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LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday ordered a full public inquiry into the high-rise blaze in London that killed at least 17 people as residents of the building that was engulfed by flames early Wednesday said their complaints about safety concerns were repeatedly ignored.

The cause of the blaze is not known and under investigation, but a tenants’ group had complained for years about the risk of a fire.

The Grenfell Action Group said it had raised fears about the lack of a sprinkler system, the dangerous position of gas pipes and boilers, and that the bloc only had one escape route.

The death toll currently stands at 17, although that is expected to increase as emergency workers sift through more of the wreckage at the residential building in west London’s North Kensington district. The fire also injured dozens of people, 18 of them critically. Thirty people are still hospitalised.

Dany Cotton, London’s fire chief, said authorities don’t expect to find anyone else alive and that they “genuinely don’t know” how many people died in the incident.

However, investigators are still searching for victims and the families of those unaccounted for have been appealing on social media for information.

Witnesses described harrowing scenes as the building became an inferno with people, including children, jumping out of windows to escape the heat.

The Grenfell Tower has 20 floors of apartments and 4 floors of mixed-used residential and office space. How many people were in the building during the fire has not been established. Up to 600 people lived in the building’s 120 apartments.

Investigators were trying to determine yesterday why the fire spread so quickly to the top floors of the building when only last year the residential complex underwent a $13 million refurbishment that included a new thermal cladding to the building’s exterior.

“We need to know what happened, we need to know an explanation,” May said, announcing the inquiry. “We owe that to the families.”

In a blog post written last year, the Grenfell Action Group warned of “dangerous living conditions” in the bloc. “It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO.” — BBC