Kennedy House Fire Ramsgate, pictures

Tower block fire in Ramsgate at around 5pm today, it looks as though this fire broke out in a ground floor flat of the fifteen story block of flats.

Some people have obviously been injured I would think smoke inhalation although I am not certain.

Here is the link to the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/khfr/ I don’t think this a serious fire I would think one flat gutted but not the whole tower block.

Update from Kent Fire and Rescue

15 February 2011
Fire and Research Investigators are examining the cause of a fire in a block of flats in Ramsgate.
Firefighters were sent to the sixteen storey building in Newcastle Hill at 4.48pm yesterday (14 February) following reports of a fire in a first floor flat.

Initially, four appliances from Ramsgate, Margate and Thanet were sent to the scene, but fire crews soon called for support from other resources, including a height vehicle, from Canterbury, Westgate, Deal, Herne Bay and Eastry.

While one team of firefighters wearing breathing apparatus tackled the fire, a second team evacuated the first floor flats.

Crews were joined by their Ambulance and Police counterparts.

Thanks to some aggressive firefighting, crews managed to contain the fire to the affected flat, extinguishing the fire by 5.36pm.

Firefighters then spent a further hour ventilating the smoke - logged building and ensuring that it was safe for them to leave the scene.

Four people, including two elderly adults, suffered smoke inhalation and were treated at the scene. One of the casualties - a woman - was taken to hospital after falling eight feet from her flat. Her injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.

Residents living on the first floor of the building stayed with family and friends overnight as a consequence of the fire, but are due to return to their flats shortly.The cause of the fire is not yet known, but is being investigated.

Thanet District Council, don’t jump! Ramsgate’s beach hut revealed.

The picture above taken today (click on it to enlarge) shows our one and only new beach hut in use, the council officer sitting in it is being paid out of our council tax to stop people from jumping from the fish quay into the harbour.

What is wrong with this?

Firstly as you can clearly see in the picture someone is jumping into the harbour, from the fish quay, behind the hut.

Secondly they have put one young female council officer on her own in the beach hut, with no authority to enforce anyone from doing anything they want, the youf don’t seem to like being told not to do what they want to do, at the moment their reaction is limited giving her verbal abuse. My own opinion is that the person in most danger here is the council officer.

Thirdly the beach hut is facing away from the fish quay, so she can’t even see what is going on properly.

The proper solution here is to encourage our youf in this healthy activity by putting up a proper diving board supervised by a lifeguard and offer them proper training in the sport.

Now I come back to the problem of what to do when the council has evidently done something completely crazy, this young women is from one of the European countries Poland of Hungary I would guess from her accent, she is sitting in this hut in the middle of Ramsgate periodically having verbal abuse shouted at her, obscenities, threats and racial abuse.

This isn’t like the Thanet Pride thing yesterday, where accusing the council of homophobia appears to have the desired result i.e. getting the event publicised on the councils homepage. I say this as I also asked them to publicise Ramsgate Carnival in the same way and as they didn’t I can only assume that it was because I couldn’t accuse them of political incorrectness.

I am afraid that this one is one of those insane actions by our council that really annoys me, my take on it is that the council at some high officer or cabinet level has identified that there could be some council liability here if someone is injured jumping in the harbour.

I don’t think there is any sense of the council wishing to protect local people or the wouldn’t have put this officer in an invidious position, much more a case of that they have given someone and impossible job to cover their own backs.

Oh and a few pictures from the camera these are yesterday afternoon http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Julylaptop3/id5.htm these this morning before the fun fair had opened http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Julylaptop3/id6.htm and these this afternoon http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Julylaptop3/id8.htm

Ramsgate Around the Town

I popped out to the town during my lunch break and noticed a few things, here they are.
First a new shop selling magic items, this is not magic tricks but the occult type, tarot cards and so on, I expect this will do fairly well as that section in the bookshop does fairly well.

The town centre itself was very busy indeed, as you can see, making photography there pretty much impossible.

