What follows below, is a personal account written by one of the many firefighters who attended the Grenfell Fire tragedy.
It has been shared by ‘Save The UK Fire Service‘ with the following appeal:
‘In light of Channel 4 Dispatches programme airing tomorrow, we would like to remind our followers of a post we put up from a firefighter who was there’
‘As always we were woken with a start, the lights came on and the automated tannoy voice started shouting our call signs. It never fails to set your heart racing. Getting dressed I looked at the clock, I’d only lay down less than an hour ago. Time to see what we’ve got this time..
Down the pole to the trucks and it’s here I’m handed the call slip make pumps plenty.. what!
We have to look it up and then we’re out the doors.
We arrived about 0120hrs but due to the way cars are parked in the streets and the fire engines that are arriving with us we couldn’t get closer than 4-5 streets away from the building.
Other trucks were closer they would be setting up water ready for us.
We could see this was a bad one immediately.
The sky was glowing. Leaving our truck we started quickly towards it.
Picking up
How big is the tower, where is the fire, where is the fire going next, how’s it behaving, how many flats are internally affected, how many people are in there?
We mustered outside the entrance.
Parts of the building were already starting to fall down on to the surrounding area.
As we entered the building the fire on the outside was raging from the top to the bottom.
Walking up to the bridgehead on the 3rd floor we were told to look at a floor plan that had been hastily drawn on a wall.
We stood looking at it waiting at entry control to be given instructions my BA partner and I stood waiting with other firefighters waiting to see what information there was available.
Then we received our brief… 23rd floor people stuck in their flat go!
23rd floor? I repeat back.. giving the flat number I received to the Watch manager.
She confirms.
I turned on my BA as the reality of how high we are going to try and go on a single cylinder of air.
Weighed down carrying 30kg+ of equipment not including our firekit and breathing apparatus (BA) we passed through entry control handing in our tallies and confirming our brief.
We made our way up a crowed stairwell struggling to make progress, at times unable to pass because of the amount of people on the stairs.
The stairwells were full of other BA crews bringing people down all in various states and conditions.
The smoke grew thicker with each floor we went up.
No proper floor numbers on the stairwells after about the 5th floor made it hard to know where you were. Someone before us had tried to write them on the wall with chinagraph pencil but this didn’t last long. The dirty smoke was covering the walls with a film of blackness
Around the 9th floor we lost all visibility and the heat was rising. Still we continued up and up through the blackness.
We reached what we believed to be the 19/20th floor but there was no way to tell. It was here where we found a couple trying to find their way out, panicking, choking, blinded by the thick toxic air.
A quick gauge check showed us that the amount of floors we’d climbed had taken its toll, we were getting low on air. There’s no way we could make it to the 23rd and back to the bridgehead.
The couple were shouting and screaming at us through the coughing, trying to tell us there were 5 more people on the floor above!
Now I had horrible decisions to make and a very short amount of time to make them.
In what I think would of been less than a minute these are all the things I had going through my head.
I will list a few of them for you. All of which I needed to consider before making my decision:……..
•Now that we’ve stopped and lost our rhythm on the stairs would we have enough air to leave this couple and try to reach the next floor?
•Was the information we are getting from these people was correct. After all they are frantically panicking as they choke and suffer from the heat.
•If we let them carry on down the stairs alone would they or could they find their own way out?
•If we went up another floor would we actually find the 5?
•If we found them what state would they be in? Could the two of us get that many out especially one or more are unconscious?
•How would we decided who to take?
•Do we have enough air to make it back down to safety ourselves from where we are?
•Should I be considering asking my BA partner a “new mother” to risk even more than she already has…?
•Can I accept/live with the thought that saving two lives is better than taking the risk to go up and potentially saving no one?
Ahh!! Come on think…!
Am I doing enough?
Can I give more?
Am I forgetting any of my training….?
Stop….
Breath…..
Think…..
•Why haven’t we seen another crew for so long?
•Will another crew find them?
•Are we really where we think we are?
•The radios are playing up… have we missed a important message.
•Have all crews been pulled out?
•Is the structure still safe?
Come on make a decision… and make it quick these people are choking…….
Ok Ok Ok!
Dam!
Come on!! Think!!
