By now I’m fairly certain that everyone reading this will have woken up to the absolutely horrific news about the Grenfell Tower fire, which resembles something out of the movie ‘The Towering Inferno’. Absolutely awful news to receive so early in the day. RIP to all the victims and our thoughts go out to anyone affected by this terrible tragedy.

Featured Image VIA 

What makes the incident even worse though is the fact that it may very well have been prevented if people had just listened to the residents of the tower. A blog written by the Grenfell Action Group back in November and posted on the internet for everyone to see eerily predicted the fact that a huge fire would burn down the tower block:

It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO, and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders. We believe that the KCTMO are an evil, unprincipled, mini-mafia who have no business to be charged with the responsibility of looking after the every day management of large scale social housing estates and that their sordid collusion with the RBKC Council is a recipe for a future major disaster.

Unfortunately, the Grenfell Action Group have reached the conclusion that only an incident that results in serious loss of life of KCTMO residents will allow the external scrutiny to occur that will shine a light on the practices that characterise the malign governance of this non-functioning organisation. We believe that the KCTMO have ensured their ongoing survival by the use of proxy votes at their Annual General Meeting that see them returned with a mandate of 98% in favour of the continuation of their inept and highly dangerous management of our homes. It is no coincidence that the 98% is the same figure that is returned by the infamous Kim Jong-un of North Korea who claims mass popularity while reputedly enslaving the general population and starving the majority of his people to death.

It is our conviction that a serious fire in a tower block or similar high density residential property is the most likely reason that those who wield power at the KCTMO will be found out and brought to justice! The Grenfell Action Group believe that the KCTMO narrowly averted a major fire disaster at Grenfell Tower in 2013 when residents experienced a period of terrifying power surges that were subsequently found to have been caused by faulty wiring. We believe that our attempts to highlight the seriousness of this event were covered up by the KCTMO with the help of the RBKC Scrutiny Committee who refused to investigate the legitimate concerns of tenants and leaseholders.

Image VIA

This was then followed up by the following post in January:

It has been very clear for some time to the residents of Grenfell Tower that those responsible for ensuring the smooth running of Lancaster West Estate are failing in their duty of care and wilfully allowing our residential amenity to decline in unacceptable ways.

Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in our landlords failure to deal with a serious health and safety issue that recently developed at the entrance/exit to Grenfell Tower.”

This matter is of particular concern as there is only one entry and exit to Grenfell Tower during the Improvement Works and the potential for a fire to break out in the communal area on the walkway does not bear thinking about as residents would be trapped in the building with no way out!”

I mean that’s one hell of a prediction isn’t it? But it seems like their protests were justified after the events of today so you can’t really argue with it. It’s just crazy that they managed to call it perfectly so long ago. Obviously we don’t know the causes of the fire (at the time of writing at least) but let’s hope that there wasn’t any foul play involved as that would make the whole situation even worse.

Ominously, the blog was updated today saying the following:

ALL OUR WARNINGS FELL ON DEAF EARS and we predicted that a catastrophe like this was inevitable and just a matter of time.

A grim situation – there isn’t much more to say about it than that. Here’s hoping that everyone currently in hospital manages to pull through.

To watch a man save his kids from a horrific house fire, click HERE.