower block or similar high density residential property is the most likely reason that those who wield power at the KCTMO will be found out and brought to justice! The Grenfell Action Group believe that the KCTMO narrowly averted a major fire disaster at Grenfell Tower in 2013 when residents experienced a period of terrifying power surges that were subsequently found to have been caused by faulty wiring. We believe that our attempts to highlight the seriousness of this event were covered up by the KCTMO with the help of the RBKC scrutiny Committee who refused to investigate the legitimate concerns of tenants and leaseholders.

We believe that these investigations will become part of damning evidence of the poor safety record of the KCTMO should a fire affect any other of their properties and cause the loss of life that we are predicting ...

In the last twenty years and despite the terrifying power surge incident in 2013 and recent fire at Adair Tower, the residents of Grenfell Tower have received no proper fire safety instructions from the KCTMO. Residents were informed by a temporary notice stuck in the lift and one announcement in a recent regeneration newsletter that they should remain in their flats in the event of fire. There are not and never have been any instructions posted in the Grenfell Tower noticeboard or on individual floors as to how residents should act in the event of a fire. Anyone who witnessed the recent tower block fire at Shepherds Court, in nearby Shepherd’s Bush, will know that the advice to remain in our properties would have led to certain fatalities and we are calling on our landlord to re-consider the advice that they have so badly circulated.

The Grenfell Action Group predict that it won’t be long before the words of this blog come back to haunt the KCTMO management and we will do everything in our power to ensure that those in authority know how long and how appallingly our landlord has ignored their responsibility to ensure the health and safety of their tenants and leaseholders. They can’t say that they haven’t been warned!

Updated

The London ambulance service has set up an emergency rest centre for those who have been evacuated from their homes. Residents of about 30 flats near the scene were told to leave their homes.

Assed Baig of Channel 4 News took this photograph of men from east London, representing the Suffa Global charitable giving initiative, delivering supplies to people affected by the blaze.

Updated

Emergency hotline set up

The Metropolitan police has set up an emergency number for anyone who is concerned their friends or family might be affected in the Grenfell Tower blaze in Kensington.

Updated

Residents tell of escaping the Grenfell Tower

Residents of Grenfell Tower who managed to escape the fire that ravaged their building early on Wednesday morning have described how they fled as the blaze took hold.

The survivors, whose belongings are presumed to have been destroyed, gathered in the nearby Rugby Portobello community centre where they were given water, clothes and blankets.

At least 200 firefighters and 40 engines are on the scene of the huge fire at Grenfell Tower in Latimer Road, near Notting Hill, in West London. One resident, who did not want to give his name, said he first heard a neighbour’s smoke alarm and “thought nothing of it”, but realised something was wrong when he heard a neighbour shouting.

“I’m lucky to be alive – and lots of people have not got out of the building,” he told Guardian. “I’ve lost everything I own. I’m standing here in everything I’ve got.”

Updated

A man who lived on the fourth floor of the Grenfell tower has told Sky News UK: “there was no bell”. The first alarm he heard, he said, was when he and his family were outside the building and it was in flames.

The only reason he and his family knew to flee was because someone else escaping the building knocked on every door on their floor on their way out.

This man said he did hear alarms, but they were “very, very quiet”. He was on the verge of falling asleep in his home on the seventh floor when he smelled burning plastic – he only realised the building was on fire when he opened the kitchen window and heard, “it’s getting bigger, it’s getting bigger”.

London fire brigade has updated its statement on the fire:

Forty fire engines and over 200 firefighters and officers have been called to a tower block fire on the Lancaster West estate in north Kensington this morning. The brigade has received multiple calls. The fire is from the second floor to the top floor of the 27-floor building.

Assistant Commissioner Dan Daly said: “Firefighters wearing breathing apparatus are working extremely hard in very difficult conditions to tackle this fire. This is a large and very serious incident and we have deployed numerous resources and specialist appliances.“

The brigade was called at 0054 and is still at the scene. Fire crews from North Kensington, Kensington, Hammersmith and Paddington and from surrounding fire stations are in attendance. The cause of the fire is not known at this stage.

