BRENTSIDE HIGH SCHOOL
GRENFELL survivors and relatives of those who died in the blaze are facing more trauma dealing with the formal publication of the report into the first phase of the public inquiry, which was released on October 30.
The 80-page document makes tough reading, highlighting how combustible cladding led to the blaze ripping through the tower, and how the policy of asking residents to stay in their homes backfired so badly on the night.
The hard-hitting findings of the inquiry, which heavily criticise fire, council and tenant management organisation bosses for being illprepared to deal with the disaster, were welcomed today by Miguel Alves who escaped from his home on the 13th floor of Grenfell.
He said: “It is important that the judge has been very strong in it.
“It’s most important that the stayput policy changes. Most of the safety changes need to be done very soon, because they could save lives in the future.”
The day after the disaster, his daughter Ines sat her GCSEs and is now on course to take her A levels, but Mr Alves said the fire has had a “huge” impact on his family.
He added: “The fire brigade should introduce an evacuation policy nationally. It’s important that firefighters should be able to help with evacuation in high-rise buildings. The stay-put policy killed them.”
Ahmed Chellat lost family members from the Wahabi family in the fire – Abdelaziz, Fouzia, Yassin, Hourhouda and Mehdi.
He said: “It’s the end of two years waiting. It’s been a psychological battle.”
He was angry about the combustible cladding which was put on the tower, turning it into a death trap.
“They never considered the people who were living there. They never considered the complaints of residents raising issues of safety,” he said.
Abbas Daddou, the chairman of Lancaster West Residents’ Association, said: “From early on it was obvious that the stay-put policy was wrong.”
The residents’ association said it was happy that “the council and their arms-length management of the TMO [tenant management organisation] have come under the kind of scrutiny they should have done at the start” and referred to “shoddy maintenance, fire doors that didn’t work and no plans of the building or any idea who lived in it”.
The association said it hoped the next stage of the inquiry will hold “all of the people involved in this disaster, RBKC council, the disgraced TMO, the disastrous refurbishment of the tower with its combustible cladding and the manufacturers of it to account, both in the inquiry and the subsequent police investigation”.
Pat Mason, leader of the Labour opposition on the council, said the community was exhausted by the past two-and-a-half years.
Campaign group Justice 4 Grenfell’s Yvette Williams also called for swift action to improve fire safety but said it could have been done sooner.
Hamid Ali Jafari, whose father Yawar died at Grenfell, said the publication of the findings of phase one of the public inquiry has been very difficult and felt it would be hard to read what the report said about his 82-year-old father’s fate in the tower and that of his neighbours in the 24-storey building.
Hamid, 36, said: “I have not found a similar person to him. I have not seen any person say a bad thing about him.”
He questioned what justice would mean for him and his family.
He said: “Even if (someone) goes to prison, what will it do for me? My dad will not come back. Even if (someone) goes to prison they have got my family. My life goes round and round about justice.”
However, he wants to see change to prevent such a disaster happening again and affecting another community.
He said he thought the fire service “should work together with the government” to prevent materials such as combustible cladding being used on buildings and also called for more training as the cladding on Grenfell made it difficult for the emergency services to know what to do to tackle it.