Smoke, screams, silence, shock: How Grenfell Tower catastrophe unfolded

Seven years ago, 72 ­people died in the ­Grenfell Tower fire. Today the inquiry into the disaster releases its final report. 

The 1,700 pages will explain the causes of the blaze and how another one can be prevented.

Using witness statements from ­firefighters and ­residents of the 24-­storey block in Kensington, west ­London, Jonathan Mayo tells how the tragedy unfolded.

June 14, 2017

00.50 am

In the kitchen of Flat 16 of Grenfell Tower smoke is rising from the back of a large fridge-freezer, close to the ­window. The smoke alarm goes off waking Uber driver Behailu Kebede who opens the door to the kitchen and is shocked to see thick white smoke.

Behailu wakes his flatmates, calls 999 and gets London Fire Brigade’s control room. He says, ‘Flat 16, Grenfell Tower. In the fridge. It’s the fourth floor. Quick, quick, quick. It’s burning!’

The driver wakes his fourth-floor neighbour and, after living at Grenfell for 25 years, leaves it for the last time.

00.59 am

Four fire engines arrive at the Tower and, as in the five or so fires a week in London high-rises, the crews expect it to be a routine incident.

Watch manager Michael Dowden is the senior officer at the scene, so becomes incident commander.

The fire is easy to spot as there is an orange glow at a kitchen window on the building’s east side; many flats are dark as most of the 297 residents are asleep.

1.09 am

Firefighters Charles Batterbee and Daniel Brown have reached Flat 16 and, surrounded by smoke, move around on their knees checking each room. Brown sprays water into the kitchen and it turns instantly to steam.

Batterbee said later, ‘I thought ‘Wow’… I felt a burning sensation on my arms from my elbow to my wrists, around the back of my neck and head. I have never felt that level of heat before.’

They can see fire engulfing the fridge-freezer and ­cupboards but Batterbee successfully ‘knocked it right out’ and the kitchen slowly clears of smoke.

01.15 am

On floor 22, Naomi Li, 32, an IT worker in the airline industry is lying on her bed waiting for a call from husband Lee Chapman who is in Malaysia on business.

A smell of burning plastic drifts through the open bedroom ­window. ‘It was a smell that made you definitely think something was wrong,’ she recalled.

Naomi looks out but can’t see anything so goes to her cousin Lydia’s bedroom and they spot an orange glow reflected in the windows of a building opposite.

Naomi calls 999 and the operator tells her to stay inside her flat as the fire is on the fourth floor. ‘You’ll be fine up there and we’re dealing with it now, ok?’

The Fire Brigade’s ‘stay put’ policy is based on a belief that the design of high-rise buildings will contain a fire long enough for firefighters to extinguish them; the safest policy is for flat-dwellers to remain until help arrives.

01.21 am

In Flat 16, firefighters Batterbee and Brown notice the fire has spread outside the kitchen so Brown leans out of the window with Batterbee holding on to his ­shoulder straps and points the hose at two burning panels.

Even though he’s only 5ft away, the water is having no effect. Brown said, ‘I could see the fire was creeping up these vertical sections, but I could not get water underneath the panels covering the outside of the building. I could not knock these panels off or clearly see underneath them all.

‘I didn’t know at the time that these panels are referred to as cladding.’

A few years earlier, every storey of Grenfell Tower had been fitted with external insulation and rainscreen cladding made of thin sheets of aluminium with a core of combustible plastic.

1.22 am

Above them on the 7th floor, Jose ­Vieiro, 67, walks into his kitchen to see the nylon curtains and the extractor fan in the ­corner of the window on fire.

The fan falls into the room and through the hole in the window burst bright orange flames. Jose pulls the curtains down, burning his hands, and stamps out the flames, but it’s a losing battle – the window frame is alight and dripping burning liquid onto the floor.

Jose and his wife make a run for it. By now many extractor fans and window frames on the east side are alight and burning panels a metre square are falling off the Tower. The flames are spreading by one storey every minute.

1.24 am

Nadia Jafari’s kitchen is one of those on fire, so with her sister Maria, mother Fatima and father Ali they get into a lift on the 11th floor. Ali has a heart problem and diabetes so is too ill to take the stairs. The lift suddenly stops after just one floor, fills with smoke and the lights go out.

Nadia said, ‘People began to panic and kept pushing the buttons. Eventually the doors opened. I tried to get out, but it was difficult. It was terrifying, and the smoke was horrible.’

