“Grenfell tower looms over everything – like a cemetery in the sky”

A year ago, an inferno tore through London’s Grenfell Tower, killing over 70 people. Today, the building still casts a shadow over the community…

Images of one I of the UK’S most horrifying disasters created a heartbreaking backdrop to the inquiry into the catastrophic fire that ripped through Grenfell Tower, leaving dozens dead and 70 injured.

Closer was at the hearing, which opened last month, to listen to moving tributes paid to the victims of the tragedy, from a stillborn baby to an 84-yearold woman. Among the series of speeches, the inquiry heard about three-year-old Amaya Tuccu-ahmedin, who would “laugh so much her whole body shook”, 15-year-old Nur Huda, who was “loved and respected by all her peers”, and Mohammed al-haj Ali, 23, who’d fled wartorn Syria and chose to remain in the tower to comfort a trapped mother and child. The eulogies were full of love and heroism.

BLUNDERS

The blaze started behind a fridge freezer in a fourth floor flat during the early hours of 14 June 2017. It spread with ferocious speed up one side of the 24-storey building before engulfing the whole block, leaving 120 flats incinerated. Damning reports read to the hearing, which will last for months, told of a staggering 30 blunders that resulted in the tragedy, including maintenance issues, fire response procedure and the recent refurbishment where flammable cladding was put up around the building.

DEVASTATED

The father of the fire’s youngest victim, Marcio Gomes, 38, an IT worker, paid the first tribute. His wife Andreia, was seven months pregnant when their son Logan was stillborn hours after they’d fled the inferno – which medics blamed on the poisonous cyanide she had breathed in. Marcio said, “I held my son in my arms, hoping it was all a bad dream, wishing, praying for any kind of miracle, that he would just open his eyes… that never happened.”

As a picture of his ultrasound scan was shown on a screen behind his devastated family, Mr Gomes described how “everything was ready” for his baby’s arrival, including a message painted on the nursery wall that read, “Twinkle twinkle little star, do you know how loved you are?” With Andreia sitting beside him, he said, “It felt like our hearts had broken. He was going to be my superstar.”

Later in the inquiry, Ahmed Elgwahry relived the torture of listening on a mobile phone to his mother Eslah Elgwahry, 64, and sister Mariem Elgwahry, 27, who lived on the top floor, as they took their last breaths. For an hour, he continued listening to the fire, hoping he’d hear someone rescuing them.

Recalling how he’d told his sister to stay on the phone as the tragedy unfolded, he said, “She started to mumble, banging the floor, and then, nothing. I presumed I’d lost my mum at the same time, but about 20 seconds later, she said her last words, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.’ That was the last time I heard her voice. Even though I wasn’t in the room, I felt as close as I could have been. We were all together right until their last breath. Now, I’m voicing my concerns for safer homes across the country.”

Fire investigation expert Eric Stewart says, “This was an unprecedented disaster with many contributing factors. Changes need to be made to building regulations, so we never see anything like this again.”