Grenfell Inquiry day 58: resident tells how daughter saved his life

Mr Talabi said: “I took the sheets from everywhere in the house. I tied everything we had in the house [together], I took them from the bedrooms from the place where we put bed linen.”

Mr Talabi made one attempt to escape through a window after tying the makeshift rope before being helped back in when his daughter refused to follow him. His daughter’s name has been redacted to ‘K’ in the evidence published by the inquiry.

Speaking about the night of the fire Mr Talabi said: “I thought to carry K down with me and then to drop whilst protecting my daughter. I thought I would take the brunt of the fall from the second or third floor and that K had a chance if she stayed attached to me. It was a plan hatched out of total desperation.

“When K wouldn’t come out, there was no way I was going to leave my family in the flat, so I wasn’t going to lower only myself down. I decided to try and climb back into the flat. I tried pulling myself back in with the windowsill, but I couldn’t get purchase. I kept slipping on the cladding. It was terrifying; I thought I was going to slip, or fall to the ground.”

The evidence from Mr Talabi comes after firefighter Desmond Murphy apologised to families on the 14th floor who were told to stay put in the building.

The stay put policy has been a key issue in the inquiry, with one firefighter admitting he did not agree with the advice.

Four of the eight people who were originally advised to remain in flat 113 subsequently died.

In his evidence Mr Talabi said that after climbing down, “I was probably only hanging outside of the window for 40 seconds, or a minute, but it felt like an eternity. When I was outside of the window I could see flames beneath me, and so much smoke.

“I looked down and saw the fire beneath us, and saw bits of cladding falling off and hitting the ground. Luckily, Omar or Mohammad came over to the window and he pulled me back in. Despite the danger, and despite the fear I had felt hanging out of the window, I was disappointed that I hadn’t been able to make an attempt to get out of the tower with my daughter.

“It was only coincidence that the firefighters knocked on the door. As on the first time, although she was only five at the time, my daughter definitely saved my life by refusing to come out of the window.”

Mr Talabi tied his daughter to his back using some Nigerian cloth in what he believed would be preparations for a second attempt at climbing down the stairs.

Giving evidence Mr Talabi said: “Just as I was beginning to climb out of the window the firefighters knocked on the door for the third time.”

“I think we had just tied my daughter to my back, she didn’t want to do it in the first place but she decided that was the only option we had. We were about to do it again [climb down] when we heard the door again.”

By that time Mr Talabi described conditions as smoky but still visible inside the flat. However, once on the stairs the smoke felt like “I was being strangled”.

Earlier in the day, fellow resident at the tower and neighbour of Mr Talabi, Omar Alhajali told the inquiry how he had been told initially to stay put inside his flat by firefighters who promised to visit again.

In his evidence Mr Alhajali said: “At about 2am a firefighter came and knocked on our front door.

“When we opened it the firefighter came inside and closed the door behind him.

“He was wearing his mask and breathing equipment. He told us: ‘Stay here, your flat is safe. Stay here and we will come again’. I think the firefighter was a white male and he had an English accent. My brother and I asked him if we could leave and whether it was safe to go outside the flat. He told us: ‘No, not now. You can’t leave’.”

Mr Alhajali told how the residents were moved from their flat to that of Mr Talabi at 113 by firefighters, away from the main fire on the opposite side of the tower.

At around 3am, with the smell of smoke growing stronger, he saw Mr Talabi head to the door with his wife and child. Mr Alhajali left flat 113 and headed down the stairwell; his brother did not follow him and remained in the flat along with an elderly resident named Denis Murphy from flat 111 who had suffered from smoke inhalation, and Zainab Deen and her two-year-old son Jeremiah.

Mr Alhajali said that upon reaching the ground he called his brother on his mobile: “I was so worried for Mohammad. Mohammad told me that he was left with Zainab, her son and Denis. He kept telling me that no one had taken him out and he was saying to me, ‘Please tell them that I am still in the flat’.

“While I was still on the phone to Mohammad I walked over to a fireman inside the tower and told them that my brother was still in the flat and could not get out. I was saying, ‘Please go upstairs, please. There are children upstairs’. The person that I was talking to had a mask on. Some firefighters were saying that they were sure that they took everyone out. They ignored me and didn’t believe me.”