Tag Archives: fire

Jun 23 2017

My visit to the tragedy struck Grenfell high rise block

As its not far from my work I took the train to the recent Grenfell block disaster.

IMG_20170615_191952230 1024Journalism and blogging can be unpleasant and eagerly looks for tragedy as a trophy.

My motivation is to see what was happening with the community there, and to see if Christians and churches were helping out.   I also wanted to walk around and discretely pray for this area.

I was nervous with trepidation as this was a few days after it just happened, the grief was still new and folks were putting up posters of lost family members fearing the worst, after all some people left in the night clothes and may not have a phone, wallet, money and details of how to get hold of loved ones.   Getting closer to the neighbourhood you can smell the remains of this charred 1970s concrete relic.

The police and fire are still around assessing if much of the building is safe to enter.

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This church on the right tirelessly serving the community.   Several different Muslim groups are out too, as well as a van from the Chabad Lubavitch (Orthodox Jewish) movement.

The piles of donations from kind citizens took up a whole street.

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From nearby tube station as I was going home.   This line is now shut as wind is pushing debris across the track.   From here this has the closest view, as much of the streets are shut off from the public.   Once the train moved I could see a kids play area strewn with burnt fabric from the building.

People are now very angry about this and want to blame someone.  It seems logical for many to blame our current government.   I wish people would stop stirring up trouble and allow our government and charity to do their job and getting these people rehomed and the failings of the building thoroughly investigated.   Its not right for this to be manipulated for political gain.

I’ve noticed there is a great deal of similar political battles to what’s going on in the UK in Europe.  This isn’t been from the news, I got to visit a few cities in Europe for work.   I’ll write on this later.

 

Jul 29 2011

More fires in Jerusalem

Few weeks ago there was a fire close to Yad Vashem holocaust museum which almost prompted staff to move precious artifacts into different rooms.  This fire appears to have started deliberately and in four different places.

Last Saturday I was cycling over to a friend’s house and across the valley, I could see fire and smoke.

Here the fire appears to be in the forest at the foot of the Haas Promenade near my house, close to the Arab side of East Jerusalem.

4 minutes later when I was riding past the abandoned station, fire crews were arriving.

Now, I didn’t see this in the news, but it concerning that arson seems to happen quite often of late, most significantly last year when several Israeli prison staff were killed trying to get people out of prison (including Arab terrorists) when flames suddenly engulfed the truck they were in.

At the moment, temperatures here are exceeding 35c (that’s about 97F)   which mean bush fires could easily be started accidentally as well, but at the moment, this country needs prayer against threats of fire, whether it be deliberate or accidental.