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Article snippet: LONDON — How many people died in the Grenfell Tower blaze? On Monday, after weeks of criticism, the police for the first time offered an estimate of the number of people who should have been in the building that night — 350 — and said that of that figure, 255 had survived and 14 were not at home, which would imply that 81 people had died. But the official death toll in London’s deadliest fire since World War II has been repeatedly challenged by survivors and their advocates. Skeptics, including three volunteer researchers, have been trying to fill the information vacuum: an Iranian biomedical engineering student who lived on the third floor (he estimated at least 123 dead), a demographer who came out of retirement to bring professional techniques to bear and a software engineer in Brussels whose website has emerged as the most credible source (both the demographer and the engineer place the toll in the 90s). The tragedy, for many, has come to symbolize not only official negligence but also rising inequality, particularly given that the fire occurred in a London borough, Kensington and Chelsea, that is one of the wealthiest localities in Britain. The Metropolitan Police, which serves Greater London, says that it has made efforts to provide information, but that it is painstaking work, hindered in some cases by inaccurate and unreliable official records. But the paucity of official information about the fire dominated a series of meetings last week between resident... Link to the full article to read more