Residents have ‘lost everything after nightmare’ east London flat block fire

All people have been accounted for after the blaze broke out at the multi-storey building in Dagenham which had “a number of known” fire safety issues, a spokesperson for London Fire Brigade (LFB) said.

LFB said it was called to the blaze in Freshwater Road at 2.44am on Monday where more than 80 people were evacuated and 20 people were rescued after a “significant search-and-rescue operation”.

A resident of the building said the incident felt like “a nightmare” and that she felt “frightened to be on the street starting from zero”.

Irina Vasile, 46, a healthcare assistant who lived on the second floor, said she was woken by her partner at around 3am telling her there was smoke.

Speaking outside Becontree Heath Leisure Centre where the residents have been relocated, she told reporters: “(There was) such a dense smoke all over the apartment. When we wanted to open the window, another smoke hit our face, on the throat and the eyes.”

Ms Vasile said she was spotted by firefighters after shouting for help and calling 999.

She said: “We didn’t grab nothing – we lost everything.

“The firemen bring us outside, and while I came outside, I’ve seen a big fire come from the building on the ground floor, and when we went further, I’ve seen another big fire on the top.”

The resident said she did not hear a fire alarm go off during the evacuation.

She added: “My partner is devastated as well. We try to encourage one another because we lost everything. We are scared, frightened to be on the street starting from zero.”

Sam Ogbeide, who lives on the fourth floor, said he was coughing up “black“ from the smoke and that “everything is gone”.

He told reporters: “I opened my main door, smoke was coming in from the window – I live at the back. I saw it (the fire). Very terrible, very terrible.”

Mr Ogbeide said it was very busy in the building’s stairwell with residents who “didn’t bring anything” when evacuating, with some still “naked”.

He said: “I’ve never experienced something like this in my life. Everything is gone. I don’t know what to do.”

Asked how he felt, he added: “I’m not feeling OK. All my mouth is bitter because I feel the smoke in me.

“When I cough, you see the black.”

Mr Ogbeide later told the PA news agency he did not see any water sprinklers in the building, but did hear a fire alarm.

Another witness living near the building said he heard people “screaming” as the incident unfolded.

Ahmed, 44, of Kemp Road, which is a few hundred yards from the property, told PA: “When I woke up, I saw the fire engines, the helicopters and obviously the smoke everywhere.

“People were screaming.”

The property was undergoing “remedial” work to remove and replace “non-compliant cladding” on the fifth and sixth floors containing flats, according to a planning application document.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) said the incident exposed the “national scandal of flammable cladding and deregulation in the building industry”.

The FBU highlighted that the fire came a week before the publication of the final report of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.

Emmanuelle Perraud, 54, a civil servant who lives on the third floor of the block in Dagenham, said she was “angry and concerned” about the building’s cladding after escaping the fire with her 17-year-old daughter and 56-year-old sister.

She told Mail Online: “I’m angry and concerned that the cladding hadn’t been removed faster because the plans were in place to do so last summer and it’s taken nearly nine months for them to start taking it down as we’ve had scaffolding around the building since January.

“The residents complained about it being there because we all remember what happened with Grenfell Tower.

“Whether it was a factor in this fire, we don’t know yet, but it should’ve been removed long ago.”

Ms Perraud told Mail Online she was woken at around 2.30am by people shouting and knew she “had to get out quickly” when she saw smoke outside the window.

She continued: “At no point did I hear any smoke alarm in the corridor – the only one that went off was the small battery-operated one I have in my kitchen – and there was no sprinkler system in the building either.

“None of us could see a thing and we couldn’t breathe which was the scariest thing.

“My daughter and I inhaled some of the smoke which was really unpleasant.”

An investigation into the fire has begun, which will look at the role of cladding, the LFB’s Assistant Commissioner Patrick Goulbourne said.

According to the LFB, London Ambulance Service treated four people at the scene and two people were admitted to hospital.