Nadia stays in the lift and when it reaches the ground floor everyone runs out. Then she realises her father is not with them – in the confusion he must have got out on Floor 10.

Nadia tries to run back into the Tower but a police officer stops her. Her father’s body is later carried out by firefighters.

01.25 am

On the 22nd floor, Naomi Li and her cousin Lydia are heading for the stairs. To their surprise, they see residents ­walking up towards them, blocking their way, ‘not screaming, running or ­anything unusual’.

Their neighbour in Flat 193, Nadia Choucair, 33, invites them inside as they are free of smoke. In the living room the three Choucair children are joking and smiling. Naomi phones her husband to say they’re safe.

01.26 am

Fire Brigade Control is being inundated with calls from people either trapped or affected by smoke. A jet of water from a crew on the ground is having little effect on the flames.

Melanie Ramirez, 20, tells firefighter David Badillo that her 12-year-old sister Jessica is alone in a flat on the 20th floor as their mother had popped out to give medicine to a friend. She asks if they could go together to rescue her.

Badillo insists he goes alone and heads to a lift, convinced it should be a straightforward rescue. But the lift stops abruptly at Floor 15, the doors open and black smoke pours in. He is wearing only a tunic, gloves and helmet, so goes back down to get ­breathing apparatus.

01.27 am

Michael Dowden, the Fire Brigade incident commander, is bewildered as the fire isn’t behaving in a way he’s ever seen before. It’s spreading up the building at a frightening speed and has already reached the 23rd storey. He orders the number of fire engines to be increased to 15.

He said later that all his previous ­experience ‘had gone out of the ­window. Very daunting moment. I felt helpless.’ But he still believes his men can bring the fire under control.

01.30 am

On the 16th floor, resident Edward ­Daffarn, 53, is staggering around the smoke-filled corridor, trying to find the staircase. In a panic, he puts out both hands to find his way and the wet towel round his face falls off. He collapses.

He said later, ‘I thought to myself ‘s***, man, this isn’t going to end well for me.’ ‘

Then Edward feels someone tap his leg; firefighter Jamal Stern who has been crawling through the smoke on his ­stomach, picks him up and leads him to the stairway. Stern asks if he’s OK. Edward says ‘yes’ and reaches the stairs.

Stern continues his search.

01.35 am

Flames have reached the very top of Grenfell Tower and set fire to horizontal panels which are known as the ‘crown’ and start to spread in both directions.

Edward Daffarn, who has reached the bottom, is looking up in horror. ‘I could see people in the windows who were still in the building. It was horrible.

‘A Muslim man, a stranger, offered me comfort, putting his arm around me. I could not stop crying.’

1.40 am

On the 22nd floor, 67-year-old former boxing trainer Tony Disson is trapped in his flat near where Naomi and Lydia are sheltering with the Choucairs.

The emergency operator has told him to stay put and in a panic he phones his wife Cordelia, who is on the other side of London, saying: ‘I am going to jump out of the window.’

She replies: ‘You are not doing that to my boys. Just get out, Tony!’

Then there is a knock on the door and he thinks it must be the fire service. ‘They are here, they are here!’ But instead ­Cordelia hears a baby crying and a man screaming, ‘Tony, please help me!’ then her husband saying, ‘I can’t help myself!’

Cordelia said later. ‘These are the voices that haunt me, I could hear the panic in the man’s voice.’

A police helicopter arrives and Cordelia tells Tony to smash the windows so they can see him, but he says, ‘For f*** sake – the flames are at the window!’

1.48 am

Firefighter David Badillo has been joined in his urgent search for 12-year-old Jessica Ramirez by colleague Chris Secrett and both are wearing breathing apparatus.

The smoke is so thick in the Ramirez’s flat that they can’t see their hands in front of their faces, and after a thorough search don’t find anyone. The flat door was ajar, so they hope that Jessica has made her way to safety, but in fact she was swept up by people heading for the 23rd floor and is hiding in a flat with about ten others.

Jessica begs control room officer Sarah Russell, ‘Please can you hurry up?’ who reassures her, ‘We’ve got 20 fire engines there with you. They’re fighting the fire.’ Smoke is now coming through the floor of the flat.

2.00 am

A total of 129 people still remain in Grenfell Tower and the flames are ­travelling across both the north and east sides of the building. On Floor 23, Naomi, Lydia and the Choucairs have put towels under the doors, but the flat is still filling with smoke.