Right… ok
Decision made!
I do a double check… ask my partner…
Is it the right decision..?
Ahhh
I’m doubting myself,
Ahhh! there’s no time for this!
Come on get on with it…
Right! Make the call!
I try to radio down to entry control.
“Alpha Control Priority!”……
No response….
“Alpha Control Priority!”
Still No response….
Where are they… what’s going on?!?
“Alpha Control Priority!”
Did they answer… it’s hard to tell.. the signal is all broken I think I can just about hear something.
“Alpha Control Priority!”
Alpha control responds…
“Go a head with priority over”
Are they talking to me I can’t hear my call sign…
Pass the message
‘Alpha control
Alpha control “Message received”
Were they talking to me it broke up again…
Ok we really need to get out.
Let’s go!
Grab my arm.
Taking a casualty each we set off. Within two floors both of us had been pushed down one of the flight of the stairs by our casualties. They are screaming at us that they couldn’t breath.
We try to reassure them.
Stay with me!!
We are going to get you out!!.
Please stay with me!
Down and down we go… I hear a shout from behind me from my partner, the female casualty has become unconscious. My partner is now having to drag her down alone. I can’t help at this time.
Two floors later we find another crew making their way out. One of them is carrying a little girl. I hand off my casualty to the firefighter who has a free set of hands, please take him out I shout, we’ll be right behind you.
I turn to go but with that he hands me something I’d not seen initially.
Wait!
What!
Im handed a firefighters helmet!
This can’t be good!!
Why does he have this?
Where is the firefighter it belongs too!
As I turn round and go back up one turn of the stairs I see him.
He’s missing his helmet but he’s with my BA partner.
He’s got no helmet and no breathing apparatus.
Are you ok? Where’s your BA set!?
He’s given it to a casualty.. he’s coughing as he tells us, he’s delirious from the heat and smoke.
Still he tries to help carry the casualty! Helping others is still his first thought.
I shout at him.. Get down those stairs, get down to the bridgehead!
I take the casualties arms my BA partner has her legs.
We start down again.. round and round we go, hear the noise of crews working hard around us. There are still crews going up the stairs past us.
My BA pre alarm starts going this off…. this means one thing.. my air is running low.. similar noises are all around me.
Turning a corner we see a white helmet, it’s a watch manager in the stairwell we’ve reach the bridgehead.
It’s moved again. It’s now up on the 5th floor.
My partner takes the firefighter with no BA
The watch manager takes the casualties legs from her.
Walking backwards down another 5 floors and finally I’m on the ground floor but I can’t stop yet. I hand the casualty over. Then I’m off back up those stairs to the 5th floor.
Reaching entry control, now finally I can shut my set down and I take my mask off. Hoping for a deep breath of clean air…
ah nope!!
It’s not clean air in here, I suck in lung full of light ish smoke. It makes me cough and retch.
Still It’s clean enough to breath I guess. It’s better than the air higher up.
With my tally collected I find my BA partner. She’s with the firefighter we found and she’s administering him Oxygen. We’re off. We take him down and out with us.
As we get outside we are desperate for a drink of water, collapsing on the grass by the leisure centre. Someone see us and throws us some water I drink it straight down, its gone so fast it barely touches the thirst I have.
As I look up colleagues are all around us, tunics off their t-shirts soaked through with sweat, no one really able to talk.
All of us sat there looking at the building we’ve just come out of. It’s worse now! The fire is everywhere and fierce!
It’s hard to comprehend we were just in there.
We see a man in a high window trapped in his flat, we can hear the radio traffic. They know he’s there but no one can get to him… but crews are working hard trying to help him.
He’s there for a long time disappearing then coming back.
Slowly we catch our breath, we service our BA sets new oxygen cylinders on them we are ready to go again.
Recovering I go to find more water. At a cordon a woman pleads with me… crying and pushing her phone at me she says she has her friend
It throws me… I struggle to reply
Stay on the phone with her I say!
Tell her not to give up!
We are still coming.
We are still getting to people I promise.
No time to stop, don’t get distracted. I’ve got to get a drink and get back to it.
Time passes quickly, some people are given jobs while others have to wait to be tasked with going back inside.
