A residential tower block in East London has caught fire, according to London Fire Brigade. There are more than 100 firefighters at the scene, tackling fires on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors.

Fifteen fire engines and around 100 firefighters have been called to a fire on Fairmont Avenue in #Poplar More information to follow pic.twitter.com/iFrud1iWaG

— London Fire Brigade (@LondonFire) May 7, 2021

According to Pete Apps, the Deputy Editor of the journal Inside Housing, the ACM cladding used in this building is the same as that in Grenfell Tower, which caught fire in 2017, leading to 72 deaths.

Incidentally, the New Providence Wharf building has caught fire two days after Jonathan Sakula, a facades expert with three decades of experience, presented evidence on May 5th to the Grenfell Inquiry that the combustibility of building like Grenfell were well known to the contractors. You can view the full evidence here.

However, on the burning site right now, residents are still trying to reach safety, as you can see in the clip filmed by a neighbour helping another below.

This happened to one of our residents in new providence wharf fire today in East London -they had trouble evacuating, but thankfully were fine! @weareballymore please take responsibility, we dont want another grenfell! #grenfell #canarywharf pic.twitter.com/7fSajATea4

— Simon (@simontests123) May 7, 2021

Apsana Begum is the MP for Poplar and Limehouse and raised the issue of the dangerous cladding in the Polar tower block, including the building New Providence Wharf, to the Parliament earlier this year.

In case someone missed it, here's one of the occasions, @ApsanaBegumMP raised this in Parliament: https://t.co/VrF6iLHzJF

— Niklas Albin Svensson ✊ (@marxistniklas) May 7, 2021

Featured image credit to Ben Sutherland.