This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/04/grenfell-tower-firefighter-inquiry

The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Grenfell firefighter likens scenes of ‘carnage’ to 9/11 Grenfell firefighter prepared to die when his oxygen almost ran out
(about 4 hours later)
One of the first firefighters to attend the Grenfell Tower blaze has described scenes of “absolute carnage” as he ferried the dead and injured during the incident, which he likened to 9/11. A firefighter at Grenfell Tower prepared to die when his oxygen almost ran out during the attempted rescue of a 12-year old girl because the fire lift failed, the public inquiry has heard.
John O’Hanlon, a firefighter for 16 years, was part of the second crew into flat 16, where the fire began in a fridge freezer, and described how easy it was to put it out internally with “just a dribble of water”. But as he trained his hose on the burning window surround to which the fire had spread, his efforts had no effect and he became worried. Christopher Secrett, a crew manager at North Kensington fire station, placed himself in a corner of the smoke-logged stairs, so his body wouldn’t be in the way if he died, and tried to text his mother, the inquiry heard.
“We had the jet fully open and the hose was set on 240-270 litres a minute … and it was doing absolutely nothing at all,” O’Hanlon told the inquiry into the disaster. The outside of the building was “roaring” like a burning gas main, he said. Secrett described how he was responding to a call for help for Jessica Urbano Ramirez on the 20th floor and had climbed with colleagues through thick smoke and extreme heat up 14 storeys of the building. They should have been able to take control of the lift but that failed and only carried them six storeys. If it had worked his air would not have run out and this was “one of the major faults” at Grenfell, he said. Radio communications between firefighters in the tower also failed, he said.
Describing being at the base of the tower, O'Hanlon said: "I would describe it as, when you hear and watch the 9/11 videos where they heard stuff falling on top of them. It was mentioned, I don't know by whom, about whether the building structure was safe." “I knew we were in trouble,” he told the inquiry. “It was just too hot and I was running out of air.” Urbano was found dead on the 23rd floor.
The fire on 14 June 2017 was quickly brought under control in the fourth floor flat, but it spread rapidly through the uPVC window and into the combustible cladding materials, rising 19 storeys in just 12 minutes. Seventy-two people died. Secrett’s testimony came on a day when the horror of what faced the firefighters in the early morning of 14 June 2017 became clearer than ever.
“On the right hand side [of the window], that’s where it was roaring and whipping and trying to come back into the flat,” he said, describing how he hung out of the window to douse the exterior. They described bodies falling from the building, including one that hit a firefighter and another whose leg came away from his hip when firefighters tried to move him. Firefighter John O’Hanlon described the scene as “absolute carnage” and like a war zone, likening it to 9/11.
“The water didn’t have any effect on it. So I thought there may have been a gas pipe on the outside or something or it was next door … It just didn’t add up,” he said. “We noticed somebody had jumped and landed on the playground,” O’Hanlon said. “I had seen a blur and heard a thud. It was going so fast I knew it wasn’t a piece of debris. He landed around 10 metres from me.”
“I remember looking out of the window and seeing little sparks coming down. They were falling through the air, they were fizzing … You could hear it and see the little sparks coming off, little drops. It is stuff that I had never seen before.” Secrett said he saw this same man lying in a garage where he had been put. His separated leg was next to him where he lay in a pool of blood.
When O’Hanlon’s air in his breathing apparatus ran low, he left the building to be replaced by another crew. “I remember one casualty I had was a young girl, she was roughly the size of a two- or three-year-old,” said O’Hanlon. “She looked to be of Somali descent. I believe she may have been dead. I laid her down and her eyes were rolled to the back of her head. That face will always stay with me.”
“We looked up at the building, looked at each other and just said: ‘Oh shit!’,” he said. “Looking to my left, it looked like that whole side of the building, where the window was, was alight … I’ve never seen anything like it.” O’Hanlon told the inquiry that when he first got to the fire he was reminded of a hotel fire in Dubai he had seen on YouTube but he said he had had no training in responding to such exterior cladding fires. The London Fire Brigade knew about such fires because it had compiled a slide show about the risks of combustible cladding in July 2016, featuring the Dubai blazes, the inquiry has previously heard.
O’Hanlon said he immediately thought of a video he had seen online of a fast-spreading fire at a high-rise hotel in Dubai. He told the inquiry he had had no training in what should happen when an exterior cladding structure on a high-rise building catches fire. He said he received training in tackling high-rise fires about every six months. O’Hanlon was one of the first to enter the fourth floor flat where the fire began and described how even though they were pumping at least 240 litres of water per minute onto the burning plastic window surround it wouldn’t go out. He said the outside of the building was “roaring” like a burning gas main.
