Manager abandoned ‘stay-put’ policy for Grenfell
A FIRE control room manager on the night of the Grenfell Tower blaze became “increasingly uncomfortable” with the stay-put policy and abandoned it within 15 minutes of her arrival.
Joanne Smith, senior operations manager for the London Fire Brigade (LFB), was on call on June 14 last year when itr later emerged 72 people died in the tragedy.
After listening to operators’ calls and becoming aware of deteriorating conditions inside the tower, she made the “quick-time” decision that residents should be told to evacuate if able.
In a written statement to the public inquiry into the blaze, she said: “I had arrived at Stratford at approximately 2.15am – within 10 to 15 minutes the decision was made to change policy and that decision was mine.
“This would have been at approximately 2.30am-2.35am.”
The inquiry previously heard that the stay-put advice was officially abandoned at 2.47am – almost two hours after the first 999 call. Ms Smith said she told Adrian Fenton, the deputy assistant commissioner responsible for the Brigade co-ordination centre, they should consider changing the policy.
It was, to her knowledge, the first time such a decision had been made.
She went on: “The decision was made owing to a variety of factors – the duration of calls, the content of the calls and the resources available. These factors and my years of experience formed the basis of my rationale and coincided with the recommendations following the Lakanal fire in 2009 in which certain questions were asked by the CROs (control room operators) regarding smoke and fire levels.
The information that was fed back by the CROs from residents and the conditions they were in led me to believe that they had no way of waiting to be rescued.”