Five years and 21 days since the fire tore through the west London block, killing 72, public hearings recording the cause of death, last words and movements of the dead began with an account of eight people who died after fleeing to two apartments on the 23rd floor. . Coroner’s reports found that seven of them died from inhaling fire fumes or toxic fumes. The eighth, Mohammad Neda, 57, known as Saber, a driver originally from Kabul who fled the Taliban in 1998, jumped to his death, landing on a playground. She had avoided running away to stay with four women who had been excluded because two of them were disabled. Shortly before he died, he sent his brother-in-law a voicemail to say: “I’m leaving this world, goodbye.” The family of Rania Ibrahim, 31, an Egyptian who came to London in 2009, who died with her young daughters Fetia Hassan, four, and Hania Hassan, three, in neighboring flat 203, heard how the remains were found them together in the bathroom. Three neighbours, Gary Maunders, Fathia Ahmed and Isra Ibrahim, also took shelter in their flat and died. Details of their deaths will be heard from the inquest in the coming weeks. “Grown women had cordoned off the children,” Danny Friedman QC told the inquest. In a Facebook video, Rania could be heard saying: “The whole building is on fire and we are on the top floor.” He then wondered how they could get out. In a call to the fire service from the flat at 2.42am, the operator said: “The safest place for you at the moment is the flat” – but this was shortly after fire commanders lifted the strategy and “stay put” and began urging the survivors to get out. The hearings detailing the last moments of 70 of the victims of the disaster (excluding one dead child, Logan Gomes, and Maria del Pilar Burton, who died months later) are likely to last three weeks and serve the purpose of inquest hearings. Lawyers for the bereaved have raised questions about the conduct of the London Fire Brigade and a council landlord’s decision to house disabled people on the upper floors of a block of flats without an escape lift in the event of a fire. They also questioned the Home Office’s recent decision to reject the inquiry’s call for landlords to draw up personal evacuation plans for all disabled residents. The inquest heard that after his son and wife Neda had made a successful escape, he had stayed with Eslah Elgwahry, 64, and Sakina Afrasehabi, 65, who were both mobility impaired and had taken refuge in the family’s flat Neda. . Eslah was also with her daughter, Mariem Elgwahry, 27, and Sakina was with her younger sister, Fatemeh Afrasiabi, 59, who was visiting. Danny Friedman QC, representing families including the Elgwahrys, told the inquest that in 2015 Eslah informed the council landlord she was physically disabled but nothing was done to ensure she could escape a fire. He said the same lack of planning is related to other cases that will be heard in the coming days. He said Professor David Purser, a toxicologist and research expert, found healthy people “could have escaped flat 205 and gone down the stairs without collapsing” by 2.33am. But before that, when other residents tried to go down the stairs, “a male voice was heard shouting an order for the residents to return. That could have been a firefighter,” Friedman said. Mariem Elgwahry had tried to go down the stairs but other residents told her to go back up. “None of the firefighters present ever unequivocally yelled at the occupants of the stairwell to get out when they had the opportunity to do so,” Friedman said. Between 1:30 a.m. and 1:40 a.m., multiple calls were made to the fire department from people trapped on the top floor, but “there were no deployments to the floor for rescue purposes until 2:08 a.m.,” said Friedman. No one made it to the top floor. In the absence of help, Farhad Neda, Saber’s son, had managed to carry his crippled mother to safety down the smoking stairs, sometimes over the bodies of dead and dying people. “Saber told his wife and son that he would be right behind them as they left,” Imran Khan QC said. “Saber stayed behind to help the Elgwahry and Afrasehabi families… Their last sight of him alive was of him helping the women with the wet towels.” A sample of his blood showed that it was oily and had begun to separate as a result of smoke inhalation. He showed a carboxyhemoglobin concentration of 20%, which meant he was unlikely to make it down the stairs without collapsing. The investigation continues.