Updated

Siar Naqshabandi, at the Rugby Portobello centre, said he lives on the third floor and said his brother, who was in the building, heard no fire alarms. “I came back at about 1.45am and saw the building was on fire. I rang him [his brother] and said, get out.”

He has more family living on the 23rd floor and an uncle is still missing. “They were telling people not to leave the building,” he said. “I told them to get down. They said we’re not allowed to get out.”

Updated

Two people have told Alice Ross, the Guardian reporter at the scene, that they heard no fire alarms – only household smoke alarms.

This man spoke to Assed Baig, a journalist with Channel 4 News, about his escape from his home on the 17th floor of Grenfell Tower with his 68-year-old aunt. We’ve not yet been able to independently verify his suggestion that the building had no central fire alarm, or that the cladding was especially flammable.

“We saw the fire engines, so we were looking outside at what’s going on. There was no fire alarms anywhere, because we don’t have a kind of integrated fire system – it’s just everyone’s house for itself. I walked out into the common area to see if the lifts are moving, to see if people are in a hassle – nothing. But I could smell the smoke.

“I went back inside the house, looked out the window. I started looking down the window – I had to really pull myself out to look down the window, from the 17th floor, and I see the fire blazing, and coming up really fast, because of the cladding – the cladding was really flammable, and it just caught up like a matchstick.”

Walking with his aunt – “step by step, slowly, slowly” – down the smoke-filled stairwell from the 17th floor was terrifying, he says. “The smoke was already strong when I was getting out – god knows how it would have been minutes after.”

He lost everything in the fire.

Updated

Ambulance: 30 patients taken to five hospitals

London ambulance service has confirmed that 30 patients have been taken to five hospitals.

The fire at Grenfell Tower remains a major incident and more than 20 ambulance crews remain at the scene, working with other emergency services. “Our priority is to assess the level and nature of injuries and ensure those in the most need are treated first and taken to hospitals.”

Updated

Ahmed Chellat had come to the Rugby Portobello centre with his wife to look for his brother-in-law, his wife and three children. “We don’t know what’s happened,” he said. “I asked him to come out and he couldn’t. He was advised to put towels under the doors and he said they will come for him. We’ve heard nothing.

“Last time we spoke to them was about 2.30am – he said the fire brigade’s coming up to me.”

Chellat continued: “The whole issue here is for five hours we’ve been here with my sister-in-law and some tenants. There’s no councillors, no TMO [the tenants’ organisation] to say exactly what’s going on. If it wasn’t for the local people we would be in the street. This is ridiculous. There’s no one to tell them what to do.”

Cllr Aicha Less, from neighbouring Westminster, was delivering water and blankets to the centre and described the situation as a “complete shambles”. “There’s been no steer, no guidance,” she said. “People have been left there, they don’t know if their relatives are in the block or not.”

Some people have said names are being gathered at the nearby Harrow Club, while the Red Cross is giving out clothes at St Clements Church, one of the places evacuated people have been sent to.

Updated

Some residents of the tower are at a makeshift centre in the Rugby Portobello, a community centre, where people are delivering water and blankets. Others have come to offer their houses to those in need.

One resident, who did not want to give his name but said he lived “high up” in the tower, said no alarms went off as the fire started.

“I heard my neighbour’s smoke alarm go off, and thought nothing of it. Then I heard a neighbour shouting ... I’m lucky to be alive – and lots of people have not got out of the building,” he said. “I’ve lost everything I own. I’m standing here in everything I’ve got.”

The building was an “accident waiting to happen”, he said, and there was not enough space at the base for fire engines to attend the scene.

He and others criticised the lack of information they were receiving. “There’s no coordination from anyone,” he said. “The police have not come to speak to us. We’ve been unable to give anyone our names. “It’s been five hours. There’s people here who don’t have a clue if their relatives are alive or dead.”

