LONDON - Residents and community leaders demanded to know Wednesday how a ferocious fire engulfed a 24-story apartment tower in London on Wednesday with such speed that it killed at least 12 people.
The anger was particularly strong since activists had warned just seven months ago that fire safety procedures were so lax that only a catastrophic blaze would bring the scrutiny needed to make the building safe.
Desperately trying to avoid the flames, residents threw one baby and other small children from high windows to people down on the sidewalk, witnesses said.
"Sadly I can confirm there are now 12 people that have died that we know of. This is going to be a long and complex recovery operation and I do anticipate that the number of fatalities will sadly increase beyond those 12," London Metropolitan Police Commander Stuart Cundy said.
The inferno lit up the night sky and spew#mce_temp_url#ed black smoke from the windows of the Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, where more than 200 firefighters battled the blaze.
The smoke stretched for kilometres across the sky after dawn, revealing the blackened, flame-licked wreckage of the building, which was still burning over 12 hours later.
"A smouldering ruin" tweeted Sky News, with video.
Joe Walsh, 58, said he saw someone throw two children out of a window from the fifth or sixth floor. Tiago Etienne, 17, said he spotted about three children between the ages of four and eight being dropped from an apartment around the 15th floor.
Samira Lamrani, a witness, said one woman dropped a baby from a window on the ninth or 10th floor to people on the sidewalk.
"People were starting to appear at the windows, frantically banging and screaming" and one woman indicated she was going to drop the baby, Lamrani told Britain's Press Association news agency. "A gentleman ran forward and managed to grab the baby."
Huffington Post UK had details on a mother who threw her baby to safety.
Baby 'miraculously' saved from #GrenfellTower fire https://t.co/WUICLOanuv pic.twitter.com/rBsJmKOhZM
— HuffPost UK (@HuffPostUK) June 14, 2017
The London Fire Brigade received the first reports of the fire at 12.54am on Wednesday (6.54am Thailand time) and the first engines arrived within six minutes, Cotton said.
Witnesses described a white, polystyrene-type material falling like snow from the building as it burned. Some feared the charred tower block might collapse, but a structural engineer said the building was not in danger, according to the London Fire Brigade, which added "it is safe for our crews to be in there."
Ruks Mamudu, 69, escaped from her first floor apartment wearing only her purple pyjamas and bathrobe. She and her grandson sat outside the building, helplessly watching those trapped on higher floors.
"I sat there watching my house burn down and watching people cry for help who couldn't come down," she said.
People at the scene spoke of being unable to reach friends or family inside the building or seeing people using flashlights and mobile phones to try to signal for help from the building's higher floors.
Nassima Boutrig, who lives opposite the building, said she was awakened by sirens and smoke so thick that it filled her home as well.
"We saw the people screaming," she said. "A lot of people said `Help! Help! Help!' The fire brigade could only help downstairs. It was fire up, up, up. They couldn't stop the fire."