RESIDENTS and business owners evicted following the Glasgow School of Art fire have claimed they feel let down by authorities and were left struggling to find information – and in some cases accommodation – in the aftermath of the blaze.

Those evacuated from their flats and shops as a result of last weekend's inferno told the Sunday Herald that they had felt like a secondary consideration, while the focus of concern was put on firmly on the historic building.

They said recorded information phone lines were unhelpful and when they contacted authorities directly calls were not returned, or they were told to ask police stationed at street cordons, who were unable to provide details.

Business owners, meanwhile, said they had only started to receive information after calling a joint public meeting and had spent days standing at street cordons unable to get the answers. Some told the Sunday Herald they had thousands of pounds worth of stock in their shops, leading to potentially life-changing loss of income.

Paul Sweeney, Labour MP for Glasgow North East, said the Glasgow school of Art fire, combined with the previous fire at Victoria's nightclub at the other end of Sauchiehall Street, had led to a “disaster situation” that Glasgow City Council had failed to deal with adequately.

“It is clear the council has no over-arching task force that is set up to respond to large-scale incidents like this in the city, leaving it up to under-staffed departments to manage people’s concerns on an ad-hoc basis with no central co-ordination or decision making authority,” he said. “This needs to be gripped as it is a total failure of leadership from Glasgow City Council. The Scottish Government should have also intervened to provide a resilience fund to support businesses during the closure period but has been found missing in action. Glasgow deserves better if it is to remain one of the UK’s cultural and retail capitals.”

Alison Thewliss, SNP MP for Glasgow Central, said she had attended a residents' meeting on Thursday, during which frustrations about the lack of communication provided by authorities in the midst of an “incredibly challenging” and “rapidly changing” situation were clearly on show.

She said that while the focus quite rightly had to be on ensuring people's safety, and that cordons existed to safeguard that first and foremost, Glasgow City Council “had to do better” in terms of communicating with locals.

“It has been a very difficult situation and I have huge sympathy with people,” she said. “The response has not been co-ordinated enough – there has to be a better information response going forward. It's not good enough.”

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: "The council has a robust resilience and contingency planning structure which is regularly tested, alongside other agencies.

"Clearly this is very difficult for everyone who has been affected. However everyone who needed accommodation has been looked after. It's completely understandable that people are frustrated by a lack of new information but the facts on the ground are not regularly changing."

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government claimed it was “working with our partners to consider both the short and long term implications of the fire”.

Community view: “No-one seemed to be thinking about what would happen to us.”

"WE saw the first flames,” says Libby Usher, a 20-year-old Glasgow nightclub PR manager, who watched the fire unfold from the window of the Sauchiehall Street tenement flat she shares with three others. For a while it seemed the firefighters were gaining control. “Then I saw a purple flame pop from the ABC. Shortly after that I heard a really scary bang, which must have been the roof.”

Police arrived to evacuate their flat, giving them a few minutes to pack essentials for up to three days. Officers advised them to go to the nearby Mitchell Library and took mobile numbers. They were told someone would call the next day, but nobody did.

“For six days I've been going between friends, sofa-surfing,” says Usher. “We were told to phone 101 and then they would tell us to ask police on the streets and they would tell us to call 101. We were sent backwards and forwards.” When her flatmate called social services to request accommodation he was urged to keep staying with friends, she claims.

She understands the pressure on authorities but still feels let down. “It feels like the order of priority was the art school, then the businesses and then the residents last,” she says. Finally, at a meeting organised by residents on Thursday at Garnethill Multicultural Centre, just down the road from Glasgow School of Art, their concerns started to be heard. On Friday social workers set up a help point at the Dental Hospital, further up Sauchiehall Street, and a residents' meeting was called by the council, where she was was able to secure a hotel room for the weekend.

It's been more than a week since the art school fire and now, in the shadow of the charred shell of the famous Mack building, a community that feels it has been largely forgotten, is trying to pick up the pieces and move on with their lives.

Everyone is safe and unharmed, and for that all are thankful. But it's been a truly horrible week for those who were living and working in the evacuated area. Some have secured housing from Glasgow City Council, supporting providing emergency accommodation to 16 households, and helping one other to secure alternative accommodation from their landlord. Others have had help from insurers while Charing Cross Housing Association has also assisted some of its tenants.