Updated

Council head: 'several hundred' in tower block

Nick Paget-Brown, the leader of Kensington and Chelsea council, has spoken on Sky News UK, saying he was working to establish how many people were in the tower block at the time of the fire. “Several hundred would have been in there. It’s a question of establishing how many were in there at the time of the fire,” he said.

He said emergency centres had been set up nearby to accommodate people who had been evacuated from their homes. “We’re providing as much support as we can ... it’s quite hard to get accurate and up-to-date information but the council will be doing all that it can to work with residents who have been evacuated.”

Paget-Brown said he had not spoken to residents who had been evacuated, but said were some being treated by emergency services. “I think at the moment the main priority is to make the building safe and ensure that residents we can evacuate are evacuated.”

He said he did not know whether people were trapped within the building: “That’s a matter for the emergency services.”

Paget-Brown had toured the building last May following a multimillion-pound refurbishment. “I’m really not in any position to answer any questions about the structure ... Clearly there’s a lot more work to do to actually evacuate the building and to establish how safe it is. This is a very, very, very severe fire.”

He said the tower block was inspected at the time of its renovation last year. “We will have to await the studies as to what the source of this has been.”

Updated

Jody Martin said he got to the scene as the first fire engine was arriving at Grenfell Tower. He told the BBC: “I grabbed an axe from the fire truck, it looked like there was a bit of confusion about what to do. I ran around the building looking for a fire escape and couldn’t see any noticeable fire escapes around the building. A lot of debris falling down.

“I eventually gained entry on to the second floor, and once I got to the corridor I realised there was so much smoke there.” He added that given the thickness of the smoke, he would be surprised if anyone could have left the building without assistance.

“I watched one person falling out, I watched another woman holding her baby out the window ... hearing screams, I was yelling everyone to get down and they were saying, ‘We can’t leave our apartments, the smoke is too bad on the corridors’,” he said.

Updated

St Clement Church and St James Church, a parish covering Notting Dale, Notting Hill, North Kensington, and Holland Park, is receiving people who have been evacuated from their homes.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has confirmed he is in close contact with emergency services.

Updated

The Metropolitan Police have clarified that it is the A40 that is closed in both directions – I’ve corrected my earlier post.

There is no service between Hammersmith and Edgware Road on the Hammersmith and City Line, and severe delays elsewhere on the line. The fire is close to the Latimer Road tube station.

This footage, only just shared on Twitter by Celeste Thomas, shows chaos on the streets at 1.50am, within an hour of emergency services being called to the blaze.

“People in night clothes, no shoes, crying, looking for family.”

Thomas lives nearby the tower block and had earlier posted footage of the fire. Her house is inside the police cordon, she tweeted in the last few minutes, and she had been told to stay inside with the windows shut.

Neither police, ambulance nor the fire brigade have given specifics about injuries, but multiple eyewitness accounts – including that of the Guardian reporter on the scene, Alice Ross – have spoken of people being trapped inside the building.

Local man and witness, Tim Downie, told the Guardian it seemed impossible that there would not be fatalities. “The sheer scale and the speed with which it spread, the closer you got, it seems like there must be casualties and fatalities.”

By 5am, he said, the building was almost entirely burned out and the fire was sending a huge plume of acrid black smoke into the sky.

“It has gone very quiet now, we heard a lot of sirens and screaming in the early hours, but now the building is pretty much all consumed. I hope everyone is out and being treated.”

He also told of seeing people using their mobile phone lights to get the attention of rescue crews.

Updated

The Metropolitan police confirm the A40 is closed in both directions as a result of the fire and are asking people to avoid the area to give authorities access to the scene. (They issued a correction to their earlier tweet, in which they’d specified the A4.)

The police cordon extends several blocks around Grenfell Tower.

Updated

Ashish Joshi, a senior correspondent for Sky News UK, says the tower block has been gutted in the fire: “The building is pretty much burned down, there’s a tiny bit left that’s not on fire, but every single window is gutted ... there’s nothing left of it. The acrid smell is horrendous.”

