Grenfell fireman: I thought I’d put it out... then it rained fire
A FIREFIGHTER believed the Grenfell Tower blaze was out after he tackled flames in the flat where it began.
Charles Batterbee said he would “never get over” the horror of discovering fire had engulfed the outside.
He radioed colleagues to say “we had done our job” after dousing the fridge fire on the fourth floor, the Grenfell Inquiry heard yesterday. Then he noticed “out of the window, something was alight.” Mr Batterbee held on to a colleague who dangled out of the window to try to put out flames. “It just rained fire,” he said. By the time he got back on the ground flames were “jumping multiple floors”. Mr Batterbee added: “I will never get over that shock.” A further 156 private high-rise blocks have unsafe cladding, on top of the 141 already known, Housing Minister James Brokenshire admitted yesterday.