Tears of joy as survivors reunited with items

MORE than 200,000 personal items have been saved from the burnt remains of Grenfell Tower as part of a painstaking recovery operation.

Michael Lockwood, who was drafted in from Harrow Council to head the management of the site, said survivors shed tears of joy after being told they could return to the tower’s lower floors to salvage what was left of their possessions.

Kenyon International Emergency Services, a company involved in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena terror attack earlier this year, has been removing property elsewhere in the tower on the behalf of former residents who cannot yet return.

Mr Lockwood said: “I’ve spent a lot of time with survivors. One of the things they said to me was, ‘We want to go back into the tower. There are some very sentimental and precious items for us, whether it’s jewellery or photographs, and we only want to collect those’.

“We had 40 of the survivors, we stood in front of them and said, ‘You can go back into the building’, and every one of them was in tears of joy.

“And they said to me, ‘This is the first time we’ve ever been listened to’.”

More than 50 people – survivors and accompanying friends and relatives – have returned to the tower to recover possessions over the past six weeks.

Mr Lockwood added: “Most came out with big smiles on their faces, with a box of sentimental items they’d managed to get.

“You can’t underestimate that moment for them. Going into your home, seeing it for the last time, having that closure.

“To achieve that, we bent every rule possible. We didn’t break any rules, but we did something that was important to them, not what we thought was important.”

So far, around 30,000 personal belongings have been removed, catalogued, cleaned and returned to survivors. The remainder are being stored in a warehouse until families are able to take them back.

Mr Lockwood is hoping to enable some of the residents of the higher floors to return to their former homes once investigators have finished scouring the site.

With the criminal investigation expected to finish in March, attention is turning towards what will happen to the empty shell.

Mr Lockwood said there had been differing opinions over whether the tower should remain in view.

He said: “The obvious thing when I came in was ‘let’s cover the tower’. That’s what I heard from the local community. It’s upsetting, it’s painful.

“But a number of the bereaved and survivors did not want it covered because they didn’t want it to be forgotten.”