The below footage shows the damage done in the four-hour blaze, still not yet extinguished.

And the view from BBC Broadcasting House across the city.

Updated

Police are evacuating Barandon Walk and Tesserton Walk adjacent to the tower, with residents asked to gather their belongings and go to a nearby church about 20 minutes ago.

Fire declared major incident

The London ambulance service has also tweeted a statement, attributed to Stuart Crighton, the assistant director of operations. He says a “number of resources” are at the scene, including its specially trained hazardous area response team and more than 20 ambulance crews, but still no detail as to the number of injuries.

An evacuation process is still under way with people on the scene reporting that buildings near Grenfell Tower are being evacuated due to falling debris.

Jonathan Swain, of Good Morning Britain, says falling debris is making fire crews’ jobs “extremely difficult and dangerous”. This video was posted 15 minutes ago.

Updated

George Osborne, the Evening Standard editor, has tweeted this view of the “awful tower block fire” from a distance.

According to Get West London, the Grenfell Tower block had recently undergone a £10m refurbishment. Nick Paget-Brown, the leader of Kensington and Chelsea council, and Rock Feilding-Mellen, the deputy, visited the tower upon completion of the renovation in May last year.

The upgrade – which included the installation of insulated exterior cladding, new double-glazed windows, and a new communal heating system – was funded by the council as part of a multimillion-pound regeneration of the area.

According to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s website, the tower block was built in 1974 and contained 120 homes, managed by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation on behalf of the council. Among the tenants were Grenfell Under 3s Nursery and Dale Youth Amateur Boxing Club.

The refurbishment also created “nine much-needed new homes ... created from unused spaces”.

Updated

People remain trapped inside Grenfell Tower

Alice Ross has just filed this devastating account from the scene:

People can be seen at the windows, including one man waving a blanket from the window. People from neighbouring estates are huddled outside in their pyjamas near the flaming building, some shouting “put your head out the window” or calling the man with the blanket to shout his flat numbers so they can guide the fire services to him. Fire officers are spraying his window with water to try and douse the flames.

There’s a smell of acrid smoke and flaming debris is spiralling from the building. There’s the sound of breaking glass and dull pops. There was a woman with a child. I saw her waving maybe 30mins ago,” said a man who asked not to be named. “She said I’ve got a child ... I saw them spraying her window.”

Hadil Alamily said in the past hour she saw “someone jump on fire from the top floor”. She had seen him flashing a light in an SOS pattern. “He was screaming help, help, help but no one helped. He dashed a mattress out of the window. He was literally on fire and jumped.”

This footage was tweeted in the last 15 minutes.

Updated

This from Alice Ross, my colleague in London: “I can see a man in the window.”

Sky News is reporting that police have told onlookers who may know people inside the building to cover their mouths with a wet cloth and get out of the building as soon as they can, by any means possible. This has been confirmed by another reporter:

There is still no detail from authorities on the human impact of the blaze – even whether people are trapped – with the latest still that word from Metropolitan police: “A number of people have been treated for a range of injuries.”

Updated

What we know so far

  • A huge fire has engulfed a tower block in West London.
  • The fire broke out shortly before 1am on Wednesday at Grenfell Tower in Latimer Road near Notting Hill.
  • The tower is at least 24 storeys high and contains 120 apartments.
  • 200 firefighters have been tackling the blaze with 40 engines.
  • A number of people have been treated for a range of injuries according to the fire brigade
  • There have been multiple reports of people trapped in the blaze. These have not been confirmed by police or the fire brigade.
  • Streets around the tower have been sealed off and residents in ther houses evacuated.
  • London fire brigade say there is no known cause at the moment for the blaze.
  • The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has declared the fire a “major incident”.

This news story will be updated with developments, in addition to this rolling coverage.

Updated

There has been no confirmation yet if anyone has been killed in the Grenfell Tower fire, although police have said “a number of people” are being treated for various injuries.

