LONDON (CNN) — Residents furious over the handling of the Grenfell Tower fire descended upon the local town hall Friday afternoon in west London, pushing their way into the building while shouting, “we want justice.”
Dozens of protesters mounted the front steps and entered Kensington town hall. Some attempted to force their way past security personnel to the upper floors where local officials have their offices.
Some held fliers or wore t-shirts with images of fire victims and the word “missing” over the pictures.
One man approached a TV camera, saying, “We want answers and justice.” He said the people don’t want to be violent but they are desperate for information.
The protests come as British police say they may never be able to identify all of those who perished in the tower disaster, as anger and frustration mounted in the London neighborhood stunned by the tragedy.
A criminal investigation has been launched into the circumstances surrounding the blaze. Police said the cause of the fire was unlikely to be arson, but a team of senior detectives is investigating whether other offenses were committed.
One London Member of Parliament has called for corporate manslaughter charges to be brought, after it was revealed that flammable material had been used to clad the building during a recent refurbishment. No sprinkler system was installed.
Police said on Friday that 30 people were confirmed to have died and around 70 are unaccounted for. Relatives and friends of the missing made increasingly desperate appeals for information, as it became increasingly clear that few are likely to have survived.
Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Cambridge visited the area to meet residents and community representatives on Friday.
Theresa May slammed
The government of Prime Minister Theresa May, already weakened after losing its parliamentary majority in elections last week, has been slammed for a faltering response.
The London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, demanded that the government publish a list of other tower blocks checked by investigators by the end of Friday. In a letter to May, he listed a litany of concerns raised by residents, including the lack of information about missing relatives, the chaotic response of the local council, and concerns about safety in other tower blocks.
“They feel the government and local council haven’t done enough to help them in the aftermath of this horrific incident, or to provide answers to their increasingly urgent questions,” he wrote in the letter.
May, who has announced a full public inquiry into the disaster, faced criticism for failing to meet residents when she made a low-key visit to the scene Thursday. After widespread condemnation for failing to face residents in person, she visited victims in hospital Friday.
Police said on Friday that they had identified the place where the fire originated, and disclosed that it was unlikely to have been started deliberately.
Metropolitan Police Commander Stuart Cundy said there was “a risk that sadly we may not be able to identify everybody”. He said 24 people remain in hospital, 12 of whom are in critical care.
Details of victims emerge
The names of those who died are beginning to emerge.
One was Gloria Trevisan, a 26-year-old Italian architect who was living in London because her family was having financial difficulties at home in Italy.
A lawyer for the family told CNN that Trevisan was able to speak with her parents before she died, telling them: “I am going to heaven. I will help you from up there.”
On Thursday, Mohammad Al-Hajali, 23, a refugee who fled Syria for the UK in 2014, was announced as the first victim of the fire.
Mohammad and his brother Omar, both students, lived together in a 14th-floor apartment in Grenfell Tower.
Omar, 25, survived, but the brothers were separated as firemen tried to rescue them from burning building early Wednesday.
Anger
Many residents blame the fire’s rapid spread on cladding fitted to the outside of the tower in a recent refurbishment.
According to the Times of London, the cladding’s manufacturer said its use is banned in the US on high-rise buildings “because of the fire and smoke spread.”
There are also questions over why no sprinklers were fitted during the 2015/16 refurbishment of the building, which would have cost £200,000, according to the British Automatic Fire Sprinkler Association .
Nicholas Paget-Brown, leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which owns the building, told the BBC that sprinklers were not fitted “because that would have delayed and made the refurbishment of the block more disruptive.”
He added that the cladding fitted to the outside of the tower — and blamed by many residents for helping spread the fire — would not be used again.
Warned of the danger
Originally constructed in 1974, the residential tower block recently underwent a $13.2 million (£10.3 million) refurbishment. But multiple residents told CNN they did not hear fire alarms when the blaze broke out and many survivors said the fire spread quickly with little warning.
Residents had complained about safety for several years.
In November, the Grenfell Action Group highlighted ongoing concerns among residents over the safety of the tower, managed by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation on behalf of the borough.
The group’s blog post argued that only “a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord … and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders.”
The management company acknowledged residents’ concerns in a statement: “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.”
Blame game
The UK government has promised that all those made homeless by the disaster will be rehoused in the local area. But the government has been criticized for failing to act on recommendations from previous tower block fires.
The Prime Minister is facing particular scrutiny over the role of her new chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, who served as housing minister until he lost his seat in last week’s snap general election.
Barwell had told lawmakers that the government intended to review fire safety standards following a deadly blaze at the Lakanal House high-rise building in south London in 2009, in which three women and three children died. In that case, exterior paneling helped the fire spread.
Jim Fitzpatrick, an MP with the main opposition Labour Party, slammed the Conservative-led government for shuffling its feet on the review.
He said that he and a parliamentary group that he chairs have been pushing for better safety regulations since the 2009 fire.
