But operator tells girl, 12, on 20th floor firefighters are ‘below you’
A GIRL of 12 was told firefighters were on their way to rescue her from Grenfell Tower as she begged the 999 operator: “Please can you hurry up?”
Jessica Urbano Ramirez was one of the 72 people who died as a result of the blaze on June 14 last year.
She fled her flat on the 20th floor before taking refuge along with others higher up the 24-storey tower block in west London.
Details of her 999 call to London Fire Brigade, which lasted almost an hour, were revealed in a 70-page transcript at a public inquiry in central London yesterday.
Complaining of smoke and fire below, Jessica repeatedly asked control room officer Sarah Russell: “Please can you hurry up?”
At one point, Russell, who had been in the job for nine months by the time of the fire, said: “They are hurrying up. Is there another room you can go into?”
Jessica replied: “No, can you hurry up please? I’m begging you.” Russell told her: “They’re right below you. But you need to keep yourself safe.”
Giving evidence, the officer admitted she had no information that firefighters were on their way.
The inquiry’s counsel, Richard BY HENRY VAUGHAN Millett QC, asked if she had lulled Jessica “into a false sense of security”.
Russell said: “It was more about comforting her and trying to get her through that situation and get the information ( from her).”
Russell said she’d had only one day of fire survival guidance training more than eight months earlier. In a written statement she said: “After about an hour, I could not get any more response – only rasping sounds, then nothing.”
“I was torn as what best to do. I ended the call when the line fell silent.”
The information that Jessica had fled to a higher floor was not passed to fire crews, who searched her flat but didn’t find her.
Russell said that, not long after the call ended, she became aware the advice to callers had been changed from “stay put” to attempt to evacuate.
A transcript of another call showed she was still offering a “choice” after the change of advice.
She told the inquiry: “I was making them aware that they needed to leave and how, but if you send them out into the fire and smoke it could potentially be sending them out to death.
“If they waited, they may have been rescued.” The inquiry continues.