Outside of Grenfell tower ‘was effectively covered in petrol’ says firefighter who tackled inferno
4 September 2024, 11:02
Outside of Grenfell tower ‘was effectively covered in petrol’ says firefighter who tackled inferno
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A firefighter involved in tackling the Grenfell fire has said the outside of the building ‘was effectively covered in petrol’ as he described a ‘cataclysmic series of failings’ in the tower’s construction.
Ricky Nuttall, who was forced to abandon an attempt to rescue a resident from the 15th floor, defended the "stay put" advice initially given to people in the building, saying firefighters were unaware of the state of the tower.
"The idea of a 'stay put' policy is, its principles are founded on a building working as it should," he said today.
"At the time, as a firefighter on the ground, we had no idea that the building wasn't built as it should be, that areas were compromised, that fire doors weren't fitted, that smoke vents wouldn't open, that the outside of the building was effectively covered in petrol, a flammable material that's going to burn rapidly, window sills weren't fitted correctly.
LIVE: Grenfell tower report to be published seven years after deadly blaze
"There were a cataclysmic list of failings with the building, and none of that information was available to us at the time."
Describing the failed rescue attempt from the 15th floor in 2017, he said he was running out of air and together with a colleague, they decided an attempt to reach the victim would have left "three people in mortal danger rather than one".
"The guilt of leaving a human being behind is very, very hard to come to terms with, especially when you find out that that person did, in fact die.
"But it was the right decision from a logical perspective in terms of what air we had and what chance that person actually had of getting out of building with us," he told the BBC.
The report into the deaths of 72 people in the fire was published today more than seven years after the blaze.
The lengthy document - the final report of the inquiry into the 2017 disaster - laid out in detail its findings around the actions of corporate firms in the construction industry, the local authority, London Fire Brigade and government.
Families of those killed have insisted it must be a "landmark report" which prompts widescale change after what was described as a "spider's web of blame" was spun during inquiry hearings.
A report in 2019, from the first phase of the inquiry, concluded the tower's cladding did not comply with building regulations and was the "principal" reason for the rapid and "profoundly shocking" spread of the blaze.
This final report, which follows further hearings on the tower's 2016 refurbishment, presents conclusions on how the west London block of flats came to be in a condition which allowed the flames to spread so quickly.
The report comes just over a week after a major fire in east London at a block which had been undergoing work to have cladding removed as a result of what happened at Grenfell.
The non-fatal Dagenham blaze, coming so many years after the 2017 fire, prompted fierce criticism from various quarters including bereaved and survivors group Grenfell United, which said it showed the "painfully slow progress of remediation across the country, and a lack of urgency for building safety as a whole".
