Grenfell Inquiry day 22: description of hectic scenes within control room

A picture emerged today of the frantic scenes inside London Fire Brigade’s back-up control room as the horrors of the Grenfell Tower fire unfolded in the early hours of Wednesday 14 June last year.

Joanne Smith, senior operations manager at the force, spent a second day facing intensive questioning from Richard Millett, chief counsel to the inquiry.

Ms Smith yesterday detailed how the nerve-centre taking 999 calls and mobilising firefighters had been moved from its usual Merton base to a smaller site in Stratford, east London, due to routine security upgrades.

Today she was asked to go over the tragic night in forensic detail and forced to defend decisions made by call handlers as the desperate situation began to overwhelm efforts to contain it.

Arriving at the control room at about 2.15am Ms Smith said she made the decision within 15 minutes to tell call handlers to advise people to leave the building rather than stay and await rescue.

She said learnings from the 2009 Lakanal House disaster had influenced her decision along with a range of other factors.

Ms Smith said that given the scenes in the control room, as staff grappled to get on top of the situation that was rapidly unfolding, she didn’t question why a decision to tell people to evacuate hadn’t been taken earlier.

“The control operators were taking constant calls, many of them harrowing and distressing… it was very noisy in the control room, there was a down link from the police helicopter so that was additional noise… there was the whiteboard set-up and that rhythm of communication had started. I wouldn’t imagine anyone could have stepped back and have an oversight as they were all very task-orientated.

I was the only spare person who arrived… I could have logged on to a position and got involved with taking calls but I made a conscious decision not to,” she said.

Ms Smith was asked to look at the transcript of a 999 call made about an hour before she took the decision to tell operators to advise callers to leave the building.

The emergency call in question came at 1.30am from the 22nd floor of Grenfell Tower. According to the transcript, the caller described some smoke and asked whether they should stay in the flat and the operator replied: “I obviously can’t really advise you but I’ll let the firemen know you’re there.”

Ms Smith was pressed on whether the operator had asked the right questions and given the correct responses.

“The operator still believes the fire is on the fourth floor,” she said. “The caller is on the 22nd floor… we let the firefighters on scene know there were people on the 22nd floor… had the call progressed and become a fire survival guidance call, I would have expected the operator to assess the situation and provide advice.”

The operator did not offer fire survival guidance – or assess whether it was required – it was likely to be due to the sheer scale of the unfolding tragedy, Ms Smith said.

“There was a huge volume of calls coming in, we were handling over 100 in that hour from people in the tower wanting advice and I imagine the operators were trying to get to everyone as quickly as possible…. I can only imagine the situation.”

Ms Smith went on to describe the way information was collated from 999 callers and passed to firefighter crews on the ground via “scraps of paper”, a hastily repurposed whiteboard, radio messages, a computerised log and constant mobile phone calls.

Ms Smith defended the rapidly created system.

“Stratford is a smaller location than Merton – you are able to have visible eyesight with everyone and hear conversations,” she insisted