Why weren’t they told to get out?
This photograph, released by the Grenfell inquiry yesterday, was taken at 1.26am, exactly 27 minutes after fire crews first arrived on the scene. Although the flames had spread to the top of the building, the inquiry heard there was still an opportunity to evacuate residents. Yet the official order to stay put was not withdrawn until 2.47am, by which time it was too late for many victims GRENFELL TOWER victims had more than half an hour to escape the highrise block before the stairs filled with toxic smoke, but were told to stay put by the fire service, the official inquiry was told yesterday.
The failure of the London Fire Brigade (LFB) to evacuate the building immediately may have “made all the difference between life and death”.
An official report revealed that the controversial “stay-put” strategy had “substantially failed” by 1.26am when flames could be seen to have reached the top of the 23-storey tower block.
It said the building remained “tenable for escape” while the stairwell stayed smoke-free, which was until at least 1.30am. But it would take the fire service until 2.47am – 41 minutes after it had declared the disaster a “major incident” – to abandon the advice and instead encourage residents to evacuate.
The inferno on June 14 last year claimed the lives of 72 people, representing the single-greatest loss of life to a fire in a residential building in Britain since the war. Nobody who lived below the 11th floor died.
A report by Dr Barbara Lane, a leading fire engineer, questioned LFB’S continuation of the “stay-put” advice when it should have been clear that the blaze, which broke out in flat 16 on the fourth floor, had not been contained and was spreading rapidly up and across the block.
She uncovered serious safety breaches relating to the £10million re-
‘From 00.55 to 01.30 the stairs appear to have been free of smoke and therefore tenable for escape’
furbishment of the building that included the installation of flammable cladding and more than 100 “non-compliant” fire doors.
Dr Lane said there was “an early need for a total evacuation of Grenfell Tower”. Instead, the fire service, which first arrived at the scene at 12.59am, only withdrew the “stay-put” policy almost two hours after the first emergency call.
She suggested the “culture of noncompliance” on basic fire safety coupled with the “stay-put” guidance that exposed Grenfell victims to thick toxic smoke in the stairwell had led to “a disproportionately high loss of life”.
The inquiry was played a voice recording of a panicked call made by Bahailu Kebede, one of the occupants of flat 16, who told the 999 operator in a call at 12.54am: “Quick, quick, quick. It’s burning.”
But Dr Lane noted: “From 00.55am to 01.30am, the stairs appear to have been free of smoke and therefore tenable for escape.”
She went on: “The ‘stay-put’ strategy had substantially failed by 01.26am.
“At present, I am unclear about the basis for delaying the formal end of the strategy between 1.40am and 2.47am. I am particularly concerned by the delay from 2.06am, when a major incident was declared, to 2.47am.”
She concluded: “There was therefore an early need for a total evacuation of Grenfell Tower … I do not wish to imply this was an easy decision to make during the unfolding and complex events that occurred.”
Richard Millett QC, the lead counsel to the inquiry, said in his opening statement: “It may well be that the withdrawal of the formal ‘stay-put’ guidance at that stage was just that – mere formality in light of the number of occupants that had escaped safely before that time. On the other hand, it may be that the formal maintenance of that advice until 2.47am made all the difference between life and death.”
By 1.18am, 34 residents had escaped, whether by ignoring the advice or by being rescued by firefighters. Between 1.19am and 1.38am, a further 110 had fled. But evacuation rates then slowed, with 20 people escaping in the next 19 minutes to 1.58am. In the next two hours, a further 48 people got out.
Firefighters got no higher than the 20th floor, and Dr Lane said in her