To date, London’s worst tower block fire took place in Camberwell, south London, in July 2009. Six people – three women and three children – were killed when fire swept through the 14-storey Lakanal House. At least 20 people were injured.

Earlier this year, Southwark council was fined £570,000 after admitting it had breached a number of fire safety regulations.

All local authorities were ordered to check the safety of high-rise blocks in the wake of the Lakanal House tragedy, after firefighters expressed shock at the speed at which the flames engulfed the building.

Rachael Venables, an LBC reporter, has tweeted video of emergency services on the roads surrounding Grenfell Tower.

Ashish Joshi, a senior correspondent for Sky News UK, has said the police cordon extends several blocks back from the blaze and is manned by “hundreds” of officers: “There isn’t any panic, people are just looking at what is happening with a degree of disbelief. The tower bloke is aflame, the smoke is rising, there are people who have escaped with their lives who are looking back on the tower and knowing that everyone they have has been destroyed.

“It’s a terrible, terrible situation.”

Another shot from George Clarke and an onlooker:

Updated

Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, has tweeted urging people to follow London fire brigade on Twitter for updates.

Updated

George Clarke, the host of the Channel 4 show Amazing Spaces who earlier spoke to Radio 5 Live, has posted this on Instagram.

Alice Ross, my colleague in London, is near the scene and reports that the building is “completely ablaze” as debris continues to fall form the floors.

The sun is starting to dawn on west London, where it has just gone 4am. Fabio Bebber is continuing to tweet images from the scene – this one was posted within the last 10 minutes.

It is easy to see how the fire spread from one side of the tower in the hours since emergency services were called at about 1am – compare the above image to one taken by Bebber three hours ago:

Updated

Where is the Grenfell Tower?

map embed

Fire Brigade: the cause of the fire is not yet known

The LFB has posted an update on Facebook:

Forty fire engines and over 200 firefighters and officers have been called to a tower block fire on the Lancaster West estate in north Kensington this morning. The brigade has received multiple calls. The fire is from the second floor to the top floor of the 27 floor building.

Assistant Commissioner Dan Daly said: “Firefighters wearing breathing apparatus are working extremely hard in very difficult conditions to tackle this fire. This is a large and very serious incident and we have deployed numerous resources and specialist appliances.”

The brigade was called at 0054 and is still at the scene. Fire crews from North Kensington, Kensington, Hammersmith and Paddington and from surrounding fire stations are in attendance.

The cause of the fire is not known at this stage.

Updated

A nearby resident, named as Sofia, also told Radio 5:

“I kept hearing what I thought were loud banging sounds … I looked out of the window and said Grenfell Tower was burning down.”

She said, as other witnesses have done, said the fire began one side but quickly spread across the whole building: “I have not seen a survivor, someone pulled out of the building and being treated by an ambulance. I think it confirms my worst fear that people are dying in this building.”

She said the noises began at about 1.15am, and the fire had spread very rapidly.

“I heard loads of young girls crying out for help … I can’t see any ladders extending into the building … I can hear people screaming for help and they are dying.”

BAnother witness said he had seen groups of people, “at least three families”, leaving the building at different exits, but added that he had heard that staircases inside were now on fire.

Updated

One witness, Victoria Goldsmith, has told Sky News:

“The whole building seems to be engulfed now. It’s spread all the way to the top. I heard it at about 1am and I ran out to see if I could help, and there were already people there.

“There was literally two people trapped at the top and they had mobile phones and they had the lights trying to flash them and signal people... They couldn’t get to them ... fire kept going and the lights went out. “

“They are trying to get it under control. It’s pretty horrendous.”

Updated

More horrific footage shared by Fabio Bebber.

George Clarke, who presents Channel 4 show Amazing Spaces, told BBC Radio 5 Live: “I was in bed and heard ‘beep, beep, beep’ and thought, ‘I’ll get up and run downstairs as quickly as I could’.

“I thought it might be a car alarm outside and saw the glow through the windows. I’m getting covered in ash, that’s how bad it is. I’m 100 metres away and I’m absolutely covered in ash.

