London Fire Brigade failures at Grenfell Tower ‘caused extent of deaths’

The London Fire Brigade’s (LFB) failures at Grenfell Tower were “causative of the extent of loss of life” and even made matters “far worse,” an inquiry into the 2017 fire has heard.

Danny Friedman QC, who represents several residents and families of those who died in the inferno, told the Grenfell Tower Inquiry on Monday that the fire services’ failures were “shocking” and contributed to the deaths of 72 people.

It comes as lawyers make closing statements for the latest modules covering firefighting as part of the inquiry’s phase two, which is examining how Grenfell Tower came to be coated in flammable materials.

Mr Friedman said: “The depth of the failures of the LFB that contributed to this disaster was shocking.

“The brigade was incompetent and incapable at every level to respond to a fire that was extreme but foreseeable and was actually in breach of its duty under statute and policy.

Mr Friedman also called on the LFB to publicly declare and acknowledge its own responsibility in its failures in order to reclaim trust.

The LFB failed in six ways at Grenfell Tower, which were “all foreseeable, all preventable and all in their own way causative of the extent of loss of life,” he told the hearing.

Mr Friedman said the first of the failures was that “firefighters and managers remained in ignorance of catastrophic construction risks posed by cladding fires”, even though the risks were known about within the LFB and cladding fires were on the rise.

“Incompetent” risk assessments of the premises and the LFB’s “profoundly insecure” training, continuing education and preparation also contributed to the extent of the disaster, he said.

According to Mr Friedman, the LFB also failed in terms of “no developed thinking at all” when it came to supporting high-rise residential evacuations and because it also “tolerated inadequate fire ground radio communications”.

Finally, he said: “The control room was simply unable to cope with a complex incident involving multiple cause.

“The fire ground control could not coordinate properly and the result was to make matters worse, in fact, far worse.”

Mr Friedman also explained how each of the six failures were “foreshadowed” during the LFB’s response to the Lakanal House tower block fire in 2009, which led to six deaths.

“The repeat of these failures should be deeply unsettling to anyone who have studied the evidence,” he added.

Phase two of the inquiry’s hearings are expected to conclude in May.

A report on the panel’s findings of evidence heard during the second phase is then expected to be published at a later date.