My baby was so beautiful . . . like he was just sleeping
Heartbreak of father whose child was stillborn after fire catastrophe
A FATHER wept yesterday as he told how his baby son was stillborn just hours after his family escaped the Grenfell inferno.
Marcio Gomes helped his pregnant wife Andreia and two daughters to fight their way to safety from their home on the 21st floor.
But hours later, doctors told him the unborn child’s heart had stopped and they could not save him. Mr Gomes, 39, broke down as he told the Grenfell inquiry how he cradled the child’s lifeless body in his arms, praying his ‘superstar’ son would somehow open his eyes or cry out.
He was the first of the Grenfell families to give evidence about the devastating impact of the blaze, which killed 72 in the worst fire on British soil since the Second World War.
Families wept as they spoke of their own grief and as they listened to others speak of how their lives had been ripped apart by the tragedy last June.
In heartrending evidence, Mr Gomes showed an ultrasound image of his son in the womb followed by pictures of his wife smiling and laughing at her baby shower. He then showed photographs of the devastated couple holding their child’s body.
They had already decided to call him Logan and Logan Gomes has been formally recognised as the youngest victim to have been killed in the fire.
Mr Gomes told how his family escaped from the West London tower block at about 4am, around three hours after the fire began in a fourth-floor flat on June 14.
His wife and their two daughters, then aged ten and 12, had to be put into medically induced comas as they were treated for exposure to toxic smoke. Mr Gomes said doctors told him that night his baby had died and let him cradle Logan.
He said: ‘I held my son in my arms, hoping it was all a bad dream, wishing and praying for any kind of miracle, that he would just open his eyes, move, make a sound... He was so beautiful, so restful. He looked like he was just sleeping.’ In poignant detail, Mr Gomes told how his family had prepared a nursery for Logan in their flat, their home for ten years.
They painted the walls blue and wrote his name, with the words: ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star, do you know how loved you are?’ The family planned games and ‘adventures’ to enjoy after his birth, including a trip to Disneyland. Mr Gomes said his wife was ‘glowing with happiness’ during her pregnancy and was about to go on maternity leave from her job in a clothing shop before Logan’s due date in late August.
Instead the family was left planning a funeral and Mr Gomes, a Portuguese-born IT manager, said the last 11 months had been the ‘hardest battle’ of their lives.
His wife wiped tears from her face as he paid tribute to their ‘beautiful sleeping angel’ and said he would not have survived without her support. ‘Without her strength and courage I wouldn’t be here,’ he said.
The inquiry in West London opened with a 72-second silence to remember the dead and is expected to hear evidence from the families for two weeks.
nInsulation blamed for the rapid spread of the fire had never passed the required safety test, it was claimed last night.
Manufacturers used extra fire retardant when it qualified for a safety certificate but not in the version used in the tower’s £9million revamp in 2016, BBC1 programme Panorama alleged.
Comment – Page 18