14 June, 2017
"We are dealing with a really serious fire that spread throughout the building", a spokeswoman for the London fire brigade confirmed.
Commissioner Dany Cotton calls the fire an "unprecedented incident" and says she has never seen anything on this scale in her 29-year career.
Police say it will take some time to confirm the cause of the fire.
"There was bits of building falling off all around me, I scalded my shin on a hot piece of metal that had fallen off the building", said Jodie Martin, who lives close to the building and sought to save people from the fire.
He said: "It's horrendous".
Four hours after the alarm was raised, flames could still be seen on several floors of the blackened residential building, which was shrouded in a cloud of thick black smoke. I looked out my window, I leaned over and I could see the fire blazing up.
"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".
"I always open my windows and I heard some unusual noises outside", she said.
"(If I were asleep), we would have all been dead - that's how bad it was", he said.
An earlier report said that at least 600 people were believed to have been inside the flats when the fire began.
Residents related how they woke up to the smell of burning and rushed to escape through smoke-filled corridors.
He got up to have a cigarette and discovered the fire by hearing a woman shout through an open window. "I'm 100 meters away and I'm absolutely covered in ash", he continued.
"We have taken 30 patients to five hospitals", London Ambulance Service said.
More than 200 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze which was reported just before 1am on Wednesday. Residents said repairs, including the addition of some sort of cladding, had been made to the exterior of the block recently.
A blog post from the Grenfell Action Group from November 2016 said "only a catastrophic event" would expose the concerns residents had.
Nine News UK correspondent Seb Costello told Hit FM that fire crews had worked throughout the night to contain the fire, which broke out in the multi-storey Grenfell Tower near Notting Hill this morning around 1.15am.
A building that had previous reports of fire hazard warnings is ablaze with residents of London's Grenfell Tower building trapped as some desperately jump through windows for their lives.
He said that after they fled the explosions from the flats included blue flames, suggesting gas. "There weren't no stopping it".
