Grenfell Inquiry day 26: poor signage hindered rescue efforts

The pattern of fire and smoke spread in Grenfell Tower was so inexplicable that one firefighter feared an arsonist might be at large, the inquiry has heard today.

Richard Hippel, a firefighter based at Kensington, said he had found the tower’s fifth had some smoke seeping from flats but “visibility was fine”, but then the sixth floor “was completely filled with smoke with zero visibility”.

He said: “I’d never seen smoke like that in a domestic fire and can only say its like smoke when tyres burn. It was the first indication I had this incident was something unusual.”

Firefighters were then told by a resident that his bed-ridden father required evacuation from the 16th floor.

Mr Hippel went there believing “there would be no smoke above 6th floor”.

Instead, he recalled: “In the lobby on 16th floor there was the same black smoke as on 6th floor coming out.

“It did surprise me. It was possible for it to travel up a shaft, but highly unlikely for that amount of smoke, so I knew there was something going wrong badly.”

Mr Hippel told the inquiry that finding a similar level of smoke 10 floors above where he had first met it - and with an unobstructed staircase in between - made him wonder if an arsonist was in the building, since he could think of no other explanation.

Firefighters were delayed by the building’s poor signage, with some floors showing no numbers in the stairwell or having this written up only in biro.

Crew manager Jarnal Stern said he had to pause several times to try to find out which floor he was on as he progressed up the tower.

He had been with Mr Hippel and said: “I was shocked by conditions on 16th floor lobby when I got there. I checked some lobbies on the way up and there was no smoke and the stairwell was clear.

“It shocked me that 12 floors above the [fourth floor where the fire started] there was smoke at that density and at that speed. It made no sense to me. You should not get that kind of smoke in a lobby, the compartmentalisation of flats should stop it.”

Mr Stern said the build up of heat and smoke was such that without suitable equipment “the only safe thing was to go down; if I had resources I would have gone up but I was low on air and water.”

He rescued someone from the 16th floor but in the confusion caused by the dense smoke it proved not to be the bedridden man, and the person concerned left unaided.

Harry Bettinson, a probationary Paddington firefighter, said he had been trained in exercises on dealing with tower block fires but had no specific training on either what to do if compartmentalisation failed or on dealing with burning cladding.