Three children were hospitalised after a fire broke out in a three-storey block of flats in Enfield.
There were 10 fire engines and around 70 firefighters at the scene on Maybury Close in north London on Monday morning. The roof and second floor of the block of flats were destroyed in the blaze.
A resident who lives near the flats, Vicky Gardner, was walking her dog at 5.15am when she saw the fire and called the fire brigade.
“I couldn’t hear anything, but I immediately saw flames shooting at the top of the roof,” she told The Independent.
“At the same time, one of my neighbours had come out of her property and they were going and knocking on doors and waking people up because no one had come out at this point.”
From what she could hear, there were no fire alarms going off at any point, and people began evacuating as emergency services arrived.
Ms Gardner added: “People started to come out and I could see there was a woman on the top floor with a child in her arms... by then there was a lot of smoke.”
The London Fire Brigade (LFB) said three children were taken to hospital with smoke inhalation, and the Met Police confirmed that their conditions have been deemed as non-life-threatening.
A London Ambulance Service spokesperson said: “We sent ambulance crews, a paramedic in a fast response car, an incident response officer and our Hazardous Area Response Team to the scene.”
A Met Police spokesperson said enquiries were ongoing and police were working alongside the LFB to investigate the cause of the fire. They said no arrests have been made at this time.
Major traffic disruption was reported in the area this morning, and the A10 into Hoe Lane is currently closed. London commuters have been advised to avoid the area.
The LFB received the first of 16 calls about the fire at 5.19am, and crews were deployed from Enfield, Edmonton, Chingford, Tottenham, Woodford and Southgate fire stations. The fire was under control just after 8am.
Just over a week ago, a fire broke out at London’s Westfield Stratford City shopping centre, and 10 fire engines were sent to the multi-storey car park which was alight.
The fire brigade reported receiving at least 35 calls about the fire, getting the first one at 4.05pm and putting the blaze under control by 5.54pm. It is being treated as accidental and is thought to have been caused by an undetermined fault within the engine compartment of a diesel-powered car.
Anyone with information should contact the police by calling 101 or online, quoting CAD866/22SEP.
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