19 June, 2017
We know that there are still bodies of those who died inside the building and we want to return those people to their families as soon as we possibly can."The work to search the building is challenging, but naturally could never be done quickly enough for those now having to live with the uncertainty of knowing where their loved ones are".
Metropolitan Police Service Commander Stuart Cundy said on Saturday that authorities have formally identified one of the victims who died in the June 14 blaze as 23-year-old Mohammad Alhajali, a resident of the apartment building in the West London neighborhood of North Kensington.
Aluminum cladding with insulation sandwiched between two panels has been blamed for helping to spread flames in major fires in many parts of the world, including blazes in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the United States.
Search-and-recovery efforts were paused on Friday over safety concerns, but resumed Saturday afternoon, police said.
The Conservative Party leader has been criticized for failing to meet with survivors of the fire on her first visit to the site earlier this week. It includes 30 deaths that already have been confirmed, and reports of people who are missing and presumed to have been killed.
In a statement to the Press Association, they said: "With the exception of very few junior officers, the estate managers have been invisible in the aftermath of the tragedy".
Cundy said a criminal investigation began the day of the fire and will look at a "wide range" of issues, including the renovation project, the public housing block's management and maintenance, and fire-safety measures.
British Prime Minister Theresa May, facing criticism for the government's handling of the disaster, met Saturday with 15 fire survivors invited to her official residence at 10 Downing Street.
He said it had been "incredibly emotional working in there", adding: "On Saturday I went in myself and went to the top floor".
Cundy said authorities plan to release video and photographs from inside the badly-charred building.
Officials are using dental records, fingerprints and DNA samples to try and positively identify victims. They paid their respects before the start of the annual Trooping the Color procession that marks the observance of the queen's birthday.
HMRC will stop communication with residents and will allow self-employed people extra time to make payments. The building was gutted in a blaze early Wednesday morning that has also left dozens missing and hundreds of others homeless. The paneling has been blamed for quickly spreading the flames.
Council leader Nicholas Paget-Brown says questions about how the fatal fire spread so quickly through the tower block "will be answered".
Scuffles broke out near the Kensington and Chelsea town hall offices Friday as demonstrators chanting "We want justice!" surged toward the doors. The British government has announced a 5 million-pound ($6.3 million) emergency fund for the victims. British officials have ordered a review of other buildings that have had similar renovations. The rules vary from place to place, as does advice about when to evacuate, but fire experts say the "shelter-in-place" directive is usually applied to buildings of 15 stories or more. There is ample food and water, but very little privacy or proper bedding, and with the tower destroyed, no one knows where they will be relocated or for how long.
London's fire department says that the reason for the subway closure near the high-rise fire disaster is because of a "short-term risk of some debris falling onto the tracks".
"In the wake of (the) Grenfell fire we have to recognize that something has gone badly, badly wrong in this country, that predominantly poor people die in a towering inferno because possibly in the long term (there had been a) lack of public investment", Corbyn told ITV's Peston on Sunday program.
