Grenfell: Why are millions still having to live in fear?
On the night of the terrifying Grenfell Tower blaze, Sawsan Choucair, 45, was staying with a friend. It was a turn of events that would save her life – but tragically she lost her mum, sister, brother-in-law and three nieces who were trapped in the tower block. And the recent fire in east London brought those traumatic memories flooding back.
HISTORY REPEATING
Sawsan tells Closer, “I felt sick when I saw footage of fire blazing through another tower block. I could barely believe what I was seeing – I was so terrified that history would repeat itself.
“It’s horrifying that four years on, people are still living in fear in buildings that are so dangerous. It feels as though nothing has changed and no lessons have been learned.”
Sawsan lived with her mother Sirria, 61, in a flat on the 22nd floor of Grenfell. Her sister, Nadia, 33, brother-in-law Bassem, 40, and three nieces, Miema, 13, Fatima, 11 and three-year-old Zainab lived just across the hallway.
Sawsan recalls, “Our doors were always open and we spent so much time together, we were such a close family. Now I have nothing to even remember them by, it was all destroyed.”
On the night of the fire on 14 June 2017, a close friend who lived in the tower rang Sawsan to tell her the shocking news.
Sawsan raced home at 3am, desperately trying to ring her family and managed to get through to her sister. She says, “I couldn’t hear what she was saying, I screamed, telling them all to get out. I couldn’t get close to the building as I was held back. The heat was unbearable and there was so much smoke. I remember watching the fire blazing out of control and praying for a miracle.”
Tragically all six perished in the fire and, since then, Sawsan has heard agonising recordings of their last conversations with
the emergency services, hearing her beloved nieces crying and them being comforted by either her mum or sister. There are also painful last photographs of her sister taken by news photographers, waving a handkerchief from her window, desperately signalling for help.
Since the fire, Sawsan has struggled. She takes antidepressants, struggles to sleep and had to leave her job in a bakery. She’s now studying hair and beauty at college.
RIPPED APART
She says, “I sometimes dream about them, it feels so vivid as if they’re back here with me.
“I’ve been ripped apart and I feel that I’m nothing but an empty shell. And it’s made worse as it feels as though no one is learning from what happened that night, no one is making sure that no other family goes through the same agony. Instead there’s nothing but delays and people left living in death traps and tower blocks.”