‘I was threatened with arrest while searching for family members,’ says bereaved Grenfell relative

Earlier in the session, he recalled rushing down to the tower where he met his brother, Hisam, at the Westway Sports Centre to begin the search for his family. Cordons were going up in the area as firefighters were still tackling the fire. 

“It was the worst nightmare you could ever imagine and see,” he said.

After being unable to find information from the emergency services near the tower, he travelled to designated emergency centres, but was unable to find representatives from the government, council or Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), the building manager.

Earlier this month, Hisam Choucair told the inquiry that he had made his way to 11 different hospitals across west and south London. They were mostly unable to provide him with any assistance.  

His brother said that going to each place was like “repeated trauma”, as if those desperately trying to find out information about their loved ones were being punished.  

While giving evidence today, Mr Choucair became visibly upset on more than one occasion. He described how one of the key problems for him was not just an absence of information, but an absence of how to get information about his loved ones. 

“It was very unclear; it was so unorganised. You would think in a situation, in an emergency catastrophe, there is some form of plans, some sort of organisation but… everything was falling apart, and it was just so unorganised. It was so unhelpful. It was like we were trying forever, but with no help, or no sense of help or exactly what to do,” he said.

It would be weeks before Mr Choucair was formally told that his family members had perished in the fire.

In his commemoration to the inquiry in May 2018, he said in a video that the family had “died shielding, trying to protect the children by having them in the middle”.

Hanan Wahabi lived with her former husband and two children in flat 66 of the tower at the time of the fire. She lost her brother Abdulaziz Wahabi and his wife and three children, who lived in flat 186 on the 21st floor. 

She described the authorities’ response as her “worst experience ever” and the aftermath as a form of “torture”. She recounted escaping the building and being left at the scene “until it got light outside”, with very little help or information. 

She described hearing that her brother and his family had been placed on a safe list, indicating they had survived, only to find out later that this was a mistake. Ms Wahabi said the fact that there was no one there from any authority to support them or the wider community led to inaccurate information being shared. 

She recalled an interview with staff from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) after the fire as cold and lacking in both privacy and empathy. There did not seem to be a clear system in place for the allocation of emergency accommodation.

“It was a tick-box exercise,” she said.

The inquiry heard how Ms Wahabi remained in emergency accommodation, a single hotel room for her and her family, for 18 months after the fire. She said the impact on survivors and the aftermath of the fire would be generational.

“You cannot imagine what it is like having no one there to help you. To give you any glimpse or bit of information, anything, any strings to hold on to when you don’t know what’s happened to your loved ones. It’s torture. We experienced torture. The aftermath was torture. It was physically and mentally torturing,” she said.

However, Ms Wahabi thanked the charities and volunteers “who rushed to our aid from all over the country and the world; who were present and supported us in the best way they could”.

Earlier in today’s session, Zeenat Islam, junior counsel to the inquiry, read a series of observations from survivors and witnesses on the emergency response, and a summary from the community, voluntary and faith organisations. 

Ms Islam quoted multiple witnesses who described the response as having “no leadership” and “no coordination”. Peter John Murphy’s evidence was that “it just felt like responsibility kept on being passed around in a never-ending circle”.

Another witness described KCTMO as “silent” and “impossible to contact”.

The inquiry heard how the council did not have a disaster response plan in place for anything more than a bus crash on the high street, and even for that, community groups had not been consulted. 

A number of faith leaders described a “chaotic fog” with no coordination or oversight. It was the voluntary and faith sector, as well as individual volunteers, who “stepped up to fill the gap”.

Some witnesses commented on their interaction with ministers, including Theresa May, the prime minister. 

Manuel Miguel Ferreira Alves’s read-in evidence was that the government did not provide support in the immediate aftermath of the fire.

“I thought that things would change after Theresa May’s apology, and she promised to rehouse us in three weeks, but it all turned out to be a lie,” he said. 

Another witness said: “Even the prime minister, when she visited, avoided seeing the survivors, as though we were contagious. That is beyond comprehension, and shows a complete lack of responsibility, compassion and the complete failure of duty.”

Jason Miller described his interaction with Nick Hurd, the minister for policing and the fire service at the time. 

“I was speaking to Nick Hurd, and he was not paying attention to what I was saying. I felt like he was more of a mouthpiece for RBKC. I had the impression that he was there to sponge information from us while keeping an ear open for any points of interest for central government,” he said.

The inquiry continues.