Later O’Hanlon was tasked with helping the victims of the fire. One of the first was a body in the playground. There were also “heated discussions” between firefighters over whether enough was being done to save people, said Daniel Egan, a fire safety manager who was responsible for relaying information from 999 calls from people inside the tower to the firefighters entering the building.
“We noticed somebody had jumped and landed on the playground,” he said. “I had seen a blur and heard a thud. It was going so fast I knew it wasn’t a piece of debris. He landed around 10 metres from me … As I went to pick him up by his right leg it appeared to come off, out of his hip. Egan said he had repeatedly told the firefighters at the bridgehead about two adults and two children inside flat 133 on the 17th floor, but believed they had not been reached, and described the response as frustrating.
“I remember one casualty I had was a young girl, she was roughly the size of a two- or three-year-old,” he said. “She looked to be of Somali descent. I believe she may have been dead. I laid her down and her eyes were rolled to the back of her head. That face will always stay with me.” Secrett has been a firefighter for 19 years but said he had never experienced heat like he felt in flat 176, where Jessica lived with her family.
Exhausted, O’Hanlon and his colleagues were eventually relieved. “At this point the temperature just soared,” he said. “It went from what I would call normal hot to unbearable. I dropped to my knees and I think I actually lay down on the floor. I knew we couldn’t stay there. I crawled out and called to firefighter [David] Badillo that we had to get out of there.”
“We walked past all the body bags,” he said. “We laid down on a concrete wall for about 10 minutes and took our tunics off. There was a hose burst and it was spraying out water, so I just laid with my face in the spray. Our heads were all over the place. It was kind of quiet, after all the noise and it was light.” “I grabbed his arm and told him I was running out of air so he was to stay with me and we needed to get out. The temperature got even hotter. I remember lying on my belly and it took me a while to get back on my knees. I thought it was going to flashover and go. Flashover is when the temperature increases and increases until everything in the room will self-combust.”
He went into the nearby St Clement’s church “and said a little prayer” and then went to the Salvation Army van for a cup of tea and a sandwich. They were also with firefighter Chris Dorgu whom they lost in the heat and smoke as they started to descend, but neither man had the energy to call out for him.
“The general feeling amongst us all was we were dumbstruck; it didn’t seem real. We were all in our own little worlds. Everything was a near miss that night. I don’t know how any of us didn’t die.” “I looked at my gauge and saw I only had 15 bar left,” Secrett said. “I was in big trouble. I put myself in a corner of the stairwell because I did not want to be in anyone else’s way if I didn’t make it out. I tried to get my phone out of my pocket to text my mum but I couldn’t get the phone out.”
Earlier, the inquiry heard from Daniel Egan, a fire safety manager who was responsible for relaying information from 999 calls from people inside the tower to the firefighters entering the building. Dorgu emerged and they came down together “stumbling, falling and crawling trying to get down”.
He described “heated discussions” between his team and officers dispatching firefighters on rescue missions. “My view was we should commit crews to every floor, we needed to flood the building with firefighters. I passed my thoughts up the chain of command,” Egan said. After spending time in recovery, Secrett started carrying the dead and injured from the block.
He had a face-to-face conversation with the group manager, Tom Goodall, who took over from him, and then the crew manager, Richard Welch, and another group manager, Pat Goulbourne. “It was raining debris everywhere,” he said. “Someone had jumped out the tower. He hit a firefighter on his back. There were lots of people there who went to help so I continued to help by putting out fires. There were taxis and mopeds nearby catching fire”.
It was “not a friendly conversation,” Egan said. “I was quite vociferous in the way I said it. I just wanted to be heard. The inquiry continues
“It was very frustrating. We weren’t seeing the people coming down from the tower. I felt I was failing but I knew there was nothing else I could do. I knew I couldn’t do anything else but I wanted to do more.”
Egan said he had repeatedly told the firefighters at the bridgehead about two adults and two children inside flat 133 on the 17th floor, but believed they had not been reached.
The inquiry continues.
Grenfell Tower inquiryGrenfell Tower inquiry
Grenfell Tower fireGrenfell Tower fire
FirefightersFirefighters
LondonLondon
newsnews
Share on FacebookShare on Facebook
Share on TwitterShare on Twitter
Share via EmailShare via Email
Share on LinkedInShare on LinkedIn
Share on PinterestShare on Pinterest
Share on Google+Share on Google+
Share on WhatsAppShare on WhatsApp
Share on MessengerShare on Messenger
Reuse this contentReuse this content