Padlocked escape door trapped terrified residents inside horrific tower block fire
A young mum forced to flee a tower block inferno in her pyjamas said she feared she would die when she found an escape route padlocked.
Cydney Parker, 26, said she heard no alarm when the blaze broke out – despite them often sounding for no apparent reason at other times.
Fortunately, she was able to get to safety with a young female relative after noticing fire engines outside the Spectrum building in Dagenham, east London, in the early hours of Monday.
The mum of two said: “I’ve looked outside and seen loads of fire engines pull up. I looked through the front door and the whole corridor was covered in thick black smoke.
“We had to run and we realised the [exterior] fire gate had been padlocked shut so we couldn’t get out.
“It felt like I was going to die then and there. The only way out was finding something [we could use] to jump over the fence. As we were on top of the fence, we couldn’t get down, so we were screaming at police officers to come and help us. How can they cut off a fire escape?”
She added: “No alarms went off. They’ve gone off so many times for no reason and then the time we need them they didn’t go off.” Other residents also claimed no fire alarms rang.
Over 200 firefighters responded to the bank holiday blaze at the block of flats which was undergoing “remedial” work to remove and replace “non-compliant cladding” on the fifth and sixth floors. The London Fire Brigade said it had been aware of fire safety issues at the building before the blaze. A probe is under way to determine what caused it.
More than 100 people were evacuated and two people taken to hospital.
Yesterday Dame Judith Hackitt, who led a review on building safety after the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017, said it was “really concerning” that so many people were still living in uncertainty about their homes.
She added: “This is a really urgent problem that needs fixing. This is really about people passing the buck ...a lack of ownership, and pinning people down to do the right thing.
“A new government must find ways of stepping up the pace on remediation and holding those who are responsible to account for doing so.”
Remedial work had completed or started on just half of the 4,630 residential buildings 36ft or higher in England identified as having unsafe cladding, figures showed last month.
