Grenfell Tower safety chief tried to overturn advice to ‘stay-put’

A GRENFELL fire safety chief tried to get the tower evacuated by abandoning the “stay-put” policy only to be ignored by his superiors, an inquiry has heard.

Daniel Egan, a station manager in regulatory fire safety, arrived shortly before 2am on June 14 2017 and was tasked with co-ordinating 999 call information.

He told the inquiry into the disaster yesterday that his “initial thoughts were that we needed to get people out of that building”, but, hours on, found the lack of progress “very frustrating”.

Mr Egan told the inquiry into the blaze that he had told three separate managers that the building needed to be evacuated immediately, but his requests fell on deaf ears.

The stay-put advice was abandoned at 2.47am, nearly two hours after the fire began and almost an hour after Mr Egan arrived.

Mr Egan, who joined the London Fire Brigade in 1992, described in a written statement how he arrived to see hellish scenes on June 14 and then heard a “loud thud” near the tower.

He said he knew the stay-put advice to residents in the block was unsafe because the whole building was “alight”, but he added that “people can

‘We needed to flood the building with firefighters. I passed my thoughts up the chain of command’

be frightened to step outside policy”. Along with Pete Wolfenden, the station manager, he told group manager Tom Goodall, the fire survival lead, that he thought the strategy should be ditched, his statement said.

Mr Egan said the same to Richard Welch – then incident commander – and was told: “We are doing it.” But he was informed by others that they “weren’t flooding the tower with firefighters”.

The fire chief began overruling stayput advice when talking to onlookers who had loved ones in the tower. He said: “My advice to them was, if they are on the phone to the people, [tell them] to get out of the building. I know that it was against what they should have been doing or what they were being told to do, but in that situation I told them to get out. I was doing what I felt was right.”

He said: “My view was we should commit crews to every floor – we needed to flood the building with firefighters. I passed my thoughts up the chain of command...it was very frustrating – we weren’t seeing the people coming down from the tower. I felt I was failing but I knew there was nothing else I could do.”

The hearing was interrupted at lunchtime yesterday by a fire alarm at the Holborn Bars centre, triggering an evacuation. A fire warden later confirmed it was a false alarm.