THE FAMILIES WHO HAVE NO HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Newsnight’s special correspondent Katie Razzall presented the moving documentary ‘ Inside The 21st Floor Of Grenfell Tower’. Here, she revisits one woman who lost everything when the 24-storey London block turned into a towering inferno on 14 June
when i met 38-year-old clothes shop supervisor Andreia Perestrelo, a month after her family’s escape from the 21st floor of Grenfell Tower, she and her husband Marcio Gomes told me they’d loved living there. Six months on, she says, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go into a tower again in my life.’ But for 10 happy years, Grenfell was a community and they’d made a beautiful home in their flat with fabulous views across London. In the aftermath of the fire, Grenfell became a symbol of injustice and poverty, so it was interesting to hear a different perspective.
As a correspondent for Newsnight, I’d reported on the disaster from the very first horrifying morning. As the tower continued to burn, I spent that day with a man awaiting news of his relatives, the El Wahabis, who lived on the same floor as Andreia and Marcio. We later discovered this family – a father, mother, daughter and two sons, one just eight years old – had died trapped inside their flat, towels rolled up against a bedroom door to try to block the smoke.
I thought of them often in the weeks after. It seemed, in the important discussions about safety, and the horror over how the 71 people perished (a number contested by residents, including Andreia, who think it’s much higher), individual lives lost the detail they deserved. Which is why Newsnight decided to concentrate on one floor – the 21st – and find out not just what happened, but also what Grenfell was like to live in.
Andreia told me: ‘I loved living there. There were different people, different cultures. Everyone got along.’ Nine people survived from her floor, six others died. These were neighbours whose children were in and out of each other’s flats or playing together in the hallway; people who shared food at Christmas, or when one of them had run out of an ingredient; who chatted often. Now Andreia tells me: ‘ We were close. It’s still hard to accept they’re not here.’
Andreia, who was seven months pregnant, and Marcio escaped with their daughters, Luana, 12, and Megan, then 10, as well as two other neighbours – beauty salon owner Helen Gebremeskel and her 12-year-old daughter, Lulya. For two hours, they’d been told by the emergency services to stay put, but when Andreia and Marcio’s flat – in which they were all sheltering – caught fire, they had to run. ‘It was horrible,’ Andreia told me as she described their flight at 3.30am in the dark through choking smoke. ‘People were making noises as we tripped on them on the staircase. I grabbed my daughter, Megan. She wanted to stop, but I knew if she did, I’d stop too.’ Luana and her friend Lulya passed out on the staircase behind. By luck, while Marcio searched for them, firefighters arrived to help. The family was reunited in an ambulance.
Andreia says, ‘Luck doesn’t cover it. How can we be alive? I believe there was someone up there looking out for us – my mum, my grandparents. I think they guided us out.
‘I have a lot of flashbacks. I have to start thinking of something else or I have a panic attack. We have to be strong for the girls. I can’t let the thoughts get to me. It’s not the fire I think about. I only saw that when we got out of the building. It’s the coming down the stairs, tripping on bodies, the smoke, the feeling I was going to pass out and die.’
As Andreia and their daughters lay in induced comas in hospital, her baby son, Logan, was stillborn – the youngest victim of the fire. ‘It’s a lot to take in,’ she says. ‘ The major part of coming to terms with it is the loss of Logan. I think of him all the time. Although he didn’t die inside the building, it was because of the smoke inhalation I experienced, the cyanide chemicals. We go to his grave a lot. At the moment it’s just earth. We have to wait a year for a headstone.
‘ We want justice. They killed my son, that’s how I see it. “They” are the borough of Kensington and Chelsea – not everyone, but the ones who made the wrong decisions, the ones who were greedy. I hope they are made to pay in some way for what they’ve done. Not just for us and our loss, but for all the people who aren’t here with us now.’
Six months on, the family is still living in a hotel. ‘It’s been really hard. I’ve had a few bad breakdowns. So have the girls. The thought of Christmas in the hotel room is very upsetting for them.’ As for Grenfell, the place where they loved living for so long, Andreia says, ‘I hope, in the future, where the tower is can become some sort of garden where we can sit and remember that this was a family place where a lot of people lived happily.’
i loved living there. there were different People, different cultures. everyone got along