But others have struggled to cope with the lack of a co-ordinated approach by authorities. Two students, both from Finland and who found accommodation through the University of Strathclyde, where they are studying, after feeling help was not forthcoming from Glasgow authorities, have spent much of their free time stood at the cordon, trying desperately to find out when they can get access.

One has a flight home to Finland on Wednesday but her passport is inside, and re-issue would mean an expensive trip to the London-based embassy, while her flatmate's Epipen is also in their flat – a manufacturing shortage means she is unable to replace it. “Every day we went to the site but we had no point of contact until Friday when they set up the drop-in at the Dental Hospital,” says one, who does not want to be named.

Alexsandra Conner, 21 and her boyfriend Michael Argent, 30 have had a tough week too. Connor, a supervisor at a city-centre restaurant, was at work when a friend contacted her to tell her what was happening. “I just started sprinting home and by the time I got there the cordons had already been put in place,” she says. “We wandered around and spoke to lots of police but no-one could give us any info. Michael had come out to find me in his joggers and a jumper so we were completely unprepared. The police didn't even tell us about the Mitchell Library, so I ended up calling my parents at 2am to come and get us. No-one seemed to be thinking about what would happen to us.”

Now also in a hotel the pair ended up sofa surfing for six days because Connor's parents live too far away for her to get to work, while she claims messages left with the council went unanswered. She tried unsuccessfully to reach her landlord and worried about money. “Our rent is due on 26 of this month and we pay in advance,” she says. “I've still not managed to speak to anyone and I don't know what to do.”

It's been hard for businesses as well. The area is packed with small independents – cafes, noodle and nail bars, sandwich and corner shops, hairdressers, tattoo parlours, and shops selling art supplies and books. With so much at stake emotions have run high. Several business owners said the "crisis situation" had been badly managed and information difficult to come by because no one person was charged with co-ordinating communications.

Gill Hutchison, owner of the historic music shop Biggar's, which has been trading since 1867, only found out about the fire when she got up on Saturday morning expecting to head-off to open up not only for customers, but 25 pupils attending lessons at its music school.

She rushed into town and stood at the cordon all day, trying and failing to get any information. She was joined by other business owners and started posting updates, such as she had, on social media. She was shocked to find that her Facebook inbox was also filling up with messages from displaced residents desperate for information, and claims she is still receiving them some eight days after the fire.

Though she hugely appreciates the efforts of the emergency services and council, she feels better co-ordination was needed. There was no central point of contact, and no signage giving advice placed at the cordons where many were gathering. In the lack of official help traders have joined forces with almost 50 businesses communicating via a Whatsapp group.

“Everyone is safe thankfully,” she says. “But in terms of the ongoing impact it's almost as though a bomb had been dropped. It really should be treated like a disaster and authorities should be thinking of the impact in cultural, economic and human terms.” With the exclusion zone set stay in place for the foreseeable future, many are looking at taking alternative premises - “who has such deep pockets that they can just sit and wait” - and she worries that some may not return to Sauchiehall Street, allowing corporates to move in and change the area forever.

Meanwhile the fire at Victoria's that has led an entire block of Sauchiehall Street to be closed for three months and counting has not only impacted on businesses and residents in those buildings, but on the wider area.

The city council is mindful of the impact, with council leader Susan Aitken announcing a Sauchiehall Street taskforce less than 24 hours after the GSA fire started. It had its first meeting on Tuesday. But Iain Gordon, director of the Pavillion Theatre – still waiting news of when they can access their smoke-damaged building – and who called a meeting for all affected by both fires on Thursday evening says its simply not enough.

“These are small businesses who rely on the students of the art school as well as tourists and visitors,” he says. “You've got BHS sitting there empty. Could the council compulsory purchase it and allow them to use that as a base? Could we involve art school students in creating some murals along Sauchiehall street that make it look brighter? If not, he claims, many traders will not survive.

The signs claiming the street is “open for business” are difficult to read and unconvincing, he claims, and he worries that many will suffer. “In Glasgow there has been a total lack of vision, of imagination,” he says. “We need to regenerate the whole area and celebrate all the wonderful things that people will find there.”

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