Former residents of Grenfell Tower are calling on visitors to stop taking selfies in front of the blackened building, an act many are calling "grief tourism".
A number of signs have been placed near what remains of the tower, urging people to "stop taking pictures please" and "stop taking selfies", with another reminding them that "Grenfell [is] a tragedy, not a tourist attraction".
It's alleged that people have been taking photos of themselves with the 24-storey tower's charred remains without paying their respects to the 79 people confirmed to have died in last week's fire or volunteering to help the survivors.
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“You don’t want to confront them because it’s all so sensitive but it gets to the stage you have so much upset and rage you just want to slap the phone out of their hands,” Wayne Kilo Lewis, who lived in the block attached to Grenfell for nearly three decades, told the Independent.
“It’s a disgusting sight which people who are trying to grieve do not want to see or ought to see. All the years in and out of that tower block, I could not physically stand there and look at the building because it was too overwhelming and emotional imagining the people trying to escape, and then people around you are having a laugh.”
#GrenfellTower
— Guy Smallman (@GuySmallman) June 18, 2017
This sign placed under the Westway this morning. Its kind of depressing that this even needs to be said.#Selfies pic.twitter.com/lNOU9SEJxL
Natasha Gordon, a Londoner whose family and friends lived in the tower, told CNN she had seen "loads [of people]... taking this as a party, disrespectfully coming to take photos without even so much as leaving flowers or a card."
Many on social media have also called the selfie-takers' actions disgraceful, with one person saying they "need to think less about themselves and more about that community".
People taking selfies near the Grenfell tower block are a disgrace. They need to think less about themselves and more about that community.
— Peter_Kirby30 (@PeterDavidKirby) June 18, 2017
Others said they saw people taking selfies with the tower while the fire was still ravaging it last week.
From day one, walking through West, I saw a ton of rich people taking selfies & Instagram pics of #GrenfellTower while it WAS STILL BURNING.
— Scully (@isthatscully) June 21, 2017
Yesterday the government announced that 68 luxury flats in the heart of Kensington would be given to those left homeless by the fire in the coming months.
This morning, Theresa May said around 600 high-rise tower blocks around the country are using similar hazardous cladding to Grenfell Tower, with a spokeswoman for the prime minister insisting it was a "matter of absolute urgency" to tell residents, reported the BBC.