Christopher Secrett tells inquiry lift failed as he went to help girl on 20th floor

A firefighter at Grenfell Tower prepared to die when his oxygen almost ran out during the attempted rescue of a 12-year old girl because the fire lift failed, the public inquiry has heard.

Christopher Secrett, a crew manager at North Kensington fire station, placed himself in a corner of the smoke-logged stairs, so his body would not be in the way if he died, and tried to text his mother, the inquiry heard.

Secrett described how he was responding to a call for help for Jessica Urbano Ramirez on the 20th floor and had climbed with colleagues through thick smoke and extreme heat up 14 storeys.

They should have been able to take control of the lift but that failed and carried them only six storeys. If it had worked his air would not have run out and this was “one of the major faults” at Grenfell, he said.

Radio communications between firefighters in the tower also failed, he said. “I knew we were in trouble,” he told the inquiry. “It was just too hot and I was running out of air.”

Jessica was found dead on the 23rd floor.

Secrett’s testimony came on a day when the horror of what faced the firefighters in the early hours of 14 June 2017 became clearer than ever.

They described bodies falling from the building, including one that hit a firefighter and another whose leg came away from his hip when firefighters tried to move him.

John O’Hanlon described the scene as “absolute carnage” and like a war zone, likening it to 9/11. “We noticed somebody had jumped and landed on the playground,” the firefighter said.

“I had seen a blur and heard a thud. It was going so fast I knew it wasn’t a piece of debris. He landed around 10 metres from me.”

Secrett said he saw the same man lying in a garage where he had been put. His separated leg was next to him where he lay in a pool of blood.

“I remember one casualty I had was a young girl, she was roughly the size of a two- or three-year-old,” said O’Hanlon. “She looked to be of Somali descent. I believe she may have been dead. I laid her down and her eyes were rolled to the back of her head. That face will always stay with me.”

O’Hanlon told the inquiry that when he first got to the scene he was reminded of a hotel fire in Dubai he had seen on YouTube, but he said he had had no training in responding to such exterior cladding fires.

The London fire brigade knew about such fires because it had compiled a slide show about the risks of combustible cladding in July 2016, featuring the Dubai blazes, the inquiry previously heard.

O’Hanlon was one of the first to enter the fourth floor flat where the fire began and described how even though firefighters were pumping at least 240 litres of water per minute on to the burning plastic window surround the flames would not go out. He said the outside of the building was “roaring” like a burning gas main.

There were also “heated discussions” between firefighters over whether enough was being done to save people, said Daniel Egan, a fire safety manager who was responsible for relaying information from 999 calls from people inside the tower to the firefighters entering the building.

Egan said he had repeatedly told the firefighters at the bridgehead about two adults and two children inside flat 133 on the 17th floor, but believed they had not been reached, and described the response as frustrating.

Secrett, a firefighter for 19 years, said he had never experienced heat like he felt in flat 176, where Jessica lived with her family.

“At this point, the temperature just soared,” he said. “It went from what I would call normal hot to unbearable. I dropped to my knees and I think I actually lay down on the floor. I knew we couldn’t stay there. I crawled out and called to firefighter [David] Badillo that we had to get out of there.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest John O’Hanlon giving evidence before the inquiry. Photograph: Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA

“I grabbed his arm and told him I was running out of air so he was to stay with me and we needed to get out. The temperature got even hotter. I remember lying on my belly and it took me a while to get back on my knees. I thought it was going to flashover and go. Flashover is when the temperature increases and increases until everything in the room will self-combust.”

They were also with Chris Dorgu, a firefighter whom they lost in the heat and smoke as they started to descend, but neither man had the energy to call out for him.

“I looked at my gauge and saw I only had 15 bar left,” Secrett said. “I was in big trouble. I put myself in a corner of the stairwell because I did not want to be in anyone else’s way if I didn’t make it out. I tried to get my phone out of my pocket to text my mum but I couldn’t get the phone out.”

Dorgu emerged and they came down together “stumbling, falling and crawling trying to get down”.

After spending time in recovery, Secrett started carrying the dead and injured from the block.

“It was raining debris everywhere,” he said. “Someone had jumped out the tower. He hit a firefighter on his back. There were lots of people there who went to help so I continued to help by putting out fires. There were taxis and mopeds nearby catching fire.”

The inquiry continues.