Fire in a Tower Block

Hello, thank you for dropping in.  It's lovely to see that you are here, really lovely.  Thank you. 

 

A couple of weeks ago, Rosie wrote that she is "keeping on keeping on" and that struck a chord with me.  I wake up in the morning and quickly turn on the news, wondering what may have happened overnight in this country which we have considered to be a peaceful, safe, democratic place in which to live.  The political situation is uncertain and the recent terror attacks on people of this country are frightening, but the event which has upset me most of all is the fire at Grenfell Tower and I should like to share with you the reason why.

 

When my girls were young, I worked in an eleven-storey block of flats which belonged to the local social housing provider, a housing association which had asked the local ecumenical council of churches to run a community project there.  The tenancies were offered to people between the ages of 17 and 29 but they were secure tenancies and many people had lived there for years because they liked it, so their ages ranged from seventeen to sixtysomething.  Some of them had babies (although not the sixtysomethings!).  Some were working, some were unemployed and some were retired, making it a mixed community of ages, genders and cultures.  There were fifty-seven flats, each housing one, two or three people, and I knew all of them.

 

The community project was open during limited daytime hours from Monday to Friday and from 6pm to 3am every night of the year because people tend to have their emotional crises

during the night, when limited support is available elsewhere.  I was regularly that support.  The importance of fire safety was impressed upon all staff members and we attempted to impress that importance upon all the tenants, but working at night, it was up to staff to enforce it.  So, during my nine hour shift I would check all twelve landings three times, once between 6pm and 7pm, once between 9pm and midnight and once between midnight and 3am.  I would close any doors which had been left open, remove any bags of rubbish which had been left and check that the dry risers had not been tampered with.  If the rubbish chute was blocked and I couldn't unblock it, I would ring the emergency maintenance team and they would come out before my shift was over and unblock it because rubbish is a fire hazard.  Similarly, I would check outside the building and if anything had been dumped there, I would ring the emergency maintenance team and they would come out and remove it before the end of my shift, because it was a fire hazard.  Three times every night of the year these checks were performed and written down to leave a paper trail. 

 

We were told that if there were a fire, the floor on which the fire started and one floor above and below would be affected but that the construction of the building was such that the fire service would put out the fire before it could spread further.  We were told that the fireproof doors, including the front doors of every flat, would give an hour's protection, by which time the fire would be out.  We tested the fire alarms weekly.  We were told that if there were a fire, we shouldn't touch the fire alarm system control panel in the staff office,  but we should wait in the office until the arrival of the fire brigade (we still called it that then) and that the Incident Commander would then deal with the panel.  Nobody else would touch it.  At that point, staff should take instruction from the Incident Commander about what to do next.  Nobody could remember there ever having been a fire in the thirty-odd years of the building's existence, but we took the risk very seriously, so perhaps that's why there hadn't been a fire.

 

Late one night there was a fire, a malicious act of arson on the fourth floor.  The fire alarms went off and the panel in my office went doolally.  The lifts stopped working and some people evacuated the building, using the only stairwell.  I was the only member of staff on duty but I felt quite calm because I knew exactly what to do: I waited for the fire brigade who arrived within minutes, shortly after the police.  The Incident Commander came into my office and started dealing with the fire panel.  By this time, the alarm had been going for a while, longer than usual, and tenants were anxiously ringing down from their flats to ask if it were a real fire or a drill and should they evacuate, so I asked the Incident Commander what I should tell them.  "Yes, get them out," he replied, so that's what I did.  As I knew all the tenants, I knew who was still inside the building so I rang round every flat until I had spoken to all the tenants.  Although I could feel adrenaline start to take hold, I was calm because I thought our procedures were sound.

 

The problem was this: there was one stairwell and so many people were rushing down the stairs that the fire officers could not get up them to the fourth floor, so the fire was spreading.  Once all the tenants were outside, I left the building, leaving it to the firefighters who soon put out the fire.  I was calm.  Nobody was hurt, I reassured myself, those stuck inside the burning flat having been rescued by the firefighters and their long ladder.  The fourth floor was badly damaged but the fire hadn't spread any further and quite soon, everyone else was able to re-enter the building and return to their homes and their belongings.  I finished my shift and calmly wrote my incident report for the manager to read in the morning.  When I got home at about 3.20am, I took off my professional head and discovered that I was too agitated to go to bed for hours, thinking about what might have been.

 

A couple of weeks later I was asked to attend a multi-agency meeting with my manager to discuss the night's events.  Representatives were also there from the housing association, the local authority and the fire service.  At the meeting, I was asked why I had evacuated the building because that action had seriously impeded the firefighters and prolonged the life of the fire.  I explained that the Incident Commander had told me to and the fire officer at the meeting said, "I was the Incident Commander that night and I didn't give that instruction."  I felt stunned.  I explained that I had been told that only the Incident Commander would use the fire panel and that as the officer in question had been doing just that, I had assumed him to the be Incident Commander.  He then told me that I should have known who was who by the number of stripes on their helmets(!!) but somebody else spoke up for me and said that that was unreasonable and that if a person wearing any firefighter's uniform tells you what to do, you do it.  I left the meeting exonerated.

 

When I woke up last Wednesday morning and saw the news unfolding of the fire at Grenfell Tower, all of this came back to me in vivid detail.  I told a friend who I saw that morning that I felt "a bit traumatised" and although I meant it honestly, I feel embarrassed about that word now: the people who have lost their homes, their possessions and those who they know and love are traumatised, my feelings pale in comparison.  I have no right.  Every day since, I have replayed that night in my mind, and I count my blessings as I hungrily search for updates on the former residents of Grenfell Tower.

So far, there are seventy-nine people confirmed dead or missing, presumed dead.  The first funeral was today.  Those people who survived have lost everything except their lives. 

See you soon.

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x