Mum, Nadia Choucair is getting calls from worried friends and family and this is making her panicky. Naomi is Googling ‘how to escape a fire in a tall building’. In Malaysia, her husband Lee is watching in horror as the disaster unfolds live on TV. He doesn’t tell Naomi what he can see.

2.15 am

Control room officer Sarah Russell is still speaking to Jessica Ramirez and ­trying to keep the schoolgirl’s spirits up. ‘You’re doing really well, Jessica. You’re being really brave.’

But Jessica’s breathing is worsening and she tells Sarah the window is ablaze. The control room usually has a television showing rolling news, but it’s not working so the operators don’t have a clear idea of the scale of the disaster.

Flames are spreading to the south side of the building.

2.24 am

The incident commander is now Deputy Assistant Commissioner Andrew O’Loughlin who has ordered the number of engines to be increased to 40.

His firefighters are using riot shields to protect people leaving the Tower from falling debris.

After almost an hour on the phone, Sarah Russell can now only hear Jessica’s breathing. ‘Jessica, can you tell me what’s going on? Jessica? Hello?’ After a few minutes of silence, the line goes dead.

Later the body of Jessica and 23 others are found on the 23rd floor.

2.33 am

On Floor 12 Roy Smith is on the phone to emergency operator Peter Duddy. Roy and his wife Kasia are trapped with their two young daughters and the girl’s bedrooms are on fire.

Roy has gathered them all together so if they die, ‘they would know we were a family of four and we could be buried together’. Kasia has closed the blinds as they can see people jumping and debris falling.

For 40 minutes Duddy’s advice has been to ‘stay put’ – but the control room senior ­operations manager decides this must change, so he says, ‘You’re gonna have to leave the flat, OK. But you have to stay on the phone with me,’ and advises them to wrap themselves in wet towels, hold hands and get to the stairwell.

Then Duddy hears Roy say, ‘Here they are, here they are! Save us, please!’ The line goes quiet. A firefighter has found the family and tells them to breath from his oxygen mask then guides them to safety.

2.40am

Above them in Flat 193, Nadia Choucair insists they must all make a run for it, but Naomi tells her, ‘999 told us to stay.’ Nadia and husband Bassem are determined to leave, so wrap wet towels around their heads and the heads of their three daughters.

Naomi recalled, ‘the mum was trying to grab me, and my cardigan was tearing apart, that is how hard she was trying to take us with them.’ The Choucairs open the front door and run into the thick smoke.

2.42 am

Across the lobby, Tony Disson is still trapped in his flat and tells his wife Cordelia that the black smoke has turned white, which Cordelia can’t understand.

‘I presumed it was because he was dying.’ 

Tony begs her, ‘Please don’t let me die’ and Cordelia screams back, ‘You are not going to die! Get out of the flat!’ He says, ‘Cord, this is it, this is it for me…’ His last words to her.

02.50 am

The Choucair family run back into the flat as the stairwell was too full of smoke for them to escape. Naomi begs the emergency operator to send a helicopter to rescue them.

Then there is knocking on the door and the next-door family, Nura Kedir, husband Hashim and their three children come in ­panicking and crying. By now the flat is so full of smoke Naomi can barely see them.

03.00am

The fire has reached the western side of Grenfell Tower and by now 63 flats are ablaze and more than 100 people are trapped.

Naomi Li calls the operator who says urgently. ‘It’s a very bad fire, your only chance of surviving that fire is to get to the stairwell, you need to put wet cloths around your face.’

Naomi calls her husband and tells him she loves him, then tells the two families they need to leave, but they refuse.

Naomi and Lydia feel their way through the smoke to the kitchen tap, soak a cardigan and scarf and make for the staircase.

As they descend Naomi trips on what she thinks are jackets, but then realises they are bodies. ‘I can’t remember how many I stepped on,’ she says later. When they reach the sixth floor they meet a fireman who says simply: ‘We’re here’. The cousins’ ordeal is over.

03.24 am

Back in the flat Naomi and Lydia have left, the emergency operator is telling Hashim Kedir they must leave. ‘This is your only chance – you need to get to that staircase.’ Hashim says, ‘Well, we can’t, we can’t even move to the other room.’

The controller hears him say to his family, ‘Yahya, I love you. Firdaws, I love you. Nura, I love you. Yaqub, I love you, OK? We will die together. We will die together.’ The bodies of the Kedir and Choucair families are later recovered from Flat 193.

