Grenfell Inquiry day 18: evacuation would have resulted in ‘huge catastrophe’

Contrary to fears that the decision to stick with the ‘stay put’ advice until 2.47am was deadly to residents, Mr O’Keeffe claimed there would have been an even bigger catastrophe had residents tried to evacuate once the blaze had fully taken hold.

He told the inquiry he didn’t want to stage an evacuation because smoke had filled the single stairwell, the only escape route, by 2am, making it “unsafe, dangerous”. Read the full story here.

Mr O’Keeffe also described the “consternation” when it became apparent that the fire was jumping up floors on the outside of the building.

He told the inquiry he was told the fire had been extinguished in flat 16, from which it originated, but shortly after heard “people screaming and shouting”, and reports of “heavy smoke” and fire on the 5th floor.

In his statement he recalled hearing a message from one of his firefighters, Jamal Stern, who said: “It’s f***ed! It’s going! It’s completely smoked out on this floor.”

The screaming came from both firefighters and residents, some of whom started self-evacuating.

He then described “a big sheet of flame” going up the side of the building and watch manager Mike Dowden running.

He said: “If a watch manager is running that’s something seriously wrong.”

When he first saw burning debris falling from the building, he reported thinking that this was “a problem, a big problem”.

Of the point when he realised they were “losing the fire” he said: “He [Mr Dowden, who was in charge] was frantic… We were outgunned completely, it happened so quickly.”

Mr O’Keeffe also pinned down the moment it became impossible to communicate via radio at 1.24am, when the 10th pump was called to the fire. The radios were “full of traffic”, he said. “I just couldn’t transmit any more information.”

In his witness statement, he wrote about residents who tried to go back into the fire, where their children were.

“I had to stop them physically,” he said. “One woman was crying. She said, ‘My children.’ I took flat numbers from two of them, but the other people just threw their keys at me.”

“My concern at that very moment – and it was in the moment – was to stop people going back into the fire,” he told the inquiry. “I was trying to persuade her in the gentlest way I could that it wasn’t possible.”