Training at Grenfell axed days before fire

A GRENFELL Tower firefighter training exercise was cancelled days before the blaze, the inquiry heard yesterday.

Dean Ricketts, a watch manager at North Kensington fire station, carried out a familiarisation visit to Grenfell Tower in late March 2017.

The “complexities of the basement” prompted him to suggest the high-rise as a suitable venue for a training exercise, planned for June 8, less than a week before the deadly fire.

However, the drill was shelved when it emerged it clashed with another exercise at Wormwood Scrubs prison.

Asked why the prison exercise took precedence over the high-rise operation, Mr Ricketts replied: “You will have to ask the group manager who cancelled the exercise.”

The aborted training exercise was prompted by a familiarisation visit carried out on March 27 by Mr Ricketts and a north Kensington fire crew.

The aim was to gather and check basic information and record it on the brigade’s operational risk database (ORD) for a tactical plan to be drawn up.

A large number of residents leaving and entering the building at the time of the visit meant the crew was unable to test the controls of the firemen’s lifts within the building, he said.

He told the inquiry he had been focusing on the basement because it did not seem to have been picked up on previous visits. He also said he didn’t find plans for the building.

Nicholas Davis, the station manager, was asked by counsel to the inquiry Andrew Kinnier QC if he could have done more to chase down plans.

Mr Kinnier asked: “Given the importance you’ve attached to plans and given their omission you’ve identified as a deficiency, could you have done more to have chased down those plans at the time given their importance to the tactical plan and other matters?”

He replied: “In hindsight, yeah, I think, if I was being brutal. For context, the workload for two stations is quite phenomenal.

“Bearing in mind I knew Grenfell, because I visited myself within my first month of attending, so I was aware of Grenfell. I just didn’t have capacity.

“If I put two and two together then I probably would’ve requested that. Unfortunately, I just didn’t.”