Some residents escaped the Harlow fire by kicking their way through railings
Fire services, who were called to an 11-storey block of flats in Harlow town centre last week, found a large fire in a bin storage area directly under the flats.
Incident Commander, Toby Ingham reported that the fire had travelled upwards via the bin chutes into the landing areas of all floors.
Terminus House is a “permitted development”, described by The Guardian in 2019 as “a government policy that allows developers to cram huge numbers of ‘rabbit hutch’ flats into unused office buildings without planning permission”.
Socialist Worker broke the story of these converted office blocks being used to house people in Harlow in November 2018. The Guardian later picked up the story and there was also a BBC Panorama documentary about the scandal of property developers making a lot of money by housing people in completely unsuitable conditions.
Smoke from the fire could be seen from some distance away. One resident, Tanya, described leaving her flat after seeing smoke coming in through her window and hearing people shouting to get out.
Smoke was also coming into her flat under the door. Tanya lives on the eighth floor and had to make her way through thick, black smoke. She said she couldn’t see anything but could hear people screaming and crying.
There were two fire exits but there was too much heat at one and when residents made their way out via the other exit they found themselves trapped in a caged-in area outside with railings topped by spikes separating the flats from the public car park.
Residents helped each other, knocking on doors because no alarms were going off in the corridors and also helping to lift children over the railings when they managed to get out of the building.
One man eventually managed to kick through one of the railings to enable others to get out.
On this occasion, nobody was physically hurt but the circumstances are all too familiar from tragedies such as the Grenfell fire.
One resident commented that Terminus House is “a very dangerous place to live for many reasons. Thankfully the fire wasn’t given much time to spread as the emergency services were on the scene very quickly”
The owners of Terminus House issued a statement several days after the fire. The statement reads very much as though Caridon Property is trying to wriggle out of any responsibility and to criticise the residents for leaving their flats.
A spokesperson said that “there is a ‘stay put’ policy in place to keep residents safe however some residents chose to evacuate”.
The spokesperson for Caridon also stated that the bin area beneath Terminus House is “external and separate from the building and accessible to other patrons from across the street and adjacent building”.
Residents responded angrily to the statement in Your Harlow, the local online paper.
“We all know what happened to Grenfell residents who followed the ‘stay put’ policy,” said one
Others said, “The ‘stay put’ policy didn’t stop the smoke entering our flat under a ‘fire door’. They should make the flats/fire doors fire safe”.
“As for the fire being in a separate area to the building, it’s an area that is owned by Caridon Property that sits directly underneath the building, the bin area should only be accessible to the tenants and not the general public.
“It is also an area which is a few feet away from the exit door and next to a dumping site for unwanted furniture, mattresses and electrical equipment that sits there for weeks before anything is moved.”
“You thought it was a good idea to put all the flammable stuff (cars, rubbish etc) stored underneath it. What could go wrong?”
Mick Patrick, chair of Harlow Defend Council Housing, whose own niece lives in Terminus House, is calling for a demonstration in Harlow Town Centre as part of the national day of action by housing groups on 8 July.
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