The SKWAWKBOX and others have long questioned the official death toll being ‘drip-fed’ incrementally to the public, as it contradicts ‘on the ground’ reports of large numbers of bodies in makeshift morgues.
Singer Gemma Fox posted to her Facebook and Twitter accounts an account of information she says she received from two friends who are firefighters that suggests that the government may be using an accounting trick to suppress the reported number of deaths and ‘micro-manage’ grief and outrage:
In isolation, this might be dismissed by some as merely anecdotal, but some days ago a former firefighter made a strikingly similar accusation about supposed falls in fire deaths (although there was recently – before Grenfell – a 15% upswing in spite of the alleged accounting dodge), which he attributed to a dishonest rule-change by the government in how fire deaths are recorded:
While not definitively proven – yet – these messages strongly suggest that the government may be using what amounts to dishonest accounting practices to achieve its end of prolonging the release of the real death figures to dilute outrage.
Perhaps others with further evidence will come forward.
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Although govt may ultimately not include deaths by falling etc in official statistics for deaths in fires, one would hope they will have to be included when the number of deaths is reported as “caused by this incident”. In other words even if a coroner’s report was to conclude death by falling it would still be as a result of the “incident” which was fire. Like many I am very sceptical of the numbers reported dead or missing so far.
I am a simple man, watching from the corner: this was public housing. Tenants. The landlord had a list. Maybe in practice a few more lived there or a few less. But anyway there is a list. The council or the housing association knows how many lived in Grenfell Tower.
The first obligation of the landlord in a disaster is to check on the tenants, yes? Who survived? A second list.
So I do not believe for a moment that there is not a list of victims, with the known survivors crossed out.
Police follow their rules. That’s all they are. Procedures. Not the sacred truth. A confirmed death is just that. One that has been processed. Not all deaths. Just a notch on a stick. Sorry, that’s what it is.
The media chooses to follow exclusively police announcements. That is not the only source of information, except in a world of banal authoritarians.
According to the current behaviour of the press, an eyewitness could report a room of 40 bodies. The press would ignore that. “But, no, but police says 2 bodies confirmed”.
The eyewitness can be right, as well as the police. Both can be true. There is such a thing as the “whole truth”.
I am a simple man, watching from the corner. But I have lived in many capital cities. I have seen poor workers crammed 10 to a room, 20 to a flat. I have shared those rooms.
Neither the press nor the police has a monopoly on truth. There is a bigger world beyond them, one the press in particular does not know. And that is the world that ignited, so sadly, a week ago.
Wonderful points, well made.
Does smoke inhalation count?
As in my earlier comment. It will surely count as a death caused by this incident, probably also in statistics used for death caused by fire, but whether falling from the building would be included in official fire death statistics as such is debatable.
Maybe just maybe
Some firefighters may have the courage to leak their own footage showing the bodies & body bags etc?
The Government constantly move the goal posts to achieve their ends.
Society itself is being micromanaged as part of the process to transfer wealth and power upwards, the government itself absolves itself from any responsibility. That is what Neo-Liberalism does.
The Landlord whoever it is has a list of tennants, they know how many people occupy their flats, from that information alone they could quickly ascertain how many are reported missing, dead and found to be alive.
The simple question as to why those figures have not been produced is lies with the reasons for not producing them, Lily Allen was absolutely right, they are deliberately micromanaging all of this.
It really is time we started to park the blame for the utter chaos created by a do nothing government that hands all power and wealth into the hands of the few.
related –
Grenfell Towers – WHERE ARE THE RESIDENTS (BODIES)?
https://flyingcuttlefish.wordpress.com/2017/06/20/grenfell-2
Note – huge censorship on this topic and on protest topic on Google/YouTube and WordPress and social media.
I think the sad reality is this: the bodies were what caused the fire to be so intense. They became fuel in a giant crematorium. There are no bodies.
The government is gambling that the true numbers will disappear when the building is demolished. Then politicians, councillors and construction companies will be able to say, with a straight face, “police confirmed 70/90/110 deaths”.
This is the real racism and class warfare that is going on here. A building of middle class white people would not be made to disappear — well, maybe it would, given what is happening to the middle class.
A building of bureaucrats, politicians and rich people would not be vanished in this way. Every last person, every entitled, grasping individual would be listed, his memory praised to the skies by the press.
For some reason, the press simply can’t find space in the infinite pages of the Internet.
I think it was melted plastic on the inferior – then inside contents combustion … then gases from same flash over effect … then maybe as you say.
As a New Yorker on 9-11 I know way too much about high rise fires.
http://skyscrapersafety.org/