He knows the risks we’ve taken but
He says he’s going ask us to do things that would normally be unimaginable.
To put our lives at risk even more than we already have.
Everyone is looking
we are ready for it! This is what we train for.
Those colleagues who a little while ago were collapsed and broken from on the grass from their first entry are back up, ready, stood in full kit waiting for their orders to go in again.
Now lots of things happened during the time I was outside. Some people were rescued alive, some, unfortunately,
People jumped, a mother threw a baby from a floor high up, caught by
All this time hour after
As the light broke and time passed we knew it had gone to make pumps 40, and that 20 relief trucks were ordered. So as the trucks with fresh crews arrived those of us that were there early on were starting to be swapped over.
We were told to find our crews and go to the debrief but no one was wanting to leave each and
So 19 hours after starting our night shift the members of Red Watch made it back to the Fire Station.
Time to try and rest.. in 4 hours time we will be on duty again.
We hand over the appliance to the Blue Watch. Tell them what equipment we
I swapped out my dirty fire gear so I’m ready for
I shower, but the smell of smoke won’t go away. I wash three times and give up.
I’m beyond tired but I cant sleep.. there’s
I think I need a drink!
I go out to the local pub with colleagues. I order a shandy, I’m back on duty soon.
As we sat with our drinks we don’t really talk.
Sitting in almost complete silence, each lost in thought trying to begin to process everything that’s happened. Yet we are aware of the people all around us laughing and joking with friends, enjoying their drinks in the sun. Oblivious to what we’ve seen, unaware of what we’ve been doing all night.
I’ve no appetite but I know I need to eat. We go to and get some food but it’s hard to concentrate.
We go back to the fire station, there’s no time to get home. I find a bed in the dorm room and eventually manage 45 min sleep before I wake up. Wash my face, get dressed and I’m ready to report for roll call, ready to do it all again.
After all that I want to ask you this.
When you see emergency services workers plastered on papers or on the news being slated by the mainstream media, or sometimes missing from a story or
“what! they can’t do that! I’m paying their salary!”
“They should be doing something else!”
Stop! and Think!
Take a minute to consider what that person might
When you see big incidents like this on the news, stop… take a moment think about the thousands of incidents that are attended every year by blue light services that don’t make the mainstream media either because they don’t sell papers or give the right message for the current political agenda of a particular party.
Maybe it is because they are only small or maybe because they are not considered news worthy enough.
Maybe they do make the news its because something went wrong and then it is reported so someone can be blamed. Reported on so some MP can say
Regardless of what they do, regardless of what the job is,
So If you see us out and about please show us you’re support, show us you’re thinking of us and appreciate us by giving us a smile or a wave and if at some point we ask for your support or go out on strike know it’s not because want to it’s because when we say things like cuts are dangerous we are doing it for the right reasons, because ultimately it’s you we are looking out for, it’s the people we serve that unfortunately suffer from government cuts’.
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Entering Grenfell that night must have been like entering Hell itself. The emergency services have my utmost respect and admiration for your sheer courage. Ignore the detractors, they haven’t got as much courage in their whole bodies as you have in one finger. Hats off to you all.
An horrendous experience for all involved, massive respect to all our firefighters and the other emergency services. You guys & gals have to deal with situations which are beyond many peoples comprehension let alone courage for what you do. Yes you are highly trained but there are things that you can never expect to occur yet you take the situations as they come and act and even commit your own lives to save others. We the people owe you all so much and it’s about time our government realized exactly what needs to be done and get extra money into the services and STOP reducing / cutting the budgets of these vital services. You are all heroes, and massive respect from a simple member of the public. Thank God you are around x
I have so much respect for our firefighters, it’s sad this man had to account for his actions and those of his men and women. I will watch this tonight and if anyone disrespects you and tells untruths i will be livid.the police force and ambulance people went beyond there duty that night and deserve medals, god bless you all.
Utmost respect for all emergency services that night. At the end of the day they too are human beings, just doing their job. They have as much right to live as the people they are trying to save but they put that aside when working and do everything they can for the benefit of others. Heros everyone of you.
Having been through all that there are those still fighting the Grenfell fire, some will never recover and will likely suffer PTSD until the day they die, some in all probability by their own hand. The lasting effects on responders family’s and friends will continue to be massively underestimated too.
