Brentford Travelodge Fire: 160 People Evacuated As Blaze Tears Through Hotel

The blaze is thought to have started in a bin room.
|

A huge fire has gutted a five-storey hotel in west London, prompting the evacuation of around 160 people.

Fifteen fire engines and around 100 firefighters were deployed to battle the blaze at a Travelodge on High Street, Brentford, according to the London Fire Brigade.

There are no reports of any injuries.

Hotel guest Mike Thomas was due to check out on Wednesday morning.

He said the fire exit they evacuated through was close to the bins and the fire.

“We could feel the heat,” he told the PA news agency.

“Then the penny drops that you’re actually running out of a burning building.”

Station commander Nathan Hobson said: “The whole of a single-storey bin room on the ground floor is alight. The fire spread to an adjacent hotel of five floors.” 

He said firefighters were carrying out a “systematic search of the hotel” after 17 calls were placed to 999.

The brigade was called to the fire at 2.52am and has been supported by staff from surrounding fire stations.

The cause of the fire is not yet known but early indications suggest it was not “cladding-related”, the fire service has said.

Reg Williams, who was staying at the Travelodge, said parts of the building covered in cladding were “shrouded” in smoke.

He told the PA news agency: “The fire crews had the hoses in that cladded area for ages.

“I’m concerned that cladding is still attached to buildings.”

As of October of this year there were still 17 high-rise hotels in the UK still clad in Aluminium Composite Material (ACM), the same type used on the Grenfell Tower which burned down in 2017 with the loss of 72 lives.

Labour politician Emma Dent-Coad, whose constituency included Grenfell Tower, tweeted: “While there is breath in my body – in or out of parliament – I will do everything I can to reverse policies that allowed use of combustible materials & ensure unsafe buildings are dealt with asap.

“This is a national scandal. People will die.”