Please hurry up... I’m begging you
Grenfell 999 operator tells of harrowing call by trapped 12-year-old girl
A 999 operator told yesterday of the harrowing hour she spent trying to reassure a girl of 12 trapped on the top floor of Grenfell Tower as fire raged through the building.
Fire brigade operator Sarah Russell said she felt ‘completely helpless’ as Jessica Urbano Ramirez told of her terror and begged firemen to ‘hurry up’.
‘When people are pleading with you, saying [they] do not want to die and I cannot physically do anything to help them, it is very hard,’ she told the public inquiry into the tragedy.
Jessica was among the 72 residents who lost their lives as a result of the fire in the 24-storey block of flats in west London on June 14 last year.
She begged others trapped inside the top floor flat with her, ‘Don’t leave me’, and told the 999 call operator the flat had filled with smoke and that she was too frightened to look around.
She clung to her mobile phone as she buried her face in a pillow to try to out the toxic smoke which left her and the other stranded residents gasping for breath.
Jessica and six others who took refuge in the flat, including a 12-year-old boy Biruk and his mother Berkti Haftom, all died.
Firemen searched her family’s flat on the 20th floor and found it empty, not realising the terrified girl had climbed up three floors to escape the fire.
Excerpts from her final, panic-stricken 999 call were read to inquiry, in which Jessica called out for her mother before telling the call operator: ‘My whole house is on fire.’
She described seeing smoke coming up through the floor and told the operator: ‘There’s nowhere we can go... Can you hurry up please? I’m begging you.’
The London Fire Brigade operator tried to reassure the schoolgirl that firemen were trying to reach her, but admitted she did not actually know if they would be able to reach the top floor.
The flames spread with ferocious speed through flammable cladding panels on the tower block’s exterior, leaping 19 floors in 12 minutes.
Operator Miss Russell said her advice to Jessica that help was on its way was based on her training and previous expefilter rience of ‘what should happen’ in a tower block fire – when residents are normally told to ‘stay put’ and wait for rescue.
She described hearing Jessica’s breathing ‘getting a bit heavy’ and others around her coughing as they huddled together on a bedroom floor to try to stay under a thick layer of choking smoke.
Jessica passed on her advice to those around her, telling them to close windows, get low on the floor and put fabric over their mouths.
But towards the end of the call she exclaimed: ‘There’s a fire in here! Oh my God! I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe no more.’
Miss Russell continued to ask questions and offer reassurance but said she could only hear ‘rasping sounds, then nothing’.
She told the inquiry: ‘I was talking to a 12-year-old girl who was very scared.
‘All I could do was offer support, to keep asking questions in the hope that her situation might improve, tell her the fire engines were there, fighting the fire, and try and prevent panic.
‘I felt completely helpless. I can pass on all the information but I cannot actually do anything – that is very tough.’
She said that after the line went quiet, she hung on, reluctant to end the call.
‘I stayed on the line a little while longer with my hand hovered over the call termination button,’ she said.
‘I was torn as what best to do.’ Miss Russell said not long after the call ended, she became aware that the advice to Grenfell Tower residents had been changed from ‘stayput’ to try to get out.
Jessica was alone in her family’s 20th floor flat when the fire started as her mother was working a night shift and her father was at a friend’s flat on a lower floor and could not get back to his daughter.
Her family searched for her for weeks before police confirmed that her remains had been found on the top floor.
The family’s campaign to find her meant that her photograph became one of the enduring images of the tragedy.
In total more than 700 firemen and 140 fire engines were sent to Grenfell in the largest operation of its kind since the Blitz. The inquiry in central London, led by former Appeal Court judge Martin Moore-Bick, continues.
‘There’s nowhere we can go’
‘The girl was very scared’