Barton Hill tower block residents’ lives turned upside down by emergency evacuation
Photos: Alexander Turner
“I don’t know where we are going to go, I don’t know what’s happening,” says Yasmin, tearfully, standing confused at the foot of Barton House with her one-year-old son in her arms and his buggy at her feet.
Her neighbour had only moments earlier knocked on her door and warned that she needed to leave the tower block immediately because it’s unsafe. She thought, in the moment, that it was about to collapse.
“We rushed down with just nappies for [my son] and I don’t know what is happening,” the 30-year-old told the Cable at the time, at about 6pm on Tuesday evening, as an evacuation of the block was under way.
Bristol City Council, which owns and manages the building, had declared a major incident due to a “risk to the structure” of the tower, which is the oldest in the city – completed in the late 1950s.
About 400 people, roughly 100 of whom are children, were ordered to leave the building. Most did, but they left without knowing exactly what was going on, and without word on where they could stay.
And 24 hours later, many Barton House residents were waiting on a call back from the council about temporary accommodation while further assessments on the building were carried out.
The building’s construction, a survey this week revealed, is significantly different to its blueprints. There is a “material risk” to the structure of the block in the event of a fire, explosion or large impact, the council said.
The Cable has revealed that structural issues were uncovered at the tower block back in 2019, but the council said the issues reported this week were more serious.
The authority urged anyone who could stay with relatives or friends to do so. Some 57 hotel rooms were provided to people who needed them most, and four people stayed at a rest centre in City Hall.
Yasmin and her son were able to stay with a friend, but she says some of her neighbours slept in their cars and that some refused to leave the building. She says she had not yet been given temporary accommodation.
“I am waiting anxiously for a call, not knowing where I will be tonight or tomorrow,” she told the Cable.
She is just one of hundreds of people whose lives have abruptly and dramatically been turned upside down by the evacuation – with no information about when they are likely to be able to return to their homes.
The trauma of displacement
Hassan, a member of the community engagement team at the nearby Wellspring Settlement, spent much of Wednesday meeting with residents, offering support and information where he could.
He paused for lunch in the centre’s cafe with Nuh, who was allocated temporary accommodation at a Holiday Inn in the city centre with his partner and two children, aged five and six.
The 46-year-old and his family were taken to the hotel on one of three buses laid on for residents on Tuesday night. He said his children could not eat the hotel food and went to school without breakfast.
This morning, he and his wife returned to their flat in Barton House to cook and collect their remaining possessions. They are concerned about how living in the hotel will affect their children’s health.
“This is not a healthy situation,” Nuh told the Cable. “There is one room for the four of us, my daughter couldn’t sleep last night and we are all struggling a lot. It is not fair that this is happening.”
Hassan said that the council is working hard to offer temporary housing to displaced residents.
“It is a traumatic thing, and we need to do what we can to make sure people are safe,” he said, adding that there were people who live in the block refusing to leave their homes.
“There are some people who do not want to come out, we are going to talk to them now and see what we can do,” he said. “We are doing our best to keep people informed and help them find somewhere to stay.”
Confusion and uncertainty
Kubra arrived at the community centre alone on Wednesday afternoon with a bag full of her things. She told staff in the Wellspring’s cafe, where the lunchtime rush had just finished, that she needed help with accommodation.
The cafe staff called the council’s helpline set up for residents on her behalf and explained that she had a child with special educational needs and needed guidance from the support team in her native language of Urdu.
Judging by others’ experience, she could be waiting a while.
Sidra Riaz stayed with a friend overnight with her two daughters, aged three and six, and was waiting for a call back from the council about temporary accommodation.
“Yesterday I was picking up my daughter from school and a friend told me we could not go back to the building,” she told the Cable at the community centre. “I have all my stuff, clothes, at the house and I am scared to go back.
“I can stay with a friend for maybe one or two days but no longer, it’s very worrying that I cannot speak to anyone at the council about this.”
Sidra says she called the council’s helpline it set up for residents early Wednesday morning and staff told her they would contact her with information as soon as possible. She was still waiting on their call at 4pm.
Questions over council’s planning
Questions remain about why the council chose to act so suddenly, leaving even local councillors in the dark about initial, provisional plans for an evacuation.
Yassin Muhamed, Green councillor for Lawrence Hill, says he was first told about the structural issues with the building on Tuesday afternoon by the council’s chief executive.
“But they knew on Monday that something was bad, so why it happened this way I don’t know,” he told Cable from the Wellspring settlement. “What happened in those 24 hours? There are lots of questions.”
Kye Dudd, the council’s cabinet member for housing services and energy, said the structural issues with the building lay with its concrete sections and that “it wasn’t built to the design specs”.
He added that he had a briefing on Monday where a report from a structural engineer was given to him. “It looked really bad,” he told BBC Radio Bristol. “I said to the team we need to prepare for a potential emergency evacuation.
“But we also had to seek further advice from the fire brigade, so the following day we had another meeting… and we had some prep on where we would potentially move people… We had to take the decision with the information we had as the safety [of] residents is paramount.”
‘Everyone came together’
Amid the chaos and confusion following the evacuation, the local community came together to support those who were displaced.
Deniece Dixon runs Cafe Conscious, which is a three minute walk from Barton House. She opened up the space for residents, offering them free food, hot drinks overnight, taking pressure off the community centre.
“My friend messaged me about what was going on and straight away I got down here,” she told the Cable from the cafe, donations of food, drinks, nappies and underwear piled around us.
“[Residents] were devastated,” she said. “I had people in here in tears today… told to grab her clothes and documents and leave, and they don’t know when they will be able to go back. Imagine!
“But it’s amazing how the people of this area have come together,” she said. “We just opened up a safe space and said ‘let’s do this’, and everyone else did all the work.”
The Cable has also launched a crowdfunder to help with supplies for the displaced residents, which at the time of writing had raised more than £3,000.
Left in the dark
Barton House residents have not been given any kind of timeframe for how long they will be without a permanent home, if they are ever able to return.
Bristol’s mayor Marvin Rees, in a blog post on Wednesday evening, wrote that it would take “some time” for further surveys to be carried out. He said residents would need to be away from home while they are completed.
“A number of issues have emerged that suggest the building’s construction is sufficiently different to its blueprints that there is a material risk to the structure of the block in the event of a fire, explosion or large impact,” the blog post read.
“We are working at pace to complete further surveys now, to go deep into the structure and understand when it would be safe for residents to move back into Barton House.”
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