According to the UK’s Metropolitan Police, the final death toll of the Grenfell Tower disaster will not be known until next year.
At least 80 people are now known to have died in the fire on June 14., but an official figure will not become clear until 2018 as police carry out their investigation.
However residents and Labour MP David Lammy say the numbers given are unrealistically low, and have suggested that the true number of fatalities may have been suppressed by officials desperate to avoid riots in the streets,
According to a local resident, the more than 500 people unaccounted from Grenfell Tower are actually dead. She insisted that the missing residents had all died and that the British media had censored the news.
Business Insider reports:
Residents’ groups and Labour MP David Lammy have criticised the fatalities number for being unrealistically low, and have even suggested that the true scale of destruction has been suppressed to avoid civil unrest.
Officers said they believe the majority of those who died came from 23 flats in the upper half of the building, which had a total of 129 apartments. Police have yet to make contact with anybody from the 23 flats, leading them to believe there were no survivors. They were distributed between the 11th and 23rd floors.
Officers have contacted at least one survivor in each of the other 106 flats.
Fiona McCormack, a detective chief superintendent orientating the investigation, said a conclusive death toll will be available “only after we have completed the search and recovery operation, which will take until the end of the year.”
Niamh Harris