Grenfell: Building a Disaster - Ep 8: The Smoke

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry Podcast

BBC

News

4.8 • 627 Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Ed Daffarn opens his door in the early hours of the morning of the 14th of June 2017, he is confronted by a wall of thick acrid smoke.

As the combustible cladding and insulation burned, smoke gathered rapidly in the hallways and stairwells of Grenfell. It prevented many residents from leaving their flats - and ultimately, it is the smoke which killed those who died in the tower.

The reason this smoke spread so quickly through the building is due to one small detail, which could easily be considered as inconsequential, but on the night of the fire was far from it.

Presenter: Kate Lamble Producer: Josephine Casserly Production coordinator: Janet Staples Audio engineers: James Beard and Gareth Jones Story consultant: Simon Maybin Editor: Penny Murphy

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:08.2	I was first aware that there was a fire
0:10.7	when I heard my neighbour's smoke alarm going ping, ping, ping,
0:16.0	at about 110, 115 in the morning.
0:24.6	Ed Defan had only just got to sleep. He'd been up late listening to the radio. Groggily, he thought the noise was probably nothing too serious. And in fact, I didn't
0:30.3	get out of bed. I just stayed in bed. And then maybe five or ten minutes later on, I heard some
0:36.2	shouting from the communal area
0:38.1	outside my front door. Ed lived on the 16th floor of Grenfell Tower. Just 20 minutes earlier,
0:44.1	residents in a flat 12 stories below had called 999 when they found a fire in their kitchen.
0:50.1	Since then, things had moved fast.
0:52.3	I went to my front door, expecting to find my neighbour outside,
0:56.9	just apologising for burning some food or whatever.
1:00.2	And as I opened my front door, this just thick, acrid smoke just confronted me.
1:14.7	This is the story of a fire which killed 72 people.
1:17.9	A fire both foreseeable and preventable.
1:22.6	And what it tells us about the people and policies meant to protect us.
1:26.6	I'm Kate Lamble from BBC Radio 4.
1:29.6	This is Grenfell, building a disaster.
1:34.6	Episode 8, The Smoke.
1:43.0	I mean, I literally opened my front door a matter of inches, saw this like absolute wall of smoke,
1:45.0	closed my front door and then my feeling was like my heart just absolutely sunk.
1:49.0	I got this kind of like feeling of like fear.
	...

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