I work with a former fire fighter and fire investigator, some of the shouts still haunt him many years later, but Shirley Towers is his personal horror. The truth about Grenfell, sub-letting, removal of internal fire-walling by residents to create bigger rooms, removal of fire-resistant kitchen doors and vandal damage will continue to be ignored by most of the press as it’s ‘victim blaming’, yet the responding services, as much victims as heros, are ‘fair game’ to attack. Time the ‘press’ walked a mile in fire kit doing the job before blaming the fire-fighters and other services doing their job, going beyond, day after day.
Makes you sick when maintream media uses the bravery of our emergency services as another pawn in their leftist propaganda.
These people put their own lives on the line and had to make snap decisions in a life threatening situation!
That dispatches program should never have been made – let alone aired!
As an American Fire Fighter I can tell you this account is exactly what it’s like for all firefighter’s everywhere. All of us dread the inevitable “Grenfell Fire” an I am proud of all my brother’s and sister’s that fought that horrible fire. I have read about some of the issues with this building and how it was constructed and it sounds all to familiar to me. Fire prevention begins in the planning stages of construction, then it should be the main concern for every building owner, and lastly the city should inspect annually. Fire Services in Europe are some of the best in the world.
Whilst the fire fighters were doing this those people who now try to shift the blame for allowing inferior but cheaper cladding, not carry out checks on risers, not bothering with essential maintenance and host of other crimes slumbered comfortably on. They awoke with a collective shout of not me the next morning. I retired from the job some 20 years ago, due to the general political atmosphere all I see now is another Grenfell prevented by luck
you did what you can you are all heroes they cant blame yous for anything
Disgraceful reporting and false analysis from a television channel that appeases to the left wing section of this country and could ask a few questions myself about this tragedy that seem not to being asked at the farce of an Inquiry.
The fire brigade did their best, they didnt start the fire, they just responded in the best way they could risking their lives to save others. This programme is a disgrace.
When I saw the advert for the Dispatches program I thought it was disgusting that something like that would even be made. That the media would try to direct blame on the very people who saved lives that night is shameful. I won’t be watching it full stop. Thank you to all the fire services out there for the dedication and sacrifices you make.
I think you are such dedicated passionate professionals who put your life on the line every time you go out to do your job . You are true heroes who deserve 100% respect ✊..Thank you
The UK has a shameful media busily promoting the fluff of celebrity and equally busily smearing the works of the good , brave , honest and true. Those who fought that inferno in Grenfell Tower deserve only respect and gratitude . It is not the fire fighters who should be denigrated but those so quick to say ‘ it wiznae me ‘ when it came to the cladding and lack of sprinklers.
A phrase I have grown to loathe over the many years is ‘ lessons will be learned ‘ – what happened to a bit of foresight ? And lessons are NEVER learned.
I hope I never have need of the fire service but one cannot predict the future so I’ll thank them in advance for their courage and selflessness.
Thank you and your colleagues so much for what you did that day. And every day.
The emergency services DID NOT FAIL, infact THEY PUT THEIR LIVES ON THE LINE because of a bunch of reckless cunts at the council. Indeed it was the council of KENSINGSTON AND CHELSEA THAT FAILED. Greed and the bullying of tenants overtook common sense. By the way, when is the trial of the housing association and council leader going to take place? In my books that was corporate murder, not corporate manslughter.
Cant tell you what I think. I’ve read that with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. May God bless everyone of you.
I take my hat off to you all, you did not fail in your duties and did your very best thank you for being there and putting your lives on the line.
Maybe some people need to spend a day walking in your shoes then see what they say, respect to every firefighter.
I’m sure that every firefighter at the Grenfell tower fire did an almighty horrendously brave job in the hours spent fighting the fire.
It’s amazing that the fire was coming downwards when one would have thought that as heat rises the flames would shoot upards.
The report was very interesting and a true testament of what he and his BA partner and scores of others went through.
The council who allowed the flammable panels and themanufacturers of them should face muder charges as they must have known they were not fire retardent.
We wait to hear the outcome of the inquiry. The bad press vultures should hang their heads in shame and be prosecuted too for saying malicious libelous slanderous statements.