‘Stay put’ fire chief admits failures at Grenfell

THE firefighter in charge of implementing the “stay put” policy at Grenfell Tower has admitted that he was “out of his comfort zone” and making decisions he had never made before.

Michael Dowden, the incident commander who was in control of the response to the inferno for the first hour, admitted that he was “uncomfortable” and had received no training on how to evacuate if the policy failed.

Despite requirements on commanders to continually reassess the situation, he did not order an evacuation or change the advice to trapped residents calling 999. Families have blamed the stay put advice for the deaths of their loved ones and an expert report has concluded that it had “substantially failed” by 1.26am, when flames reached the top of the 23-storey tower block and the stairwells had filled with smoke.

The policy was not abandoned until 2.47am – 50 minutes after Mr Dowden handed over control.

The fire officer admitted a litany of failures in the training he had received to deal with tall building fires and in the inspection of Grenfell Tower itself by his team during the refurbishment.

He had visited the block in February 2016 but did not identify any issues with the sprinkler system, the single staircase or the fact that a dry rising main was installed for firefighters to pump water, despite such a system not being allowed on a building of that height.

During the visit the watch crew did not inspect the cladding. Mr Dowden added: “If I knew what I know now that is something that I would have looked at.”

After a gruelling day of questioning he felt “unable to continue” and left the witness box early.

The Grenfell Tower inquiry was told that, as North Kensington watch manager, Mr Dowden was with one of the first crews to arrive at 12.59am, five minutes after the initial 999 call. When the fire spread into the building façade he began to feel “uncomfortable” and said that it was different to others he had attended during his 15 years of service.

In a written statement, he said: “After about 20 minutes, I could see that something had failed, to make the fire react as it did. When I saw Grenfell Tower behaving like

this, I was quickly outside my comfort zone, and was trying to make decisions that I have not made before. Although I have previous experience in high rise fire fighting, I have never seen a fire behave in this way. It was totally unprecedented.”

He said that in June 2017 he would not have been able to identify a cladding fire and, despite warnings from his own brigade, was unaware of the risks that it posed, adding: “I wasn’t aware that a combustible façade would be put on the exterior of buildings.”

The fire officer also conceded that he was unfamiliar with key training requirements expected of an incident commander and did not know of key guidance documents on evacuation.

He also “could not recall” receiving any training on how to re-evaluate the advice given during 999 fire calls from trapped residents or how to alert them if the stay put policy changed.

Mr Dowden also admitted he had not learnt the lessons of previous cladding fires, including guidance from the London Fire Brigade in July 2016.

In the year before Grenfell he had attended two earlier fires in the area, at Trellick Tower and Shepherd’s Court, both of which involved cladding.

The LFB had written to councils warning them they needed to be aware of the dangers after the blaze at Shepherd’s Court in August 2016, but Mr Dowden agreed that though he had read about these warnings in the local paper his “knowledge was as good as a person in the street” and he had not had any education or training on the issues identified.

Mr Dowden will continue his evidence today, when it is expected he will discuss the night of the fire in detail.