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Five mornings at the Grenfell Inquiry
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FIRE Correspondent Catherine Levin reports from the Grenfell Inquiry as London Fire Brigade firefighters give evidence
“The witness statements are rich with detail. There are the contemporaneous notes that each firefighter wrote immediately after attending the fire”
Harrowing Accounts As we bear witness to the unfolding detail of what happened on the June 14, 2017 we are in unchartered territory. This must be the first time an inquiry – certainly in this country – has been so open for all to see. With live streaming of the inquiry; same-day publication of witness statements and the full transcript of the evidence, the level of transparency is reassuring if not harrowing to watch and read. Sitting in the pressroom for week two of firefighter evidence provides an insight that watching remotely simply cannot replicate. Quietly located on the second floor, with small innocuous signs showing the way,
airport-style security admits anyone who wishes to visit the inquiry. Located along a long corridor, flanked by two large rooms, the inquiry takes place in one brimming with legal people, many of whom wear austere black gowns over smart business suits. There are rows of chairs set-aside for families and survivors to sit and observe. Sir Martin Moore-Bick sits behind a table in the middle of one end of the inquiry room. To his right sits the witness (many have chosen to stand at the lectern), and to his left stands Richard Millett QC. He is surrounded by folders bulging with paper and speckled with post-it notes. His ability to find nuggets of information nimbly
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he hot summer continues unabated, with the sun making central London streets almost unbearable. Holborn Bars sits squarely in the sunshine, glorious in its red-bricked Victorian splendour. Inside, the Grenfell Inquiry continues with London Fire Brigade firefighters and officers giving evidence throughout June and July until the inquiry gives in to the summer heat on August 3. While the UK baked, #IamMichaelDowden trended briefly on Twitter. It became a symbol for the empathy and sympathy felt by those who watched the first incident commander give evidence to the Grenfell Inquiry.
14 | July/August 2018 | www.fire–magazine.com
Government & Politics The handful of journalists who attend from the national media use the rolling transcript to pepper their reporting with quotes, boosting the written statements that are put into the public domain as soon as each witness begins giving their evidence. Sometimes they report little or nothing despite the thousands of words that enter the public domain day after day, creating a detailed historical record that will be subject to further detailed scrutiny by others in the years to come.
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Fire Service Witnesses The witness statements are rich with detail. There are the contemporaneous notes that each firefighter wrote immediately after attending the fire – everyone who finished working at the incident was filtered through Paddington Fire Station to give their statements. And later on, the Metropolitan Police took statements as part of the criminal investigation. A meticulous, minute-by-minute 360° view of the incident is being built from the daily accumulation of evidence. The line of questioning by Richard Millett is consistent as he seeks to see the same minutes of the incident through many different eyes. His forensic approach is revealing layers of detail and as the inquiry continues it is incredibly hard to keep track and fathom it all. Richard Millett has learned fire lexicon and speaks to the witnesses with a growing ease for fire language. It is a fine line for him to tread as he seeks to have a comfortable and meaningful interaction with witnesses but at the risk of alienating a lay audience. In the first two weeks, we learn a lot about the fire from the firefighters, crew managers, watch managers and one station manager. It allows us to witness the speed with which the initial response to what should have been a fairly ordinary kitchen fire, turn quickly into an inferno that no one had ever experienced before.
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and quickly speaks to his impressive experience and to the phenomenal legal operation that supports him in his work. One look at the staffing for the inquiry reveals just how costly this whole operation must be. Video cameras are trained on all three positions, switching between them but never revealing the rest of the room. They have been sensitive to the witness when he (and it was just male firefighters and officers in the first two weeks) needs to pause and collect himself in order to carry on. And on that point, after two weeks of firefighters giving evidence, both Sir Martin and Richard Millett have become increasingly adept at picking up on the needs of the witnesses, moving to short periods of questioning with frequent breaks. For the press and general public there is a separate room. In it there are three large screens to view the documentary evidence, the video feed and the rolling transcript. The transcript is a wonder in itself as the stenographers type at lightning speed to capture every word almost simultaneously.
