York Times: Charcoal-Blackened Finger and London Fire

york times: Twenty-four storeys tall, with a single stairwell escape route, where those who defied fire department orders to stay put picked their way over victims who'd collapsed on the steps as they fled, according to Toronto Star. Youngest victim of the June 14 conflagration worst London fire in more than a century appears to be a baby not yet born, delivered to a mother in an induced coma, the seven-month fetus already dead in the womb from poisonous fumes. ANDREW TESTA / The New York Times By Rosie DiManno Columnist Sun., July 2, 2017 LONDON It sticks up into the sky like a charcoal-blackened finger, a husk of a building with blank eyes where every single window was blown out. Yet almost three weeks after the blaze that consumed Grenfell Tower, part of the Lancaster West Estate public housing for poor people the exact number of casualties, at least 80 lives lost, is not yet known and may never be known. In the absence of any official list of casualties, frustrated next-of-kin are turning to volunteer demographers and independent data analysts who've poured over floor plans and spreadsheets, colour-coding apartment units according to confirmed dead, presumed dead, still unaccounted for and known survivors. It defies comprehension, in an age of digitalized information saturation, that such basic facts seem beyond the reach of officials, most especially the Kensington and Chelsea council that managed the property with such colossal dereliction of duty. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.