Six killed in London tower block inferno

[Captain Shaw]

Three adults and three children, including a three-week-old baby, have been killed in a blaze which swept through a tower block.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20090703/tuk-six-killed-in-london-tower-block-inf-dba1618.html
So sad
I have never lived or know anyone who had lived in a 60's tower block so i do not know how safe they are?
Did watch a show on BBC once that said that some of them where not built as good has they could have been but in all the years they have been up i can only remember one that partly collapsed i think in the 60s.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Yikes, three of the dead are kids.

It looks like everybody else will be okay, though; it could have been worse with all those people trapped.

 

[Aurian]

Tragic..

 

[Geckothan]

Why would anybody want to live in one of those things? This is exactly the reason (or one of them, anyway) why I'd never ever live in a tower block. Takes one idiot to start a fire and suddenly your life is in danger. I guess modern ones are designed so fires can't spread, but there's other reasons I'd never live in one that go beyond safety issues.

 

[Aurian]

My old appartmentcomplex had a couple of firers before. I have come pretty close to one of them. But our appartments are pretty well protected from eachother. All that got through to my appartment was smell and some ash/dirt around my doorframe.

 

[Captain Shaw]

Why would anybody want to live in one of those things? This is exactly the reason (or one of them, anyway) why I'd never ever live in a tower block. Takes one idiot to start a fire and suddenly your life is in danger. I guess modern ones are designed so fires can't spread, but there's other reasons I'd never live in one that go beyond safety issues.

They have no choice if you need a council home the odds are in London that its going to be a tower block.

 

[Kirk's_Tights]

Things like this, and worse, happen every single day. It's nothing new, sadly.

 

[An Officer]

I think they should condemn all of them and start again. That kind of living breeds anti-social behavior, too. It is a failed experiment. Tower blocks have done their time, time to move forward.

 

[Captain Shaw]

I think they should condemn all of them and start again. That kind of living breeds anti-social behavior, too. It is a failed experiment. Tower blocks have done their time, time to move forward.

I do know they have started doing that but you have to find somewhere to put the people while they knock them down and build homes.
And as usually it comes down money.
I know some people who think that the people who live in these tower blocks are all criminals and are not worth spending the money forgetting the fact that a lot of bus drives hca and hospital porters ect live in them.

 

[trampledamage]

In a city like London there just isn't room to put everyone in houses - they could rebuild the tower blocks with newer apartment buildings, but that's really their only option. This was only a 12-floor block though, so it's not even one of the big monoliths.


Thank goodness for the fire brigade.

 

[An Officer]

London is a spreading city, if you want proper, safe, housing, you should be willing to move to the outskirts. I hear councils do try to put in incentives for people to do that, and are ready to build newer homes further afield. I guess it's hard when you have a job and family and don't want to abandon those. I am not surprised a lot of people would voluntarily opt to stay in that kind of housing, doesn't mean they should be allowed to do so! Those residents will have kids, who'll get jobs, who also won't want to leave. Pretty soon, the damn things are burning down or falling about their ears.

I blame it on the government. They don't want to piss voters off (I don't know how many tower block residents are voters, but they might come out in droves if their homes are in danger), but you have to make these touch calls, to prepare for deterioration of old housing and progress in general.

 

[Captain Shaw]

London is a spreading city, if you want proper, safe, housing, you should be willing to move to the outskirts. I hear councils do try to put in incentives for people to do that, and are ready to build newer homes further afield. I guess it's hard when you have a job and family and don't want to abandon those. I am not surprised a lot of people would voluntarily opt to stay in that kind of housing, doesn't mean they should be allowed to do so! Those residents will have kids, who'll get jobs, who also won't want to leave. Pretty soon, the damn things are burning down or falling about their ears.

I blame it on the government. They don't want to piss voters off (I don't know how many tower block residents are voters, but they might come out in droves if their homes are in danger), but you have to make these touch calls, to prepare for deterioration of old housing and progress in general.

You can't move everyone to the outskirts that would make them just has over crowed as London also people doing the low paid Jobs can not afford to travel everyday.
The city needs its cleaners just has much has it needs its bankers.

 

[Canadave]

London is a spreading city, if you want proper, safe, housing, you should be willing to move to the outskirts. I hear councils do try to put in incentives for people to do that, and are ready to build newer homes further afield. I guess it's hard when you have a job and family and don't want to abandon those. I am not surprised a lot of people would voluntarily opt to stay in that kind of housing, doesn't mean they should be allowed to do so! Those residents will have kids, who'll get jobs, who also won't want to leave. Pretty soon, the damn things are burning down or falling about their ears.

Yeah, 'cause moving the poor people to the outskirts has worked so well in places like Paris, hasn't it?

This is an unfortunate story, but the solution isn't to send people out to the edges of the city and force them to endure long commutes to low-paying jobs, but rather to rebuild this high density urban housing to make it safer and more liveable. As I recall, I believe there are already a few major estates in central London which are undergoing such redevelopment programs.

 

[An Officer]

It is already clear that largescale tower-blocks housing thousands does not work. It is a hellhole to live in. No personal gardens or play areas for children, cleanliness is a problem too, as is noise pollution. You can't pack people in like sardines and expect to raise fine upstanding citizens, so crime becomes a problem too, from sheer frustration and misery. Just because you are poor, does not mean you should be condemned to tower housing all your life. If some were willing to move further afield, there is more space available, there is no need for tower blocks - ever! Each family could have a garden flat, their own personal yards, bins, etc, and would be more likely to take care of their surroundings... as well as a better attitude because they are not living in archaic tower housing. I won't even start on what an eyesore those things are.

As to having to commute, Milton Keynes is a city like that, built as a commuting town for those still wanting to work in London, but requiring cheap housing, and now it has grown enough to provide it's own jobs... not the squalor and stink of over-crowded housing to be found there. It is a success story. It will continue growing and sustaining itself. We should work on more like this. London by itself cannot continue housing the city's growing poor. There has been a population explosion crisis in the last few years, and tower blocks are definitely not the answer, pretty soon, we could be over-run with the blasted things. This is no time for London to start emulating New York, Tokyo, etc...

 

[Canadave]

^ That's why, as I said, they need to be rebuilt into somewhere liveable. Toronto's Regent Park had potential to do this, for example.

Sending people to the outskirts is not a viable solution for a number of reasons. For one, so many of the urban poor work in the city centre. These people would go from having a 15-minute walk to work to having a half-hour bus ride followed by 45 minutes on their city's metro system. For another, it will be an increased tax burden on whoever funds the public housing... one of the major advantages of density is that infrastructure costs are FAR cheaper. If everyone has an individual home, then extra roads, water pipes, power lines, etc. need to be built. As well, ammenities such as community centres, schools, clinics and so on will become more spread out, and as many urban poor do not own vehicles, it will become significantly harder for them to reach them owing to the increased distances between them. And finally, building public housing in this fashion can only lead to increased urban sprawl, something that is at least as bad for the health of cities as poorly constructed public apartment towers.