by A wife is “devastated” after losing her wedding dress along with the rest of her belongings in a fire that tore through a tower block in Dagenham.
More than 80 people were evacuated after the building fire on Finuisce Road on Monday, which was “known” for safety issues. Firefighters rescued another 20 people.
Residents Lukasz and Agnieszka say they have “lost everything” in the fire.
The couple are due to marry in two weeks but Agnieszka’s £2,500 wedding dress, which they picked up just two days before the fire, is among the items destroyed in the blaze.
“At the moment we are homeless, we have nothing,” Lukasz told the BBC.
“We don’t know what to say. It is difficult to say anything in our case. Basically we have nothing left.
“We are so devastated [our wedding] it was supposed to be the best day of our lives, but everything just burned down in the building.”
The couple are being accommodated for two nights in a hotel but “don’t know” where they will go and have “no money” after taking out loans to pay for their wedding, the BBC reported.
“I should be flying on Saturday to Poland to organize my wedding. I have no documents, nothing,” Agnieszka told him.
“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.”
Dame Judith said the onus is now on Labor to ensure those responsible for improvements are held to account.
Government figures at the end of July showed that of the 4,630 residential buildings in England of 11m (36ft) or higher identified as having unsafe cladding, only around half (2,299) were noted as having started or completed remedial works.
Of these, less than a third (1,350) in total were recorded as having completed such works.
Cabinet Office Minister Ellie Reeves said around 88 per cent of remedial works have been completed in cladding tower blocks such as Grenfell.
