Fire chiefs’ failures led to more Grenfell deaths, official report reveals
SYSTEMIC failures by the London Fire Brigade caused a greater number of deaths in the Grenfell Tower inferno, a damning official report into the tragedy concluded.
The report found that fire chiefs’ slavish adherence to the controversial ‘stay put’ policy prevented residents from escaping.
It is thought that up to 55 of the 72 people who died were told to stay in flats for almost two hours after the first 999 call, despite flames spreading with terrifying speed through flammable cladding.
Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the retired judge who chaired the public inquiry, found that a full evacuation should have been implemented at least an hour before the order was given.
The blaze broke out at 12.54am and was out of control within minutes. But the ‘stay put’ strategy – designed for tower block fires where the blaze is contained to a single flat – was only rescinded at 2.47am. Sir Martin states in his report: ‘That decision could and should have been made between 1.30am and 1.50am and would be likely to have resulted in fewer fatalities. The best part of an hour was lost before Assistant Commissioner (Andy) Roe revoked the “stay put” advice.’
Sir Martin said there were ‘a number of serious shortcomings in the response of the LFB’ and found that these were ‘for the most part systemic in nature’. He added: ‘ The “stay put” concept had become an article of faith within the LFB so powerful that to depart from it was to all intents and purposes unthinkable.’
The report, which was leaked to The Daily Telegraph last night, will fuel demands for the fire brigade to be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter. Fire chiefs have already been interviewed under caution by police over possible breaches of health and safety regulations.
In his 1,000-page report, Sir Martin makes 46 recommendations following a two-year investigation into how the fire in the west London tower block unfolded on June 14, 2017. He says the ‘principal reason’ why the flames shot up the 24-storey high-rise at such speed was the combustible aluminium cladding used in the refurbishment of the tower.
The report also concludes the fire started as the result of an ‘electrical fault in a large fridge-freezer’ in a fourth-floor flat. That finding is likely to bolster a multi-millionpound lawsuit being brought in the US against the corporation Whirlpool, manufacturers of the Hotpoint model that caught fire.
But Sir Martin reserves his most damning criticism for the fire service. He praises the heroics and bravery of individual firefighters but says a relatively junior commander, Michael Dowden, was left in charge for far too long as the tragedy unfolded.
The report also accuses LFB commissioner Dany Cotton of ‘remarkable insensitivity’ after she gave testimony insisting she would have done nothing differently. Survivors are angry that Miss Cotton, Britain’s most senior firefighter, is being allowed to retire next year at the age of 50 on a full pension estimated to be worth as much as £2 million. In her evidence to the inquiry in September last year, Miss Cotton said: ‘I wouldn’t change anything we did on the night.’
She also claimed no training could have prepared the fire crews, saying: ‘I wouldn’t develop a training package for a space shuttle to land in front of the Shard.’
Sir Martin describes the lack of training at the fire services as an ‘institutional’ failure.
He concludes: ‘Quite apart from its remarkable insensitivity to the families of the deceased and to those who escaped from their burning homes with their lives, the commissioner’s evidence that she would not change anything about the response of the LFB on the night, even with the benefit of hindsight, only serves to demonstrate that the LFB is an institution at risk of not learning the lessons of the Grenfell Tower fire.’
He also says Miss Cotton’s evidence ‘betrayed an unwillingness to confront the fact that by 2017 the LFB knew (even if she personally did not) that there was a more than negligible risk of a serious fire in a high-rise building with a cladding system.’
Nabil Choucair, who lost six members of his family in the blaze, said: ‘Dany Cotton is a disgrace to say she would not change anything. She should in no way be given her pension until she is 65.’
The report will be officially published tomorrow morning. Part two of the inquiry – examining the circumstances and causes of the disaster – begins in January.
‘Institutional failure’