One year on and the scars of Grenfell are still raw
It is the sheer desperation that Adel Chaoui remembers most from that terrible day – the hours of frantic searching when, like so many others, he pounded the streets, cycling between hospitals armed with nothing but descriptions of his cousin Farah, her husband Omar and three daughters Malak, Tazmin and baby Leena, who had last been seen on the 20th floor of Grenfell Tower.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph just hours after the fire broke out, Mr Chaoui was exhausted and anxious, but hopeful. He had received news from St Mary’s Hospital, where his brother had gone to continue the search; the elder girls had been found.
Mr Chaoui hoped their parents and baby sister would also soon be found. He could not have known then that his hopes would soon be dashed.
Malak Belkadi, 8, died from smoke inhalation later that day. By the end of that week, the bodies of Farah and Omar had been found in the stairwell between the 19th and 20th floors. Six-month-old Leena was found in her mother’s arms.
Yesterday, a year on from the tragedy that claimed 72 lives, more than 100 people, wearing green scarves and clutching white roses, faced the burnt-out tower that for many was once their home, during an emotional ceremony. First to lay a rose at the foot of the tower was Nicholas Burton, whose wife Maria Del Pilar Burton died in January, the last person to be named a victim of the fire. Outside St Helen’s Church a few streets away, 73 white doves were released in memory of the people who died and “one for the unknown”.
Mr Chaoui, a father-of-four, spoke of his determination to give little Tazmin, now a “wonderful, vibrant, happy” six year old, as normal a childhood as possible, saying he will do everything to get justice for her parents and sisters, “so that in 30 years’ time, she doesn’t have to”. He said: “She [Tamzin] is going to be a damaged child, we’re not going to avoid that,
‘I can fit five people into a shoebox but shall I symbolically have five coffins? – It was a hard, hard time’
but what we can do is to limit that damage as much as possible, to make it as normal an upbringing as possible, and smother her with love. She is being brought up with two courageous aunts, her mother’s sisters. There is a reason why she is a funny, happy, articulate child – that is because of them. But they are broken people. They’re strong for her, they’re wonderful for her, but they’re broken.”
Speaking yards away from the crowds flocking to pay their respects at the foot of the tower, where a memorial service was one of many held in the area to commemorate the anniversary, Mr Chaoui said he felt his family had been, to some extent, “the lucky ones”.
Unlike many, they had been able to say goodbye to their loved ones. “We had bodies that we were able to go and kiss and hug and say goodbye,” he said.
“They died of smoke inhalation, there was no burning. Their facial features were there. They were just covered in this black awful soot, this oil, I guess. But other families, they are the ones I felt for. There were some really tough conversations. People were asking: ‘I’ve got some remains that they could identify were my loved ones. I can fit five people into a shoebox but shall I symbolically have five coffins?’ It was a hard, hard time.”
Like many bereaved families and survivors, Mr Chaoui has thrown himself into the fight for justice.
It is only this week, while the inquiry takes a respectful pause, that the events of last summer have begun to truly sink in. “There has been so much activity that I almost feel numb with the lack of activity, because we’ve been so busy leading up to this,” he said.
Mr Chaoui wants the tower inquiry panel widened to include people with the skills and experience to examine the cultural and community reasons behind the disaster.
He headed a petition to have two people added to the panel. It was signed by 156,000 people and promoted by the musician Stormzy, who attended yesterday’s memorial service alongside fellow singer Adele.
Mr Chaoui also wants the inquiry moved closer to Grenfell, lamenting the decision to hold it away from where many survivors and bereaved families live. He said: “We’ve always said it should be here in West London. It takes an hour to get there. And those were the same rooms where I was given bad news. That was the original Friends and Families Assistance Centre. That’s where I was being told to meet the Red Cross, to meet the coroner, to meet the police, and that’s what I associate [the building] with – bad news.”
His focus, he says, is making sure that the tower is not torn down before the public inquiry is over. “I think there’s a strong fear that it will be out of sight and out of mind,” he said. “I’m making sure that a six-year-old girl isn’t campaigning in 30 years time, like the families from Hillsborough. I’m not going to allow that to happen.”
For now, he said, his priority is to spend time with his family, but also with the wider community who have come to mean so much to him. “They witnessed a tragedy,” he said.
“People from their community were torn from them. Even if you’re not bereaved, you may have seen someone jumping, or knocking on the windows.
“When you looked up and saw what you saw, it’s etched into your mind. It’s that much more difficult to erase.”
Ayear after the fire in Grenfell Tower killed 72 people, events were held in its shadow in west London yesterday to remember the victims. Across the city, meanwhile, residents of another high-rise block in Lewisham were recovering after they were evacuated following a fire from which mercifully everyone escaped. A sprinkler system that was not present in Grenfell suppressed the blaze. However, some residents say the fire alarms failed to operate and they were only alerted to the danger by neighbours.
The events at Grenfell were appalling and many who lost loved ones continue to mourn them. But the best way of commemorating them is to ensure that such a tragedy does not happen again. For understandable reasons, there has been a good deal of emoting and politics around Grenfell that risks displacing the pressing need to take the necessary action to change what might still be a threat to others.
There will always be fires. What matters is to ensure that, when they happen, they can be put out quickly and people can escape unharmed. After the Grenfell conflagration there was a sense that the blackened shell of the tower had somehow come to symbolise a polarised nation. The tragedy became politicised as emblematic of the privations of the poor living in the UK’S richest borough. The apparent failure of anyone at any level of government to act upon recommendations made over many years to stop something like this from happening tended to legitimise the “them and us” narrative being promoted by the Left.
Only now has the public inquiry started in order to establish what went wrong at Grenfell, even though to a great extent we already know. The fire spread rapidly because of the cladding and many residents perished because they were told to stay put when they should have fled. These failings should have been addressed already by removing cladding on other buildings and amending the evacuation guidance followed by the fire brigade.
After the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, the interim report from Lord Taylor’s inquiry was published within four months to propose instant measures to prevent a similar calamity, though the ban on standing at major stadiums was a later recommendation. It is not necessary to wait until the Grenfell inquiry reports to take the necessary steps to limit the chances of such a catastrophe happening again.