The investigation into the Grenfell Tower disaster has recovered a total of 87 sets of human remains, the last of the visible human remains left in the building. The number of presumed dead still remains at 80.
Metropolitan Police commander Stuart Cundy said:
“In total we have made 87 recoveries, but I must stress that the catastrophic damage inside Grenfell Tower means that is not 87 people.“Until formal identification has been completed to the coroner’s satisfaction, I cannot say how many people have now been recovered.”
Only 21 victims have as yet been formally identified.
Police will now undertake to search the tower by hand in a process that may take until the end of the year, or longer. They’ll be sifting through tonnes of debris in each apartment.
Police have confirmed that they have spoken to at least one person from 106 of the 129 flats in the tower, but have been unable to find anyone from the remaining 23. The police assume that no one from those flats survived.
Cundy said:
“We will use all the information we have, especially what we have been told by survivors and families, to prioritise our search where we believe we may find more human remains. This will take us many months, but we will search each and every flat.
“Such is the devastation caused by the fire that it may be that, tragically, we cannot find or identify all those who lost their lives.”
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: Carl Court / Getty.
