First senior officer on scene says it took him ‘half a second’ to declare major incident

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The first senior police officer to arrive at the Grenfell Tower fire has said it took him just “half a second” to declare it a major incident when he arrived on the scene, but the fire brigade took another 40 minutes to do the same.

Insp Nicholas Thatcher told the public inquiry that he made the decision as he saw flames coming from a flat window like a “jet engine”.

He added that he was concerned that people were not being evacuated quickly enough, but said of the fire brigade: “It was a concern, but they’re the experts.”

The inquiry heard an officer on the ground had suggested a “massive evacuation”, but Thatcher said he knew early on of the so-called stay-put advice – where people calling the London fire brigade (LFB) were told by operators to stay in their flats and wait to be rescued. And he said he has no idea how the building was still standing, adding: “We should all be dead.”

The LFB’s decision to change advice was logged at the scene at 2.47am and Scotland Yard issued a radio message to officers to give “instructions to people that are still inside the flats [that they] are to escape by any means necessary” at 3.10am.

But Thatcher said he had a feeling that not all of the officers had acted on the message, and he made the decision to issue a direct order to police on the cordons at 3.55am.

Giving evidence at the public inquiry in Holborn, central London, Thatcher became emotional after he was shown footage of the 24-storey building engulfed in flames on 14 June 14 last year that had been captured by his body-worn camera.

But the Metropolitan police officer said the full picture was not shown in the clip played on Monday, adding: “You couldn’t see what’s at ground level.

“At ground level, that green area was just full of broken firefighters.

“You couldn’t see the London ambulance service working on people in the corners. You couldn’t see the bodies ... when that came out we had lost.”

He added: “You knew it was a death sentence, you just knew. You could see them, sorry, you could still see them.”

Thatcher addressed the families of the 72 people who died as a result of the fire, telling them: “I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. The community as well, afterwards, from dawn onwards, what they did made everything else possible.”

The inspector, who has 24 years’ experience in the police, earlier described how he had taken the decision to declare a major incident at 1.26am, as he saw “a housing estate and the sky on fire”.

“I saw the fire for the first time and it was the intensity.

“It was like a jet engine coming out of this window and starting to go up the side. It was just like nothing I had ever seen,” he said.

“It’s a massive call to make. It took about half a second,” he continued.

“When you are looking at something, if you act people might die, and if you don’t people will die, you have clarity.”

Asked if he thought at the time the building should have been evacuated, he said: “In terms of going into the fire brigade and saying, ‘you need to evacuate this building’, they are the experts.

“Yes, it was a concern, but they’re the experts.

“I never thought, I need to go to the fire brigade and say, ‘you need to evacuate this building’.

“As the training was, you talk to them, you find out what they need and you do your best to allow them to do their job.”

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The officer admitted part of a policy to ensure emergency services were all aware a major incident had been declared was not carried out, but insisted it had not made a difference to the response.

“What I experienced on that night was one of the finest examples of teamwork I have ever been involved in,” he said.

“Yes, the niceties are missing, but the niceties weren’t important.

“What was important was something happened and we had to bloody well move or people would die.”