Mother who desperately fled tower block blaze speaks of her ordeal

A mother who was desperately trying to flee the tower block blaze in Dagenham has told of her horror when she realised the fire gate was padlocked shut.

Cydney Parker, 26, was still in her pyjamas when she ran in fear for her life after a fire broke out at the Spectrum building on Freshwater Road in the early hours of Monday.

Speaking to Sky News, the mum-of-two described her shock when she fled down the fire exit to discover the escape route gate was locked.

Reliving the ordeal, she said: ‘I’ve looked outside and seen loads of fire engines pull up… I looked through the front door and the whole corridor is covered in thick black smoke.

‘As we went down the fire exit, we realised that the fire was at the back so we had to run. 

‘And we realised that the fire gate had been padlocked shut.

‘It felt like there was no way 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’.

Struggling to hold back her emotion, she asked: ‘How can they cut off a fire escape?’ 

The distraught young mother also told of how the fire alarm, which ‘has gone off so many times for no reason’, failed to go off when it was most needed. 

Breaking into tears while holding her daughter, she said: ‘No alarms went off. They’ve gone off so many times for no reason. So many times for no reason.

‘And then the time we need them to go off, they didn’t go off.

‘That block needs to get shut down and we all need to get housed – I hope they are all as angry as me.’

Ms Parker fears that her possessions have all been lost in the fire.

All residents were able to escape the blaze which engulfed the tower block in east London.

Some 40 fire engines and 225 firefighters battled the blaze which broke out in the early hours of Monday morning, with more than 100 people evacuated in the middle of the night and two people taken to hospital.

The tower block had a ‘number of fire safety issues known to London Fire Brigade’ and work was also underway to remove ‘non-compliant cladding’ on the building, which is why it was covered in scaffolding.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has spoken out on the incident, saying it was ‘horrific’ to see the damage done to the Dagenham tower block.

Speaking outside the burned building, the Housing Secretary said: ‘It’s horrific to see the level of damage that’s happened to the building, but it was also heroic to see the way the community and the first responders, the council, and all of the emergency services came together to prioritise, first of all, making sure that everyone got out of the building safely, but then also about bringing the fire under control.

‘You can see the level of damage that’s happened to the building, and I’m incredibly grateful for those that responded and managed to make sure that everybody was out of that building safely.’

London Fire Brigade vehicles are still stationed outside the building on Freshwater Road and a cordon remains in place.

Shortly after Ms Rayner arrived, two firefighters on ladders were spraying the building’s roof.

It comes as Dame Judith Hackitt, who led a review on building safety after the deadly Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, has called on the Government to step up the pace of “remediation and holding those who are responsible to account for doing so”.

Asked if she would do that with urgency, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner told PA: ‘I think she’s absolutely right to raise the issue of the expediency of remuneration, since taking office I think it’s far too slow.’

Ms Rayner said 4,630 buildings have been identified with flammable cladding, and remediation has started on more than 50 per cent of them.

‘But that’s nowhere near enough seven years on from Grenfell’, she said.

‘We’ve already taken action to ensure that those that own the buildings, that have legal responsibility for them, step forward and do that work’, she added.

She said she is meeting with the Health and Safety Executive and the building safety regulators.

She said buildings need to be seen as ‘people’s homes’ rather than ‘assets’.

She said: ‘We need to deal with supply, we need to build homes but they need to be safe homes, and they have to be homes – not assets – into the future, and that’s why I outlined the new proposals on the planning framework.

‘But also, we’ve talked about building safety. I’ve met with the Grenfell survivors and the memorial trust and others involved in that, and the heroic work that they’ve undertaken over the last seven years to fight for justice, to make sure that there (are) changes.

‘I don’t think that’s been happening at the pace I would want to see, and therefore we will be stepping up that work.

‘Remediation work continues to happen too slowly, as far as I’m concerned, so we will continue to push to make sure that that happens – and that people have the confidence that their buildings are safe and secure.’

The London Fire Brigade (LFB), which was called at 2.44am yesterday, declared a major incident after the ground floor, roof and parts of the scaffolding surrounding the building, were set alight. The major incident was stood down just after 12.30pm yesterday.

Four patients were treated at the scene by the London Ambulance Service, two of whom were taken to hospital. 20 people were saved during a ‘significant search and rescue operation’ and everyone has now been accounted for.

Those who fled the building told of being woken up to ‘piercing screams’ as huge flames ripped through the residential and commercial building. Barefoot residents, including children, were seen fleeing the building wrapped in sheets.

The London Fire Commissioner said today that firefighters tackling the Dagenham blaze faced the ‘most dangerous conditions you can imagine’ after a ‘very significant building failure’.

Speaking outside the charred residential block, Andy Roe told reporters: ‘I’m immensely grateful to our crews and officers who operated in the most dangerous conditions you can imagine to rescue people and to bring the incident under control – despite being faced, as you can see behind me, with a very significant building failure.

‘A full simultaneous evacuation of the building was immediately carried out, and a significant search and rescue operation took place – again in very, very high-risk circumstances for firefighters.

‘Despite that challenge, the personal risks of their own lives, they helped evacuate more than 80 people, and, most importantly, carried out 20 rescues.’

Valcan, a non-combustible cladding supplier, posted on Facebook six days ago that it had ‘popped over to Dagenham’ to check on the progress of ‘remedial work to external cladding to the fifth and sixth floors’ and ‘removing the non-compliant cladding’. A planning application to carry out this work was approved on July 3 2023.

Questions around the role of cladding in the fire will ‘form part’ of the investigation into the incident, LFB has said.

Families who fled from the burning block of flats in the early hours of this morning spoke of their anger today.

Adding to local fury is the fact that the block had no sprinkler system nor any working communal smoke alarms in the corridors of the six-storey building.

Civil servant Emmanuelle Perraud, 54, escaped her third floor flat with 17-year-old daughter Maliha Baig, 17 and sister Alexandra Perraud, 56.

She said: ‘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.

‘I woke up around 2.30am this morning because I could hear people shouting outside.

‘I looked out the window and there was a lot of smoke. I knew we had to get out quickly.

‘My sister was staying with me so I woke her and my teenage daughter and headed out.

‘But when I opened my front door the whole corridor was engulfed in thick smoke, which then drifted into my flat.

‘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.

‘Fortunately, there was little smoke in the fire escape so we were able to get to the ground floor and out of the block. But we were one of the last residents to escape as there was a crowd of people gathered outside along with fire crews, police and ambulances.

‘We stood watching the building burn for about three hours before we were put in buses and taken to a shelter.’