Living in fear

Fran Heron gazes out of her window on the 17th floor of a 21-storey tower block in Camden, North London. Her voice brimming with fear, she describes the smoke that had come into her building after a small fire had broken out when a discarded cigarette ignited a pile of rubbish left near the entrance.

It was a fairly small incident. But Fran, tenant activist and chair of the Ampthill Square Tenant and Residents Association, is right to be worried. Almost two months later a blaze only a few miles away at a tower block in Camberwell claimed the lives of six residents and injured at least 20 others.

A faulty television ignited a fire on the ninth floor of Lakanal House causing fire and smoke to rip through the building to the eleventh floor where the six victims were later found.