One of the last people to escape Grenfell Tower has claimed residents were bullied by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) during the refurbishment of the block, which had left gaps around windows that allowed his flat to fill with smoke.

Antonio Roncolato, who lived in flat 72 on the 10th floor for 27 years, was the first resident to give evidence to the public inquiry into the disaster, which claimed 72 lives. He described being trapped in the tower for more than six hours and said there was pungent smoke, like “you’re going into a gas chamber”.

Roncolato, a hotel worker, told the inquiry that before the fire residents were unhappy about plans to relocate gas boilers in the building’s corridors and that some were bullied into accepting what they feared was a safety risk.

He described how residents had meetings with the council landlord but “the TMO was very resistant to coming to these and when they did, the meetings were often tense and residents would walk out”.

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The TMO finally agreed to put some boilers in the flats, but “those residents who did not speak up … were bullied into having the new boiler installed in the hallway”.

Asked at the end of his evidence if he had anything to add he urged other people living in social housing not to accept decisions imposed on them by local authorities. He said they must be part of decisions made about their homes.

“We have to be happy as well,” he said. “Because after all we are paying our dues and it is our lives that … could be at risk like it happened with Grenfell.”

The building was refurbished with new cladding and windows in 2016, but after the building work Roncolato noticed a draught coming in around the closed windows.

He packed one of the gaps with plastic filler to stop the cold. He had asked the main contractor, Rydon, to sort it out, but got on with it himself rather than wait. The inquiry has previously heard that plastic fillers used around the windows in flat 14 (where the fire started) and the new cladding panels helped spread the fire.

He had gone to bed before 10pm. The fire started shortly before 12.54am, when the fire brigade was called, but he was woken at 1.42am by a call from his son.

“Christopher was crying and said ‘get out of the house, the tower’s burning, I love you, Pappy, get out’,” he said.

On the ground he could hear some people shouting “get out” and other “stay put”.

“I did not know what to think.”

He heard a “clean, crispy crackling noise” like dry wood burning and flaming and smoking debris fell past his window. He dressed, packed a rucksack and prepared to flee.

When he opened his door “very, very thick smoke came billowing in and hit me in the face. It was pitch black. My eyes were stinging; I was almost crying. It was impossible to breathe.” His flat door was only two metres from the staircase but he thought he would die if he went out there. He went back inside and waited to be rescued.

When Christopher sent him a shocking picture of the tower on fire, he resolved again to try to escape but knew “one mistake would be fatal”. On the phone, a fire officer told him to wait. By 2.30am, smoke had started pouring through the bottom of a living room window and then another window. The windows were supposed to be airtight and he wet some towels to block the gaps. He was breathing in the smoke and his eyes were burning.

He then called his night manager at work to say he wouldn’t be able to come in as he was trapped. “He told me not to worry about work and ‘to get the hell out of there’.”

At about 4am he tried to leave again, but was beaten back by the smoke and could hear screaming and banging from the stairwell. Water started coming through his ceiling from the flat above where the resident had opened their taps.

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“I saw a fireman on a ladder or a platform at the same height as my flat,” he said. “He was directing water towards the top of the tower. I initially thought he had come to rescue me, but he shouted it was too dangerous for him to come closer as debris was still continuing to fall from above. He shouted: ‘mate, stay put, someone will come and get you’.”

“I kept thinking if I remained calm and acted rationally that I would come out of this alive,” he said. Roncolato even ate the porridge he had set out for his breakfast to keep up his strength.

Just before 6am two firefighters knocked on his door. He put on swimming goggles, zipped up his jacket and one of the firefighters covered his head with a wet towel and led him downstairs.

“It was such a relief to finally make it to the bottom of the tower,” he said. “The two firemen that rescued me immediately turned back around and started going back up the stairs. I did not get a chance to thank them.”

Maria de Fatima Alves, a mother of two who was outside the block when the fire began, told the inquiry that “people’s lives could have been saved if they were evacuated”.

At about 1am firefighters recommended that her husband and children, Tiago and Ines, stay in their 13th-floor flat. She couldn’t get through to them on the building intercom and “thank God” they were evacuated, she said.

She also called a friend, João, and urged him to get out and he too survived. When they were safe in a neighbour’s home she watched terrified as people at the windows shouted and screamed, waving mops and T-shirts out of the window.

“I often wonder if I had stayed at the tower and buzzed people to wake them up and get them out whether more lives could have been saved,” she said. “This guilt haunts me.”

The inquiry has so far obtained 26,000 documents relating to the night of the fire and 344,000 documents about the preceding months and years. These include 64,246 documents from the main contractor, Rydon, nearly 12,000 from the architects Studio E and nearly 28,000 from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. These papers will start to be disclosed in hearings later this autumn and into 2019, the inquiry heard.