Residents trying to flee from a Dagenham tower block as it was engulfed in flames earlier this week could be heard yelling four terrifying words as they found their paths blocked by a locked gate.
More than 80 people were evacuated from a mixed-use commercial and residential building in the east London borough on Monday after the building caught fire. Dramatic footage shows a towering inferno as flames leapt up the building's facade, reaching the roof by the time residents were able to flee to safety.
The London Fire Brigade (LFB) has accounted for everyone living in the block at the time, but the evacuation process was far from smooth in some cases. Some residents could be heard yelling as they found their paths blocked by a locked emergency gate early that morning.
The new footage shared by Sky News captures people cornered by the advancing flames as they file down the evacuation route, with one person heard shouting "open the f*****g gate" as they encounter the obstacle. A spokesperson for the building's residents said in a statement that the "lifeline" escape route was "padlocked shut", and the failure was one of several discovered following the fire.
They said: "They were fully aware of the fire safety issues: how the building's fire alarm system failed to go off, denying us the critical warning we needed. The fire escape route which should have been our lifeline was padlocked shut... the multiple layers of management from landlords to agencies utterly failed to protect us."
The LFB has said the building on Freshwater Road had "known issues", and, while the root cause of the fire has not yet been identified, a contractor who claimed to be working on the site said on Facebook that it's "non-compliant" cladding was being removed when it ignited.
Two people were hospitalised after fire engines raced to the scene, and residents have described the terrifying scenes as they woke up to the combination of smoke and flames in the early hours of the morning. Karthick and Meghana Kannaiah, who raced from the building with his children and the daughter of his friend, Dinesh Raj, said it was like a "horror movie".
Mr Kanniah told the BBC he opened his window to see the flames after his wife informed him the scaffolding outside had caught fire. He said: "It was as though I was seeing a horror movie. We opened the door and saw people rushing towards the stairs. We somehow got out of the building with our baby."