London fire: Firefighters douse blaze, death toll expected to rise

TIL Desk/World/London/ Smoke still billowed from the 24- storey residential tower block in west London that was engulfed in a massive fire after firefighters doused the blaze that claimed at least 12 lives, even as many people were still unaccounted for with little chance of finding survivors.

The fire at Grenfell Tower on the Lancaster West Estate in Latimer Road was reported at 01:16 AM (local time) yesterday. About 600 people were believed to have been inside the tower’s 120 flats, many of them asleep, when the blaze ripped through the building.

London fire commissioner Dany Cotton said it was not safe for fire crews to go all the way out to the edges of the building.

“The fire is now out, There are small pockets of smoldering. You will see wisps of smoke coming out all day due to the heat of the building and the remaining contents. There are, as we believe, still unknown numbers of people in the building,” Cotton told.

“Due to the severity of the fire and the way things are, it will take a long time for us to be able to do that search to properly identity anyone who is left in the building… tragically now we are not expecting to find anyone else alive,” she said.