‘Absolute Chaos’: Residents evacuated from social housing tower in England

Shaban Ali has lived in a social housing tower in Bristol, south-west England, for seven years. The plan on Tuesday was to stay in: eat, take a bath and watch “Paddington” with his two young children.

Instead, she and other residents of Barton House were ordered to pack a bag and evacuate the building immediately due to concerns about the building’s structural integrity.Authorities said this on Wednesday.

“It was absolute chaos,” said Mr Ali, 36, secretary of ACORN Bristol, a union that has campaigned for local tenants.

The abruptness of the evacuation order left hundreds of residents scrambling for a place to sleep, he said. Some went to City Hall, which the municipality had designated as a temporary shelter, according to a statement from Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees. And some remained in the tower, afraid to leave their belongings behind.

Mr. Ali sent his children to their mother’s house. But because he couldn’t find a place to go himself, he ended up staying. “I’ve been up all night,” he said. “Our lives are all up in the air.”

The evacuation has drawn new attention to the construction of Britain’s social housing flats. Flammable cladding, banned in many other countries, contributed to the rapid spread of one of Britain’s deadliest house fires in London in 2017. The Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 72 people and left hundreds homeless, led to a national reckoning over security measures and the construction of high-rise buildings. Critics have accused governments of prioritizing cost savings over safety, and housing advocates in London and elsewhere have since raised concerns about other buildings.

In Bristol, where a fire broke out in a social housing tower last year killed one person and injured othersCity officials said they ordered the evacuation of Barton House as a “precautionary measure” after an investigation of three of the block’s 98 apartments revealed that the tower may not have been built to design specifications. The block appeared to have no “structural connections” between floors and exterior walls, and structural elements had “lower fire resistance” and “less concrete cover” than originally planned, the mayor said.

This meant that there was ‘a material risk to the structure of the block in the event of fire, explosion or major impact’. said Mr. Rees in a statement Wednesday. Although there was “no evidence of an immediate danger to life,” he said the decision had been made to evacuate.

Barton House was built in 1958 and is one of the city’s oldest social housing projects, or social housing estates, as they are called in Britain. There was no evidence yet that the block’s problems were happening on other estates, the city said.

Housing researchers said Barton House appeared to have been built using a type of construction known as a ‘large panel system’, which was popular in post-war Britain but has since been considered a possible safety risk. Another The block partially collapsed in 1968 after a gas explosionwhich killed four people.

“These blocks are nearing the end of their safe life, and most are structurally unsound,” said Danielle Gregory, project manager at Tower blocks UK, a group that gathers information about and campaigns for the safety of public housing towers. “The scale of the problem is enormous.”

Government officials in 2017 instructed municipalities to investigate safety of these large panel buildings, and Ms Gregory said councils were under pressure to take action. But according to the group’s research, there are still at least 575 blocks with large panels in Britain.

She said she had never heard of such an urgent evacuation. The local emergency service, Avon Fire and Rescue, supported the action. say on X, previously Twitter, that it was an ‘appropriate and proportionate’ measure to protect the safety of residents.

Residents called the evacuation a frightening experience, saying they received little warning from local officials and had no clear idea when the ordeal would end. Hotel rooms were given to some families in need, while others chose to stay with friends and relatives, Mr Rees said.

City workers were still trying to reach nearly 30 households that had not answered the door, he said.

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Ali was still deciding where he would sleep that night.

“We just want someone to take charge,” he said, “and let us know this is going to happen.”