3.25 am

Firefighter Christopher Batcheldor sees a man standing at the base of the Tower shouting, ‘My girl is on the phone, my girl is in there!’

The man, called Francis, explains his friend Zainab ‘Zenay’ Deen 32, and her two-year-old son Jeremiah are trapped. Batcheldor takes his phone and when Zenay tells him she’s on the 14th floor, replies: ‘Stay on the phone to me. We know where you are. We’re coming up.’

Batcheldor can hear ­Jeremiah ­crying and coughing. Tragically, ­earlier Zenay and seven other ­residents on the 14th floor had been reached by firefighters but due to incorrect information about who was trapped and where, only four were led to safety.

3.55 am

Batcheldor is still on the phone to Zenay, he said later. ‘I was ­gagging to hear the door getting kicked in. I was just waiting to hear someone shout ‘Casualty!’ to signal that they had been found.’

Jeremiah stops coughing, and Zenay cries, ‘My boy’s dead! I want to be with my son!’ Batcheldor tells her not to give up.

4.30 am

Only one corner of Grenfell Tower is not on fire. The firefighters now have breathing ­apparatus that allows them more time, but the building is so dangerous it’s decided no firefighters must go beyond the 11th floor as temperatures have reached 1,000c.

Christopher Batcheldor decides not to tell Zenay who is trapped on the 14th Floor that she won’t be ­rescued. ‘I basically lied to her and continued to tell her that we were coming for her.’

Batcheldor hears a scream. He recalls painfully, ‘I think Zenay must have been unconscious, and then the fire got to her and brought her round. The screaming went on for about 60 seconds. When it stopped I knew then that was it. I hung up the phone.’

None of the four left behind on the 14th Floor survives. One, Mohammad Alhajali, jumps to his death and his body is found face up, covered in debris.

Members of the public take photos and post them on social media.

4.40 am

On the 11th floor, pensioner Elpidio Bonifacio has been waiting to be rescued for over three hours. His wife Rosita who had been out at work, phoned him at 1am to warn him the building was on fire and to put towels under the doors.

Later his son Gordon rang ­saying: ‘Stay there, Dad, we’ve spoken to a fireman and they have said they will come and rescue you.’

Elpidio is registered blind but can make out burning objects falling past his windows and feels the ­temperature in his flat rise.

‘I could hear people shouting for help outside and lots of screaming and crying.’ The sitting room catches fire so Elpidio retreats to his bedroom.

5.30 am

Dawn is breaking and smoke from Grenfell Tower is drifting across the capital. Britain is waking up to horrific images of the burning building.

Still trapped in his 11th-floor flat, Elpidio Bonifacio has been waving a white towel out of his bedroom window for an hour. He is drenched in water from the hoses of firefighters who are trying to stop the flames from ­reaching him.

Believing he’ll never be rescued, Elpidio considers taking an ­overdose, but suicide is against his Catholic faith so doesn’t go through with it. He can hear flames outside the bedroom door.

‘I said to myself ‘it’s finished, this is the end’ and I prepared myself to die. ‘Lord into your hands I ­commend my spirit.’ ‘

6.00 am

In the Control Room all 999 calls from Grenfell Tower have stopped. Exhausted fire crews are still ­making search and ­rescue missions but many of the flats are empty or inaccessible; scalding water heated by the fires is pouring down the stairwell.

Following the 9/11 disaster, there are concerns that ­individual ­columns in the building might fail, causing a partial collapse.

7.45 am

Most of the flames on the ­outside of the tower have ­subsided, but several fires inside are still burning fiercely.

Elpidio Bonifacio’s 11th-floor flat is one of those surrounded by flames. Suddenly he hears water inside his flat. ‘I opened the ­bedroom door and there they were – four maybe five firefighters with a hose. They were big men, they looked like giants to me.

‘They said, ‘Come on, relax, we will take you down.’ The Lord had answered my prayers.’ ­Thirty-five minutes later Elpidio is carried out of the building and is the last survivor to be rescued from Grenfell.

Aftermath

Nineteen companies and 58 ­individuals are being investigated about their role in the refurbishment of the building.

The Crown Prosecution Service has said no charges will be announced until late 2026 due to the ‘complexity’ of the inquiry.

The burnt fridge-freezer from Flat 16 sits in a ­warehouse wrapped in plastic, one of 27,000 pieces of evidence in the most complex police ­investigation in British history.