Elderly woman dies in fire on Deptford High Street

An elderly woman died in a fire on Deptford High Street in the early hours of this morning and a second woman had to be rescued from a flat on the second floor of the building, which is next door to the Morley's Chicken Shop. Fire crews and police were on the scene this morning and closed the road to carry out their investigations. According to the official report from the London Fire Brigade, officers from six stations attended the scene; one of the closest of those, New Cross, is earmarked for closure in the proposed cuts. With response times set to increase if these closures go ahead, it begs the question of whether the second woman would have survived in those circumstances.

From the LFB website:
Firefighters were called to a fire in a shop converted into flats on Deptford High Street during the early hours of this morning. Crews rescued an elderly lady from the ground floor of the building but sadly she later died at the scene. A second woman was rescued by firefighters using a ladder from a flat on the second floor and she was taken to hospital by London Ambulance Service suffering from smoke inhalation. The fire damaged a large part of the building’s ground floor. The Brigade was called at 0131 and the fire was under control by 0228. Six fire engines, 35 firefighters and officers from Deptford, Greenwich, Lewisham, New Cross, Old Kent Road and East Greenwich fire stations attended the incident. The cause of the fire is being investigated by London Fire Brigade’s fire investigation team and the Metropolitan Police.

Updated: the victim has been named as 82-year-old Giuseppina Fazzani and the police are now treating this as murder.