A residential tower in West London was being evacuated early Wednesday as enormous flames engulfed the building, police said.
Police, fire and ambulance crews raced to Grenfell Tower, part of the Lancaster West housing estate about a mile northwest of Kensington Palace.
The London Fire Brigade said it had sent 40 fire engines and 200 firefighters to battle the inferno, which it said was reported at 12:54 a.m. Wednesday local time (7:54 p.m. ET Tuesday). London Metropolitan Police would say only that “a number of people are being treated for a range of injuries.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Twitter that the fire had been declared a “major incident.”
“This is a large and very serious incident and we have deployed numerous resources and specialist appliances,” Assistant Fire Commissioner Dan Daly said in a statement. No cause had been determined.
“We wake up early sometimes anyway in the night, and one of my relatives saw the flames from the window and heard the people screaming,” Ousama Itani, who lives in the area, told NBC News.
“It just started to burn across from one side to the other, and we saw apartment after apartment getting lit up into flames,” Itani said.
Scores of passersby posted video of the giant blaze on social media, many of them also saying they could hear residents screaming for help from their windows. The BBC’s London radio service said the fire could be seen from vantage points across the city.
Source and Photo credit: NBC News, Reuters