by A woman whose wedding dress was destroyed in the fire that tore through her Dagenham home is delighted that she has been gifted a replacement.
Twenty people were rescued and more than 80 people evacuated after the tower block on Fionuisce Road, which had “known” safety problems, was evacuated on Monday.
Residents Lukasz and Agnieszka, who are to be married in Poland in two weeks, could only grab their phones and their dog as they had to flee their apartment.
The couple told the BBC how they “lost everything” in the fire, including Agnieszka’s £2,500 wedding dress which they had chosen two days earlier.
“We don’t know what to say. Basically we have nothing left,” Lukasz told the BBC on Tuesday.
“We are devastated because [our wedding] it was supposed to be the best day of our lives, but everything just burned down in the building.”
But bridal shop Amore Bridal in Yellowstone, north London, has stepped in and offered to replace the dress for free, Sky News reports.
Lukasz told Sky News on Wednesday: “We’ve had another kit and they’re making some adjustments to it – we’re excited.
“Hopefully the wedding will go ahead in three weeks now.
“[Agnieszka] He was crying when I told her. We are falling apart at the moment but the kindness of people is pushing us – it fills your heart.”
Authorities are said to also help replace the passports of the couple lost in the fire, so they can fly to Poland for their wedding.
“Remedial” work was being carried out on the building to remove and replace “non-compliant cladding” on the fifth and sixth floors which contain apartments, according to planning application documents.
It took about 225 firefighters more than eight hours to bring the fire under control. Two people were taken to hospital.
Other residents told of the horror they faced as they fled the building on Monday.
Sam Ogbeide, who lives on the fourth floor, told reporters: “I opened my main door, there was smoke coming in from the window – I live at the back. I saw it (the fire). Very horrible, very horrible.
Mr Ogbeide said the stairs of the building were very busy with fellow residents who “did not bring anything with them” as they left, some of whom were still “exposed”.
He said: “I have never experienced anything like this in my life. Everything is gone. I don’t know what to do.”
Their comments came as the Deputy Prime Minister visited the site of the fire on Tuesday, where she said progress in making buildings safe was too slow and there was “far too much” cover. still dangerous on property.
Angela Rayner, who is also the Housing Secretary, said residents and firefighters faced a “grey of fire” when the bank holiday blaze started overnight – more than seven years on from the Grenfell Tower fire and just a week before the final report of the inquiry was published that.
Ms Rayner met residents in the area on Tuesday, and spoke of how “horrific” it must have been for them to wake up to smoke and flames early, adding that it was “unbelievable” no one had been killed.
Grenfell United, which represents many of the bereaved and survivors of that 2017 fire, said the incident in Dagenham “shows the painfully slow progress of remediation across the country, and a lack of urgency around building safety as a whole “.
The group added that, seven years later, “the progress that has been made since the fire is the best we can hope for at the moment”.
The cladding on the seven-storey Dagenham building was being removed, with scaffolding visible on the site and London Fire Brigade confirmed there were “identified fire safety issues”.
London fire commissioner Andy Roe said there were around 1,300 buildings across London that needed remedial work “as a priority”, a figure he said gave an idea of the scale of the challenge facing the fire service in holding building owners to account.
Dame Judith Hackitt, who led a Government review of building safety after the deadly Grenfell Tower fire, said it was “deeply concerning” that so many people were still living in uncertainty and fear in their homes and that “the good luck” to him. in the burning of Monday.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I am deeply concerned that so many people are left with this level of uncertainty and fear about the safety of the buildings they are in.
“I mean, we can all take solace, I think, from the fact that nobody lost their lives yesterday.
“However, it is a tragedy that these people have lost everything. They have lost their belongings and everything else, and it could happen to other people.
“So this is an urgent problem that needs to be solved.”
Dame Judith criticized those who were “going overboard” on the issue of repairing the buildings seven years on from the Grenfell fire.
She told Today: “The problem of who pays and whether it was the Government’s job to fix it has been resolved, and the Government has put up billions to repair the buildings that are rented out to people, but in the case of leasing, that is also now fixed.
“So this is really about people going overboard, going down the chain, lack of ownership, and pushing people down to do the right thing that they know they have to do.”
