'Do or die situation'

Residents' terror as they flee inferno at block with 'Grenfell-style' cladding

- ANDY LINES and MELISSA SIGODO

TERRIFIED residents last night told how they fled a towering inferno in a high-rise block of flats.

No one died in the blaze but there were chilling echoes of the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy.

A planning application from 2023 shows the building in Dagenham, east London, was covered in “noncompliant” cladding.

Grenfell campaigners demanded to know how such a fire could happen more than seven years after 72 people died in the west London block blaze.

Karthick Kannaiah said he and his wife Meghana rushed out of their flat with their six-month-old baby, and pal Dinesh Raj’s daughter. Karthick was sleeping when his wife woke him saying that there was a fire on the scaffolding outside their building.

He said: “We opened our doors and saw our neighbours rushing towards the stairs. It was the most terrifying experience... like a do-or-die situation.”

The family, who live on the second floor, escaped safely and are now staying with a friend who lives nearby.

Dinesh said his sixyear-old daughter was with his friend’s family when the fire started spreading.

His daughter and his friends managed to make it out of the building safely.