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‘This Is Appalling’: Evacuated London Residents Try to Cope - The New York Times

posted onJune 25, 2017
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Article snippet: LONDON — Addise Mekonen was working a night shift on Friday when he learned from television news that his apartment was one of 650 London flats being evacuated in the middle of the night amid fears that it might be as dangerous as Grenfell Tower, which had been incinerated in the deadliest blaze in Britain in more than a century. After sitting for hours on a bench in a corner of an emergency relief center near the five towers that had been evacuated in Camden, north London, Mr. Mekonen had another night shift looming on Saturday, but no bed to sleep in. “I’m really shocked,” he said as he and dozens of other residents waited to discover where they would spend the coming days and whether their homes were now considered death traps because they were in tower blocks that had failed fire safety tests. “In the world’s fifth-largest economy, this is appalling,” added Mr. Mekonen, a resident of the Bray tower block who is originally from Ethiopia. “This wouldn’t happen in Africa.” More than a week after the blaze gutted the 24-story Grenfell Tower, killing at least 79 people, the aftershocks are rippling across Britain as the nation grapples with the unsettling prospect that thousands of families may be at risk of a similar fate, and could have been for years. Camden Council’s extraordinary evacuation of thousands of people, who had to grab clothes and whatever else they could find and leave quickly in the dead of night, is a jarring example of a gathering political an... Link to the full article to read more

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