Counsel for firefighters at inquiry into disaster rubbish claim of ‘unconscious or some conscious racism’

Firefighters have strongly denied claims by a lawyer for some of the Grenfell Tower survivors that the way they responded to the blaze was affected by racism.

At the public inquiry into the disaster, counsel for the Fire Officers Association (FOA), the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and London fire brigade rubbished the allegation from Imran Khan that there was “unconscious or some conscious racism” in the way firefighters responded to the blaze in the tower, which was home to a diverse community of people from all over the world as well as the UK.

On Tuesday, Khan, representing 27 bereaved survivors and residents, said: “The use of … stereotypes, including in one instance referring to someone as ‘foreign’, in the statement of the firefighters on the face of it suggests unconscious or some conscious racism.

“We simply ask the obvious question: did it have any impact on the way individuals were treated that night?”

Play Video 2:33 Video timeline shows how the Grenfell Tower fire unfolded

Martin Seaward, counsel for the FBU, said “that suggestion is offensive, it is wrong and it is unconstructive”.

Louis Browne QC, counsel for the FOA, said: “Issues of race, social class and religion played no part in the decision-making and actions of the firefighters who attended the fire at Grenfell Tower that night.

“What did motivate their decision making and actions was the desire to do all they could to save the lives of those who were in the tower.”

The opening statements on behalf of the firefighters and operations room controllers, 126 of whom will give evidence in the coming weeks, stressed their courage and the trauma they have endured.

Browne described the “life-changing consequences for many of the firefighters that attended” and said they were “deeply affected by the fact that they were unable to do more to save those who died”.

Seaward said some firefighters may have been affected by metabolic heat stress without knowing it. He said this can impair cognitive function including executive decision-making, coordination and memory recall.

He invited the inquiry chair, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, to ask “whether the firefighters were put in an impossible position”, given the numerous failures in the building allowed the fire to spread through the cladding and into the flats and the failures of the fire doors and other prevention measures.

The inquiry also heard that firefighters were not trained in dealing with the way the blaze spread and there was no procedure for an emergency evacuation

The FBU said the evidence so far suggested firefighters had received no training in tackling a cladding fire, no training to spot breaches of compartmentation or to effect an emergency evacuation of a high-rise residential building.

The blaze that killed 72 people rose 19 storeys through the cladding in just 12 minutes, rendering the stay-put strategy redundant before 1.26am only 32 minutes after the first 999 call from the tenant of the fourth-floor flat where it began.

“They will never forget that night and some of them remain traumatised,” Seaward said. “The fire presented challenges beyond their knowledge, experience, training and procedures.”

The London fire brigade also questioned whether it was reasonable to “expect fire services to develop operational policy on the presumption that buildings such as Grenfell Tower are inherently unsafe”.

The failure to quell the blaze and the fact that the London fire brigade only started telling residents to try to evacuate at 2.47am will form a key part of the first phase of the inquiry.

There have been several well-known cladding fires in the UK and abroad, including at Lakanal House in Southwark, south London, where six people died in 2009, as well as in Dubai and Melbourne.

Stephen Walsh QC, counsel for the LFB, said: “The LFB is of course aware of breaches, and external fire spread and operational tactics have been applied successfully on many occasions. But is was the sheer scale of the failings that made it unprecedented.

“Those other fires were subject to their own specific facts and circumstances.”

All of the firefighter representatives stressed that the stay-put strategy was not their creation, but was based on the building design and was the responsibility of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

Browne also said ordering a full evacuation was not viable because the building was not designed to allow it, there was no communications system to do that, there was no firefighting lift, and the corridors were filled with toxic fumes and smoke.

“The inquiry may well be left in little doubt that these men and women acted with extraordinary courage that night, acted selflessly and at great risk to their own lives and did all they could to save lives,” he said.