Grenfell Inquiry day 75: evidence from fire service control room officers

In a written statement, Ms Russell said: “All I could do was offer support, to keep asking questions in the hope that her situation might improve, tell her the fire engines were there, fighting the fire and try and prevent panic.

“After about an hour I could not get any more response from her — only rasping sounds, then nothing.

“I stayed on the line a little while longer with my hand hovered over the call termination button. I was torn as what best to do. I eventually ended the call when the line fell silent.”

She said that she had “felt helpless” while talking to the girl and that the calls were “relentless” for four hours.

But she said things fell “eerily quiet” after 5am, by which time her team was “completely drained and very upset”.

Zoe Martin, a watch manager in Kent on the night of the fire, told the inquiry how she had taken a call from the wife of a man trapped in a flat in Grenfell.

Upon calling the man, she said in her written statement, “I asked him whether he could get out and all I could hear were groans”.

She added: “I tried several times to get something out of him but I simply could not and eventually it sounded as through the phone had been dropped. It was a very difficult call to take.”

Rob Brown, a crew commander at SFRS, told the inquiry that he supervised a colleague while she took calls from the daughter-in-law of a man trapped in flat 194, on the 22nd floor of Grenfell Tower.

He said he decided to pass the details on to LFB rather than call the man from SFRS as “[c]alling the number and giving advice could muddle up any rescue operations that were in place by the crews on the fire ground”.

He said that afterwards “my mind was racing thinking over the calls we received and whether we did the right thing”.

Half an hour after the woman’s first call, she called again to say her father-in-law could see flames and smoke – but that he had mobility issues so could not leave.

At 3.11am, LFB asked Mr Brown to contact neighbouring fire services to relay advice to give to people trapped in Grenfell Tower about trying to escape.

The inquiry also heard from Nigel Dilley, a group manager at ECFRS, and Sharon Lancaster, a control room operator at ECFRS at the time of the fire.

Mr Dilley was in charge of “inter-agency liaison”, and described having difficulties contacting LFB control on the night.

Ms Lancaster told the inquiry how she was called by a woman trapped on the 22nd floor describing smoke in her flat. She said she tried to pass this information on to LFB but “could not get through to London at all. They were not answering the phones.”

The hearing continues.