Towering Inferno

The devastating fire at London’s Grenfell Tower killed scores and shocked a nation. This is the story of what it felt like to fight that fire, to be caught in it and to flee for your life.

- Tom Lamont

THE FIRST PHONE CALL to the emergency services came through from Grenfell Tower at 12:54 a.m., on 14 June 2017. A faulty fridge had set fire to a resident’s kitchen on the fourth floor. By 12:56 a.m., two wailing fire trucks from North Kensington station were on the way.

Grenfell was just over a kilometre away. When the trucks pulled up by the tower, there was no indication, yet, that a fire burnt inside. The men unloaded coils of hosing from the trucks, tapped hydrants for water and prepared to enter the building.

Accidental fires in concrete high rises are routine events. If the buildings are constructed and maintained with a proper respect for and dread of fire, the outbreaks are easy to control. Firefighters respond to the call, get in quickly, isolate the fire on the floor and put it out.

Firefighters entered Grenfell Tower and went up to the fourth floor, passing residents on the stairs who’d been woken from their beds by the commotion and the smoke. Two firefighters wearing breathing apparatuses broke down the door of the afflicted apartment and trained their hoses on the flames. They doused whatever burnt.

Downstairs, in the lobby, veteran firefighter David Badillo carried in extra equipment from the trucks. The 44-year-old cyclist and marathon runner had served in the district for 17 years. Before he became a firefighter he had been a lifeguard at a nearby swimming pool and he knew people who lived inside the tower. In firefighter terms Badillo was “busy”, meaning he combined a degree of cheek with an eagerness to be in first on anything dangerous. He was a doer, a helper—a hurl-himself-in-er.