The work on the Pleasurama surface drainage pipe seems to be finished, the workers on this should be commended on leaving harbour parade as they found it and not a mass of potholes usually left after major roadworks.

The nasty scum that may well be the results of problems with the sewers in harbour Parade is still there, although how you would go about finding out if this problem is being addressed I wouldn’t really know.

Tree surgeon goes bananas in Ramsgate town centre.

Many thanks to reader Pat for pointing this one out to me, I don’t know that much about trees, but thought they were usually pruned in the middle of winter. However this isn’t a pruning but more of a total defoliation, just at the moment with this heat wave we could do with more cool shady places not less.

The picture (click on it and then click on it again to enlarge) says it all really, for some reason that I don’t know the run of modern shops and offices here is called The Argyle Centre.

As is so often the case with the council this is mostly about acting without any public information, if this drastic action was necessary for some reason, perhaps the trees are diseased, I just don’t know. What is abundantly clear is that a press release before the action, explaining to local people what is to be done and why, is all the difference between local government that people understand and that people see as good government taking people with them through hard times and the situation we have now, action without public information or consultation, viewed for the most part as bad government, arrogant and uninterested in the views and feelings of local people.

It is the government of Animal Farm, Brave New World, If and 1984, quite inappropriate and out of place in the twenty first century.

Fire Brigade Extinguish Sea at Ramsgate and other pictures

This is very much a post for those people who can’t get out for a walk easily, taken a bit tongue in cheek as most of us live in houses something that means we are all for the fire brigade doing plenty of practice exercises.

However from a purely spectator point of view it does look pretty funny and has all the hallmarks of boys playing with expensive toys, click here for the rest of the pictures of this event and click here for the rest of yesterdays pictures of Ramsgate

1872 and 1849 street map of Ramsgate.

As many of you will know I published a copy of my 1849 map of Ramsgate at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/map1849/ it’s a fairly good scan and as I have put it up as a series of pages, should you so wish you can right click on each of them, click on print picture, print them all out and stick them on your wall.

I have just done this with the 1872 map of Ramsgate at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/map1872/ and am printing it out as I write, Phil published it at http://www.ramsgatehistory.com/1872_map_index.html but I found it fairly difficult to copy and print from there. So many thanks to Phil for letting me republish it in this way.

This is part of the 1872 Ordinance Survey of Kent it says that it is 10.56 feet to one statute mile, if any of you come up with any of the missing pieces of what would make a truly remarkable jig saw puzzle please send them this way.

The Maps are fairly large files especially the 1849 one, if you think I should have put the 1872 one up bigger let me know and I will oblige.

To make the maps bigger or smaller press + or- while holding down Crtl use the arrow keys to navigate around.

Update I have just opened both maps in Firefox and I am afraid to say that they don’t display properly as they do in Internet Explorer. What happens is that all of the map sections appear beneath each other, instead of where they are supposed to, I had assumed that not putting breaks between the ones I wanted to appear next to each other would work for all browsers.

Any help on this one would be appreciated, I hardly ever use Firefox as there are difficulties when pasting from MS Word into Blogger when it is open in Firefox.

As I have said before I have to use Windows based programs as the secondhand book trade standard database, will only work in windows.

Some pictures of Ramsgate and Walmer Castle and a few thoughts.

For an Easter weekend it seemed a bit strange to have no events going on in Ramsgate, as you can see from the pictures the council have made a very neat job of boarding up the tourist information office.

I should point out that there will be some sort of tourist information office in the custom house, at least this is somewhere that tourists will find it.

Yes the plane really was that low, again, no special lens, just point and shoot.

With no family event in Ramsgate and having been to Quex Park recently, I looked on the English Heritage website and decided that Walmer Castle was the place to take them.

We have family membership for English Heritage, something I would recommend if you have a family as they are much more geared to entertaining children than they used to be.

I didn’t take many pictures inside as it was just too busy, so I am afraid there are rather a lot of pictures of trees, oh well no one is forcing you to look at them.

Click on the link for the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410/id5.htm