“It’s so heartbreaking, I’ve seen someone flashing their torches at the top level and they obviously can’t get out. The guys are doing an incredible job to try and get people out that building, but it’s truly awful.”

Updated

The Metropolitan police have confirmed that “a number of people are being treated for a range of injuries” on Twitter. That’s further to the earlier report that two people were being treated on the scene for smoke inhalation.

There has been still no word from emergency services as to whether people are trapped inside the building but, judging by the plentiful eyewitness accounts, the question is not if, but how many.

It is also still not clear whether the building has 24 or 27 storeys, with conflicting accounts from authorities and the architects that recently renovated the tower. We will endeavour to bring you clarity as soon as possible.

Updated

Two hours ago, Fabio Bebber tweeted that the fire was “consuming” Grenfell Tower: “People screaming for their lives. Horrible.”

Bebber’s report that people were trapped within the building, “screaming for their lives”, has been corroborated by other witnesses, but emergency services have not yet given any details beyond two people being treated at the scene for smoke inhalation.

Bebber tweeted that there was a “very strong smell” from the blaze, and a police officer had asked those gathered outside to ask if anyone was in touch with people inside the tower by phone.

Bebber said he saw someone with a flashlight on the top floor, echoing other witnesses’ accounts of people trapped inside the building, desperately signalling for help with their phones or lights.

Bebber said that as the blaze moved from one side of the building to the other, engulfing it in flames, onlookers were moved away from the scene by authorities. He said he saw no ladders or water sprays outside the building.

Updated

A witness who gave his name as Rio told Sky News UK he could see the fire from his kitchen window. He had been alerted to the blaze by the sound of distant smoke alarms.

It began on one side of the building but has engulfed the block in the last two hours, stretching from the second floor to the top. Rio said fire fighters could not physically reach the upper floors of the block from their trucks.

London ambulance service says it has sent a “number of resources” to the scene, including its specialist hazardous area response team of medics who specialise in providing medical care in hazardous environments.

Reports that people are trapped inside the building have not yet been confirmed by authorities.

Updated

Kasia Madera, a presenter with BBC World News, says smoke is visible from Hammersmith. The Westway A40 is now closed in both directions, with a “huge plume of smoke” reaching across it from the site of the “enormous fire” on Latimer Road. There are lots of helicopters overhead, she says.

The London fire brigade has tweeted, in the last 20 minutes, that crews are continuing to work hard at the tower block fire, which is from the second to top floor of the 27-storey building. (However, the architects who renovated the building have put it at 24 storeys – we’ll clarify as soon as we know for sure.)

Updated

More footage of the blaze.

While this is a developing story, from photos and videos of the blaze posted to social media it is clear that the fire at Grenfell Tower is serious, with flames engulfing the 24-storey building.

Celeste Thomas, who lives across the road from the building, has been tweeting from the scene as firefighters struggle to bring the enormous blaze under control. She says she saw falling debris and could hear damage from inside.

Thomas tweeted that “hundreds” of people were outside the building, among them residents and families trying to find each other. Police were moving crowds away from the building to allow ambulances drive through.

She said she had been asked by police to go inside her home, across the road from the apartment block: “Fire spread and not yet showing signs of coming under control ... Smoke turned darker now.”

Forty fire engines had been at the scene for over an hour, said Thomas.

Updated

Huge fire breaks out in 24-storey Grenfell Tower

A block of flats in London is on fire, with people reportedly trapped inside. Forty fire engines and 200 firefighters are battling the blaze at the Lancaster West Estate tower block, a 24-storey building in Latimer Road in White City.

The Metropolitan police were called to the apartment building at 1.15am on Wednesday, and officers and the London ambulance service have joined London fire brigade at the scene. An evacuation process is under way.

Police said two people were being treated at the scene for smoke inhalation, but reports from the scene suggest people are trapped inside their homes. More than 200 people live in the block.

We’ll be reporting updates as we receive them.

Updated

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