The death toll in a fire that ripped through a 24-storey Grenfell Tower in Kensington of West London has reached 17 as of 11 am Thursday.
Westminster Council cabinet member for housing Rachael Robathan said yesterday: 'We understand how concerned people will be about what has happened, which is why we want to reassure everyone that Westminster makes safety our number one priority.
Cotton said structural surveyors and urban search and rescue specialists would inspect the building on Thursday and once it was declared safe a full search would take place.
The PM said people "deserve answers" as to why the fire spread so rapidly and that the inquiry "will give them".
One focus for the investigation will be the building's cladding, which architect and broadcaster George Clarke said may have accelerated the blaze.
"We do believe that number will sadly increase", Commander Stuart Cundy of the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
A Malaysian family was among those evacuated in the fire which destroyed the Grenfell Tower block of flats in West London on Wednesday.
Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton said authorities genuinely don't know how many people died and that firefighters have been traumatized by the inability to save more people.
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Department of Corrections Commissioner Greg Dozier told reporters: "We lost two of our fellow officers, two of our kin". Throughout the scorching US south cops are hunting a pair of killer convicts considered "dangerous beyond description".
Mrs May said: "We need to know what happened, we need to know an explanation".
"Ferrier Point was subject to strict building control when it was refurbished to ensure construction and materials used met with fire safety legislation". When I visited the scene, when I spoke to the emergency services, they told me that the way this fire progressed was rapid, it was ferocious and it was unexpected.
"There's people at their windows: 'Help me, help me, help me!' You can see the fire go into the house and into the last room that they're in, and just engulfing their whole apartment". "It had completely spread within half an hour".
A schoolgirl looks at messages of support for those affected by the massive fire in Grenfell Tower in London.
Similar external cladding has been linked to the fast spread of deadly fires on other apartment buildings both in the United Kingdom, and as far away as Australia.
"There are already disturbing reports emerging of the pipework in the building for a fire emergency being out of action", Ritson says.
Some experts have suggested that the waterproof material may have accelerated the fire's quick ascent up the block.
Many people are still unaccounted for with firefighters saying the operation now in the "recovery phase".
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