By Danielle Aumord

 

Closing submissions have been heard for the inquiry’s evidence, focusing on the failures of the fire brigade prior to the Grenfell fire (week commencing Monday 24 January 2022).

The Fire Officers Association called on the public inquiry to reconsider the findings on ‘stay put’ from its phase one report, within their closing statement of the firefighting module. FOA representatives argued that it was “never viable” to evacuate residents from Grenfell on 14 June 2017.

To give this context, the fire at the tower block started around 01:00 and by 01:33, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) were receiving calls from trapped residents.

Between 01:30 and 01:40, smoke began to enter the stairwell of the tower and 20 people escaped between 01:38 and 01:58. More than half of those still trapped at 01:58 lost their lives; 48 were rescued by fire fighters between 01:58 and 03:58. The fire continued to spread sideways on the exterior, and by 01:42 had reached the north side. It was only at 02:45 that advice to “stay put” by firefighters to residents still inside the building was abandoned in favour of general evacuation – however, only 36 more residents were able to escape after this change of plan.

Phase one of the inquiry said that “many more lives” would’ve been likely saved if the LFB had decided to evacuate the tower an hour and 20 minutes earlier rather than clinging onto its “stay out” until quarter to three in the morning.

At the inquiry we heard bereaved families and former Grenfell residents back the introduction of the so-called ‘Hillsborough Law’, which would mean that all public bodies, including the LFB, should be subject to a duty of candour. This means that public bodies should have a professional responsibility to admit when things are going wrong for the people in their care; in this context, it would refer to the people living in Grenfell at the time of the fatal fire.

The ‘Hillsborough Law’ was first proposed in 2017 following a review of the experiences of the families whose loved ones were crushed to death during a footage match at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, on 15 April 1989.

Such a law would place a legally-enforceable duty on public officials to be honest and to assist any public inquiries or legal investigations.

Leslie Thomas QC, who represents one group of bereaved and survivors, drew similarities between the aftermaths of Grenfell and Hillsborough, including a ‘complete lack of candour’ from the public bodies involved in both tragedies.

Grenfell’s bereaved and survivors have also called for a national body to be set up to oversee the implementation of recommendations of inquests and inquiries.

The public inquiry has by now heard numerous examples of how the fire brigade failed to implement recommendations made to it, even following the inquest into the fire at Lakanal House, where six people lost their lives in 2009.

‘Without a national oversight mechanism, coupled with a duty of candour, it’s not just a risk but likely reality that any change that’s recommended by you risks suffering the same fate as the recommendations from Lakanal. More lives will be lost. The 72 [who died at the blaze at Grenfell] will have died in vain,’ said Mr Thomas.

Danny Friedman QC, who represents a second group of bereaved, survivors and residents, identified six overarching failures of the LFB in the years leading up to the Grenfell fire.

These included a lack of training or guidance on how to support high-rise residential evacuations and inadequate on-the-ground radio communications.

He said that firefighters and managers were unaware of the risk of cladding fires despite these risks being known about within the LFB, and that premise risk assessments were carried out incompetently in a way that didn’t meet legal requirements. The incident command system used by the fire brigade was “profoundly insecure with anything out of the ordinary” and the control room was unable to cope with complex incidents, he added.

Mr Friedman told the public inquiry that these failures were ‘all foreseeable, all preventable and all in their own way causative of the extent of loss of life.’