London fire chief defends telling resident to remain in Grenfell Tower while it burned

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London Fire Brigade Commissioner Dany Cotton has defended the conduct of firefighters who battled the Grenfell Tower fire last year, including a controversial decision to tell residents to remain in their flats even as flames engulfed the building.

“I wouldn’t change anything we did on the night,” Ms. Cotton told a public inquiry on Thursday.

The fire at the Grenfell Tower social housing complex killed 72 people, making it one of the worst disasters in London’s post-war history. Police have launched a criminal investigation into allegations of corporate manslaughter and the tragedy has raised difficult questions about inequality, class and race. Grenfell was managed by the Kensington and Chelsea borough council, one of the wealthiest boroughs in the country, and tower residents, many of whom were refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, had long complained about being ignored. The council has also faced questions about renovations at the building, including the use of less expensive cladding that turned out to be highly flammable.

Ms. Cotton said she and other firefighters were overwhelmed by the extent of the fire and how quickly it spread. And she confirmed that none of the firefighters had been trained to deal with the spread of flames across external cladding, even though internal documents showed fire officials had been concerned about just that kind of scenario. She said Grenfell was an exceptional circumstance that was impossible to prepare for. "I wouldn’t develop a training package for a space shuttle to land in front of the Shard,” she said referring to the London skyscraper. "I wouldn’t expect us to be developing training or a response to something that simply shouldn’t happen.”

The fire brigade has also come under criticism for the way it handled the fire. The inquiry, which started in May and is expected to last another year, has heard testimony about inadequate equipment, communications failures and questions about why firefighters told residents to stay in their apartments even as the building became engulfed in flames. The fire started just before 1 a.m. on June 14 and investigators have concluded that by 1:26 a.m. the stay-put policy had effectively failed. The policy wasn’t officially lifted until 2:47 a.m. when there were still 107 people in the building. Only 36 got out and 71 died (another survivor died months later from injuries). The investigators’ report said 187 people ignored the stay-put order and got out safely much earlier.

Ms. Cotton defended the policy, saying buildings are supposed to be designed so that fires are contained in one area for at least an hour, meaning that it is usually safe to remain in other areas until help arrives. She added that mass evacuations can cause congestion and make it harder for firefighters. “It’s the absolutely correct policy,” she told the inquiry adding that Grenfell had just one small stairwell that would have become overwhelmed with people.

However, she couldn’t explain why the order was lifted that night and she didn’t know who made the decision. She also couldn’t explain why the fire brigade’s control centre didn’t try to contact people still in the building to tell them to get out.

She said her main priority that night was assisting firefighters who were overcome with exhaustion and frantically trying to rescue people inside. “I had spent a large number of time talking to firefighters who have broken down in my arms, firefighters I never met before, firefighters I didn’t know. I’ve never seen a situation on the fire ground where firefighters are openly crying and distressed,” she said.

In a written statement to the inquiry, Ms. Cotton recalled her horror at first seeing the fire when she arrived. “Sitting in my car I could see the tower through my front windscreen. I was still on the phone to [operations director Tom George] and said: ‘What the fuck? This can’t actually be happening; I can’t believe what I’m seeing’," Ms. Cotton said in the statement. “I’ve been a firefighter for 30 years and I have never seen a residential building that is one hundred per cent alight.”

She told the inquiry that the fire had deeply affected her and has caused her memory loss. “I’m still finding it very difficult to look at visual images and have conversations about Grenfell,” she said. “I’m still responsible for effectively running the London Fire Brigade, and everything else that’s involved in that. It would be no good for me to fall apart. Therefore, I have not spent huge amounts of time in my head looking and thinking about Grenfell Tower.”

The commissioner’s testimony did little to impress some of the victims of the fire. “To hear Dany Cotton say that she would not have done anything differently, is heartbreaking and feels disrespectful to the 72 people who lost their lives,” Natasha Elcock, chair of a group called Grenfell United, told reporters after the hearing.