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Grenfell firefighter describes radio problems when fighting fire
One of the first firefighters to arrive at Grenfell Tower has described how he could not contact commanders on the ground when fighting the fire, saying communications equipment was “from the dark ages”.
David Badillo, part of the North Kensington fire crew which arrived first at the blaze, said he tried to radio down to watch commander Michael Dowden from the fourth floor early in attempts at evacuation.
However, he said there was “so much traffic going on at that time that I couldn’t get through”.
He was subsequently forced to “go and find him myself the old-fashioned way, by talking to him”.
When pressed on the matter by Richard Millet QC, Mr Badillo said it was common not to be able to reach the incident commander on the ground when fighting a high-rise tower block fire, and that this is a “common problem” in the London Fire Brigade.
Mr Badillo also described how it was impossible to use radios above the 15th floor during the fire because of “blind spots” in the tower.
He said: “The higher you go up the building the less reliable it is, to the point of nothing at all.”
“The blind spots in Grenfell Tower was a bit of a new experience for me,” he continued. “I’ve been to the top of a lot of tower blocks because we go to the lift motor rooms at the top of tower blocks and we usually radio down to wherever the lift is to assist with getting people out of lifts, and I can’t remember it being a problem before.”
He also said the communication sets built into firefighters’ breathing apparatus, known as Barie (breathing apparatus radio interface equipment) sets, were “useless” and “from the dark ages”.
He said that because of the amount of time it takes to put them on, there is often “a choice between having a full tank of air and having a communications set.” He said: “Sometimes people shy away from having a Barie because of how useless they are.”
