Grenfell Inquiry day 37: council unable to provide tower plans to firefighters

In another day of evidence from firefighters from the Grenfell Inquiry, station manager Peter Johnson told of his struggles to obtain a building plan from RBKC officials.

These plans, which would have detailed “vital” features such as gas, water and dry risers, were supposed to be in a box in the building’s lobby but were not present.

“The plans themselves would have fed into the operational plan. It has a vital part and a vital role detailing fixed installations and detailing everything within the building,” said Mr Johnson.

“It would detail the pipeline of gas, of water, where electricity was – it was vital that we needed those plans.”

He said that a female council officer had been unable to locate the plans, even as morning came after the fire. In his witness statement he said: “At a [tactical] meeting later that morning, [a senior fire officer] asked the female [council officer] for the plans again and they still were not present.

“[He] expressed that this will be a big thing that when asked for one thing, the council could not provide it. This had slowed the crews down in accessing the incident. I do not feel that the female got the gravity of the situation, although she was clearly shocked by the incident.”

Earlier in his evidence, Mr Johnson expressed frustration at the effectiveness of mobile command units, used by the London Fire Brigade at large incidents.

“The system currently works on a 3G signal, which can vary across London. There are dead spots across certain areas in London, which affects the signal and connectivity, rendering the whole computer system useless,” he wrote.

He said the systems failed 40% of the time, an issue that had been raised with management but not dealt with, with those responsible “sometimes blaming each other”.

“There was a period of six to seven months where we had no internet access, which at an operational incident is vital. It just was not fixed and the problems with the command units are an ongoing issue with no apparent urgency to deal with the issues,” he said.

On the night, he said he tested his system at base to ensure it was working. However, when he reached the tower it crashed.

“It turned out that at Grenfell (and other larger-scale incidents), the systems did not work due to the server and 30 signal not being able to handle the amount of information and high number of log-ons at one time,” he said.

This forced the firefighters to manually record the developing incident, using whiteboards and writing on the wall of the tower at the bridgehead stationed inside the building.

He added that the fire service did not have pictures from the Metropolitan Police helicopter, as the police had scrambled the signal without telling the fire service.

“The signal was scrambled by the MPS,” he said. “If they had unscrambled it, I had repeatedly asked for the image to be available… but unbeknown to us the MPS had scrambled it without making us aware of that.”

He, and fellow firefighter Brett Loft, also gave a harrowing account of a resident who fell from the tower, striking a firefighter who was entering the building.

The inquiry continues.