Dundee expert at Grenfell inquiry

FIREFIGHTERS did not enter the kitchen where the Grenfell Tower inferno began until five minutes after it had spread through a window, an inquiry has heard.

Thermal imaging footage was shown to the hearing as part of a presentation by Professor Niamh Nic Daeid, the director of the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science at Dundee University, who was explaining the origins of the fire.

The footage showed the moment two members of the North Kensington crew smashed down the door to Flat 16 on June 14. They reached the fourth-floor apartment at 1.07am, roughly 13 minutes after the occupant rang 999.

He’d been sleeping in his living room when he was awoken by his fire alarm and found smoke coming from behind his fridge-freezer. Two others had been asleep in the flat and all three escaped.

The emergency crew could be seen scrabbling through a smoke-clogged hallway for several minutes, checking both bedrooms and the living room before entering the kitchen at 1.14am.

Talking over the footage, the professor said: “Here is where the firefighters enter the kitchen for the first time – the yellow glow is the fire that is down at the window ledge.

“The firefighters attempted to put water on the fire. They close the door and they open the door again to see the fire is still present.”

They re-entered the kitchen at 1.20am and extinguished the fire that was “in or around the fridge-freezer”.

It is at this stage in the footage – around 1.21am – that it becomes clear the scale of the problem had widened.

Professor Nic Daeid said: “The camera now swings round and looks out of the window of the flat and you can see aspects of the cladding that are coming down outside of the window.”

Camera footage shot from outside the building at the same time captured the advance of the blaze from the kitchen window up the flammable cladding system.

The expert continued: “The first embers can be seen falling from the kitchen window of Flat 16 at 1.08am.”

The blaze eventually engulfed the 24-storey block, killing scores who became trapped inside.

Professor Nic Daeid said it was possible to say the fire had started in the south-east corner of the kitchen, in or around the fridge-freezer.

But, she added, further tests were required to determine the precise cause.

The inquiry continues.

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Professor Niamh Nic Daeid.