Emerging Themes Themes emerge from the evidence even in these early days. The strongest is about communications and in particular, the use of fireground radios. Witnesses speak about the vast amounts of traffic on particular channels; they recall times when they cannot use the radios to either learn about what was happening or to share what they have learned inside the building. High up in Grenfell Tower the radios do not work at all. We learn about the intricacies of breathing apparatus (BA), both standard and extended and how, at the bridgehead, firefighters are ‘logged’ in and out to keep track of them and their air levels. The word ‘tally’ comes up again and again. A quick look at the London Fire Brigade website reveals that the BA sets they use weigh around 15kg with an extended set even more at 23kg – this is the weight of a five-year-old child. It really brings home the physicality of firefighting and the toll working in extreme environments takes on individuals.
“A meticulous, minute-by-minute 360° view of the incident is being built from the daily accumulation of evidence” www.fire–magazine.com | July/August 2018 | 15
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It is hard for those who have never been operational to visualise all of this and it would have been helpful to have some of the equipment shown during the evidence. Some journalists thought that a BA board was some kind of pegboard you might see in a classroom. “It’s my job to look after my crews,” said one crew manager. Firefighter safety is a crucial theme running through the evidence. Witnesses talk about not feeling safe; about taking risks, about looking after each other. The mantra of firefighter safety never seemed so important as it did when these witnesses shared their darkest moments with the inquiry. As the narrative unfolds, we learn that those inside the Tower had a very different perception than those who were outside. Witnesses during the second week spoke about the shock they felt on emerging from the Tower to see the extent of the fire raging up the outside of the building. These early witnesses share their experience of attending the kitchen fire in flat 16 and reveal how they tried to comprehend how it developed so quickly into the fire that we saw on our television screens early in the morning of 14 June.
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Operational Policy London Fire Brigade policy notes have a star appearance during the inquiry and demonstrate just how important good policy is to effective operational delivery. Policy 790 on Fire Survival Guidance is looked at in huge detail. National Operational Guidance gets a few mentions by witnesses but it seems of less interest to the inquiry at this early stage. “Is that in accordance with policy?” asks Richard Millet on many occasions. He is interested in whether firefighters and officers followed policy or if they deviated from it. “I did what I felt was right,” said one witness. “I probably shouldn’t have gone up there, but I did,” said another. The concept of operational discretion lies at the back of some of these responses, but the term is never used. Every witness is asked about compartmentation. They each explain with varying levels of detail and confidence that there is an expectation that a fire will be contained in the flat of origin for a period of time. They are each asked if they know what to do if compartmentation fails and what effect it has on advice to residents to stay put. Throughout this line of questioning, the link between compartmentation and “stay put” policy remains inextricable. “Stay Put” Policy And on that “stay put” point, the inquiry is interested in what has been learned from previous incidents, notably Lakanal House in 2009. By the end of the first three weeks of evidence, Lakanal is mentioned 83 times with 45 mentions on one day alone. As a reminder about the recommendations about “stay put” advice and guidance
related to high-rise firefighting, it is well worth re-reading the two-page Rule 43 letter sent from Her Honour Frances Kirkham CBE, Assistant Deputy Coroner to the Secretary of State in March 2013. After two weeks and 400,000 words of evidence so far, the inquiry continues for another four weeks and breaks for summer recess on August 3. If it continues in the same vein there will be over 1.2 million words in the public domain and that is just London Fire Brigade evidence. Add that to the evidence that is yet to come from other witnesses at later stages of the inquiry, the enormity of putting together an inquiry report is plain to see. In 1988 the late Desmond Fennell QC published his independent inquiry report into the Kings Cross fire where 31 people lost their lives. That inquiry lasted 91 days and comprised 351 files of evidence. This inquiry has over 300,000 documents as evidence and is likely to last much longer. The Grenfell Tower fire will have ramifications in all areas of how the Fire and Rescue Service operates for many years. It is the fire that everyone will remember; it has joined the pantheon that includes Lakanal and Kings Cross, a club that no one wants to join.
Be sure to listen to the BBC’s Grenfell Tower Inquiry podcast by Sangita Myska. You can download all the episodes from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ p066rd9t/episodes/downloads
“By the end of the first three weeks of evidence, Lakanal is mentioned 83 times with 45 mentions on one day alone” 16 | July/August 2018 | www.fire–magazine.com