Let inferno victims occupy empty homes, says Corbyn
The Grenfell blaze was firefighter April Cachia’s first job. She recalls the horror and the heroism
FAMILIES made homeless by the Grenfell Tower fire should be free to occupy any empty properties they like across London’s wealthiest borough, Jeremy Corbyn appeared to suggest yesterday.
The Labour leader has said ministers must do more to find homes for the families who lost everything in the devastating blaze.
Last week he said that vacant properties in the borough should be requisitioned for those made homeless by the fire. Yesterday, he went further by appearing to suggest that people should be allowed simply to occupy vacant flats and houses wherever they could find them across the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Mr Corbyn, who has won praise for his response to the disaster, was last night accused of going too far and using the event to further his own political agenda.
In a television interview yesterday, he said: “There are a large number of deliberately kept vacant flats and properties all over London – it’s called land banking. People with a lot of money buy a house, buy a flat, keep it empty.”
Asked by ITV interviewer Robert Peston if he would “seize it forever, or just take it for as long as they’re needed”, he replied: “Occupy, compulsory purchase it, requisition it, there’s a lot of things you can do.”
The term “occupy” has links to the Left-wing Occupy movement whose members camped in a park near Wall Street, New York City, protesting against corporate greed in 2011. The movement subsequently spread around the world, including an encampment set up in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London.
Last night one senior Government minister told The Daily Telegraph: “They are on the cusp of encouraging insurrection and hijacking a truly awful event.”
It comes amid fears that Corbyn supporters are planning to capitalise on Theresa May’s vulnerable position and launch civil unrest in a bid to force her from power.
Thousands of Left-wing militants are expected to descend on Parliament on Wednesday to disrupt the Queen’s Speech. Organisers of the so-called Day of Rage have urged Grenfell victims to join them in the march, claiming the demonstration could “bring down the Government”.
Meanwhile, the devastating extent of the damage inside the burnt-out Grenfell Tower flats was revealed last night in images released by the police.
Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor, said the Grenfell Tower disaster was a “preventable accident” caused by “years of neglect” by the local council and successive governments. After attending a
JUST five days into the job, 26-year-old April Cachia arrived for her night shift at Shoreditch fire station.
Hours after arriving –and having never before battled a fire – she found herself facing one of the most devastating infernos in British history.
Miss Cachia, who helped more than 20 residents of the high-rise block escape, has told The Daily Telegraph of the harrowing scenes that awaited her at Grenfell Tower, west London.
“The smell of smoke, the sound of crackling, the sound of debris hitting the ground, children screaming, people handing you their phones to speak to their loved ones – they’re the things you won’t ever forget,” said Miss Cachia, who had dreamed of being a firefighter since she was a child.
From the moment she heard a woman’s voice ringing through the fire station just after 2am saying “mobilise! mobilise!” Miss Cachia said she knew it was going to be a big job.
Miss Cachia, who was still doing her training course as recently as last month, said: “Our guvnor explained to us that it was a 40-pump fire, which means 40 fire engines need to be at the scene.”
“That’s such a rare occurrence that we kind of all just looked at each other. I didn’t have anything to compare it to – this was the first proper job really where I have seen actual flames”.
Speaking from her home in Bethnal Green, east London, where she lives with her mother Vivien, a retired council worker, and her older brother Damian, Miss Cachia said she could see the block was “completely engulfed in flames” as her crew approached it.
“Along the way I’ve got my crew around me and they know I’m five days into the job,” she said.
“They explained that they’ve never seen anything like this, and we should stick together. [They said] make sure that you just keep your wits about you, be slow and steady, take your time, you know what you’ve got to do, don’t get carried away, don’t try to run in and do crazy things.”
Miss Cachia described the chaotic scene they were greeted with at the 24-storey Grenfell Tower.
“There were lots of people screaming in the streets that their family are inside, that they can’t find them, that people are missing, they want help,” she said.
“You try and block out as much of your emotion as you can so you can do the best job that you can. It was absolute chaos. I think at this point the police were still trying to get the streets under control.” Miss Cachia’s crew were told that the stairwell was too narrow for more firefighters to come in wearing the full breathing apparatus suits, so they were given the option of helping survivors outside the building, or going inside with just eye gear to help residents flee to safety.
“My partner Paul and I just looked at each other and said ‘shall we just get in there?’” she recalled. “At this point there are loads of people coming out so you’ve got hope and you’re like, yes we are saving people. And then slowly as time goes on the numbers stop coming, it gets quieter and quieter.”
Miss Cachia described how at first, she was helping residents flee down the stairs every few minutes or every 30 seconds– and then there was a period where no one came down at all. “It would have been about 45 minutes, and that seemed like forever,” she said.
But after fearing that all the remaining residents had perished in the flames, suddenly a family of four appeared on the stairwell.
“It had been so long since we had heard from anybody, it was unbelievable that this family just came out,” she said. “You could tell they had been up there fighting for their life. I had never been happier to see a bunch of four people walking out with their heads covered in towels, it was the best feeling. I just thought thank the lord, that’s one more flat that we can just cross off.”
Miss Cachia, who had just completed her 11-week training course, said she was in the Grenfell Tower for an “awfully long time”.
“We started helping people on the third floor, but we ended up on the tenth floor,” she said. “You want to get to them, so you end up going higher and higher.
“People are saying ‘I know my brother, my sister, my aunt are still in there’. You are so blinded by how serious it is, that you just get on with it and do the best you can. I’ve never seen so many people work so hard in all my life.”
Miss Cachia told of another woman who, while she was still inside the smoke-filled building, stopped to raise the alarm about her blind neighbour who was alone and trapped in his flat.
“That woman was so courageous, she had been choking and crying and screaming but stopped and shook me to tell me,” Miss Cachia said.
“She just really cared for him – that unity of the neighbours in that block, you could tell they were such a close community.” Miss Cachia said she sent
out a priority message about the blind man, and later heard that he had been saved.
She spoke of the bravery of her colleagues, who took off their helmets to shield babies from the smoke.
“You’ve got babies being brought out and firefighters, putting their helmets on the children so that they can be safe.
“If they didn’t have a spare one they would have taken theirs off and put it on the child,” she said.
Miss Cachia said she is thinking of all the families and praying for them. “This hasn’t put me off the job at all, if anything it has made me hungrier to carry on,” she said.