I hope the press and the public will show more sympathy and understanding for Michael Dowden, the watch manager in charge at the beginning of the Grenfell fire, than is shown in the Grenfell inquiry report (Fire brigade ‘was gravely unprepared for Grenfell’, 29 October). Firefighters work in dangerous and unstable conditions and are highly trained to deal with a wide range of incidents from dustbin fires to car crashes and chemical spills as well as fires in buildings, but that training is based on existing knowledge and experience.

No one on the ground that night had any experience of a fire like Grenfell. What else was a relatively junior officer to do other than follow the previously reliable “stay put” policy? Has the chair of the inquiry fully considered the possible consequences if children and the elderly had been told to find their own way down 24 floors in a toxic, smoke-filled single stairway?

The London fire brigade is a highly regulated organisation, and you could argue that, given the dangerous situations in which firefighters work, it needs to be. It should be recognised how difficult it would have been under the stress and pressure of a fire running out of control to change the “stay put” policy, and it happened when there was a senior officer on site with the authority to take the decision.

There is much the London fire brigade will learn from Grenfell, but to lay so much responsibility at the door of an individual lacks empathy and imagination, and is profoundly unfair.

Name and address supplied

• The London fire brigade is being scapegoated. The advice to stay put has always been the best advice in buildings built with four-hour fire resistance. As my husband, a retired fire officer, stared, stunned, at the television pictures of Grenfell, he kept saying “That can’t happen! That can’t happen! There are laws to stop that happening!”

Unfortunately, since he retired, the laws have been loosened and are no longer as strict. The guilty are those who chose to use flammable materials, especially in properties that have a single means of escape, without being pressurised or having air locks. I am shocked that people who spend their lives helping society are scapegoated in this way.

Sheila Myron

St Helens, Merseyside

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