Just reading about Grenfell Tower again

And this caught my eye:
"Twelve-year-old Jessica Urbano was home alone when the fire broke out. She calls her family from someone else’s phone."

At 1am. Alone. Scared to death. Left afcukinglone to die in a fire.

Sorry but that is no age to be leaving your kids alone at night.

 

And that is all you take from the tragedy? That a 12 year old should not be left alone at night !!
Not a word about that lack of fire protection, escape routes, bare gas pipes, not replacing the fire retarding material when they did the flooring, fire crews not being able to access the approach road because of road works, plus the combustible material the cladding was made from etc.etc.

 

If by 'not a word' you mean a lot of words already mentioned in previous posts then yes not a word

 

I mean as in you have not mentioned it in your post, only used the death of a kid to somehow have a dig at their parents ! Leave it out and stop being some supercilious chuff !

 

Seems a bit pointless going over old ground. The tower was a death trap. The response was ****.

Parents still should not leave a 12 year old overnight. I don't care if there were roadworks or not

 

Wasn't the story that the Mother worked nights as a cleaner? Not sure about any Father/Grandparents.

 

Her dad lived near the bottom of the tower, the girl lived near the top with her mum and sister. The mum was a cleaner working regular nights and the sister was out for the night with her boyfriend.

 

Her father was in another flat having dinner with a friend.

Edit: It's true there is conflicting information with this.

 

17 floors away.

 

Who has their dinner at 1am?

 

People who work shifts? Insomniacs?

 

I don't know if her family are or were but Muslims observing Ramadan could easily have been eating at that time. Not that it's important because you simply don't leave 12 year old kids alone at night.

People appear to be excusing a lot of what people do because of a terrible tragedy. Well sorry but some things contribute to a terrible tragedy and leaving alone and frightened is one of those things. Perhaps if she wasn't left up there to cry and scream for help n her own then she might have made it out.

 

I think they were Latin Americans (could be wrong) so probably Catholic.

I agree with the rest of your post.

 

When I was 12 I regularly got left at home while me mam and dad went to the pub babysitting a 4and 2 year old. It depends on tbe kid

 

I know it's not ideal and I wouldn't advocate it but what is a single parent realistically going to do? If mum/dad needs a job to bring in food/rent and they can't afford childcare then they'll have to leave them at home. I'm sure they spend the entire night panicking about their kid and feeling guilty as hell whilst working but sometimes the only choices are bad ones. The other option is potentially benefits but then people would be on their back about that. They probably also wouldn't qualify if they had been turning down jobs/not actively looking. Perhaps in this case, normally the 12 year old is left with the older sibling but this was just a one off as sister was out and it's just the worst possible luck that it happened then (or it maybe saved a life if they would both have been trapped). At 12 it's not quite home alone all night age but it's not 'oh my gosh, what horrible parents' age either depending on how mature the child is. If dad or sister were going to return soon, or the 12yr was in bed for the night before mum left then I can see why they might have that arrangement, especially as a one off. Dad's involvement in the upbringing is quite important to the story here but I can still see how it might happen.

I'm sure it's a situation many single parents of teenage (or almost teenage) children face where they won't want or really need a childminder, and the parents can't afford one anyway.

 

I've read as much info as I can on the family to try to explain it and there are a lot of conflicting information.

Some reports say her father was estranged or separated and lived on the third floor, others say he was simply visiting a friend on the third floor.

Some say the sister was out with her boyfriend, others say she was working like her mother.

Whatever the circumstances I was shocked to discover that there is no minimum age for kids to be legally left alone. It all comes down to whether a parent decides the kid is mature and sensible enough and Then if anything happens it's up to somebody else to decide whether they agree with the first persons subjective guess. Seems totally wrong to me that we have a set age for driving because of maturity, a set age for drinking, a set age for watching certain things and a set age for sexual consent because of people's maturity but when it comes down to actual life endangering situations of leaving a child unattended the rules go it of the window and the law says 'meh, you decide'.

What a bizarre set of laws where the child's individual maturity is not allowed to be used to make a decision on essentially something as simple as oral sex (excuse the crudeness) because the law decides that the child must be protected regardless but as for actually putting them in harm's way we have removed the set limit because it's not that important.

 

Just watching Newsnight. A couple who were residents and were rescued and were expecting a child have just been on.
Their baby has been still born ( 7 months old) . The cause of death recorded on the certificate is cyanide poisoning.
Investigations are underway to check if the gas from the burning panels has been inhaled by the mother thus
causing her baby's death. How sad is that.?

Tenants who don't wish to be identified are rightly suspicious of the " official" line and are sceptical about everything
they are being told. The official number of dead is being put at 80. One local Virginia Sang who has lived in the area
for most of her life said the Tower was overcrowded and a lot of residents weren't even "on the books" ( probably illegal
immigrants). She says reliable local sources put the number missing presumed at as many as 200
although a close friend of hers has put the figure as high as 400.!

The BBC are saying they can't find tangible evidence to support that claim. Given the extreme heat at the height of the
blaze they conclude we may never know the true numbers of those who perished.