Grenfell Inquiry day 45: firefighter urged senior officers to abandon stay put policy

Norman Harrison, a watch manager with 25 years’ service, said as soon as he saw the extent of the fire when he arrived just after 1:30am on Wednesday 15 June he knew the stay put policy “should no longer apply”.

Mr Harrison said that he initially hoped that only the exterior of the building was alight, and that he had immediately assumed that the cladding was burning.

“I remember thinking it wasn’t something I was expecting to see in this country because I thought the regulation would preclude putting something on the outside of the tower which would propagate flames quite so easily,” he said.

He said when he moved closer to the building he realised that the fire was coming from inside the flats as well as the outside.

“I was truly shocked at such a big fire over so many floors,” he said. “When we usually fight a fire in a high rise we expect a fire to be contained.”

He said he estimated that it would take at least 15 minutes per floor to fight the fire to the top of the building, meaning it would take around six hours to access the highest flats.

Mr Harrison said: “In reality I didn’t think that there would be an opportunity to rescue people on the upper floors and I strongly felt that the advice needed to be changed from the stay put policy to almost a simultaneous decision to evacuate.”

He explained that he spoke to a group of senior managers within minutes of assessing the scene. “I suggested that someone tell our control operators to change that advice as soon as possible. I recall that some discussion took place,” he said.

“It was mentioned that there was only one escape route – there would have been lots of firefighting hose within the very narrow stairwell.

“I then asked if it was possible to use our emergency air supply equipment... I never got answered.”

The stay put policy was not changed until 2.47am, around 45 minutes after Mr Harrison said he had expressed his concerns.

Mr Harrison said he believed the firefighters were in a “lose-lose situation”. “People were going to die that morning. It was just a matter of how many,” he said.

Later the inquest heard from firefighter Adam Johnson, who described how he had single-handedly carried an unconscious woman out of the burning building amid thick smoke.

Mr Johnson explained how he and another firefighter, Terry Roots, repeatedly climbed the stairs in the tower looking for people trapped in their homes.

Having already searched a flat on the fourth floor, the pair were sent to the 19th floor where Nicholas Burton and his wife Maria Del Pilar Burton lived. Mr Johnson told the inquest how Mrs Burton had “collapsed instantly” when they opened the door to the flat.

“She was conscious but very limp,” Mr Johnson told the inquiry, describing how he carried the woman down the stair while Mr Roots helped Mr Burton.

“It was a real struggle to get her down,” he said, adding: “I had to keep going down each flight to the landing or half-landing and readjusting my grip of them.”

He later encountered two further firefighters who helped him down bring the woman down the stairs. Both Mr and Mrs Burton survived the fire, but Mrs Burton died in hospital in January after suffering a stroke.

Mr Johnson’s told the inquest that it had been “pitch black” on the inside of the building with smoke so thick that he struggled to read door numbers on individual flats.

“I do not know if you could prepare for a fire like that, no matter what equipment you have,” he said. “The extent of it was like nothing-ever encountered before.”