Part 3 of 3
Dany Cotton is London Fire Brigade’s first female Commissioner and is one of the most senior fire officers in Europe. She joined the Brigade at the age of 18 and was just one of 30 female firefighters in London. Within 12 years, she had become the UK’s first female station officer and from there, steadily rose through the ranks to become London Fire Commissioner on 1st January 2017.
Throughout her career she has attended some of London’s most significant incidents. Just three months into the job, she attended the Clapham Junction rail disaster where 33 people died and she has also led crews at the Cutty Sark fire in 2007 and a 40 fire engine blaze near the Olympic Stadium on the evening of the London 2012 closing ceremony.
She has received a number of accolades. She was made Public Servant of the Year in 2002, was the first woman to be awarded the Queen’s Fire Service medal in January 2004 and won the Most Influential Woman in Fire award in 2015. She is National Chair of Women in the Fire Service, Strategic Advisor to the Local Government Association and National Counter Terrorism lead. It should be noted that her appointment as Commissioner of the LFB on 1 January 2017 occurred less than six months before the night of the Grenfell fire.
If one accepts the detail of the FBU report above concerning the ill-conceived deregulation by government of building and fire safety systems, the privatisation of building control and fire safety inspection regimes and the savage cuts imposed on LFB staffing, resources and funding, then one must also seriously consider how much reform and improvement Commissioner Cotton could reasonably have been expected to accomplish in so little time and with so little local or national government support.
As for her perceived ”remarkable insensitivity to the families of the deceased and to those who had escaped from their burning homes with their lives", perhaps it would be fairer and make better sense to judge Commissioner Cotton on her career record and on a more comprehensive reading of the evidence she gave to the Inquiry. Below I have quoted her at length in four paragraphs from her written submission to the Inquiry:
"Even though there may be a risk to firefighters, while we believed there was saveable life, we would continue to commit crews into the tower to fire fight and conduct rescue operations. The imperative was to save human life. The right to life is a basic function of human rights and we were servicing that human right. However, for the first time ever, I had an overwhelming continuous feeling of anxiety, of responsibility in committing firefighters into a building where I could not guarantee their safety. I've never felt that way before, and I have been in charge at hundreds of large scale operational incidents. It was a huge responsibility to know how many people were in there and that we were just going to keep committing and committing, even though there was a potential risk, but that was the decision we took."
"Something we had to bear in mind was that it was a terribly narrow staircase and that was then being compromised further by the presence of hoses, taking up space and forming a trip hazard, and by firefighters in breathing apparatus. We were trying to rescue people in effectively quite a small space so the plan was also about getting reasonable numbers of resources in there, in a timely fashion to get to those floors and to make best efforts to try and get people out. We also had to consider access and egress from the tower, not just for firefighters but also for those casualties we were bringing out. I was aware that there was more than one dead person on the stairs and that it was very difficult to get passed them. It just seemed like we had been doing it forever; forever committing crews in, forever helping people coming out
So we had to consider how we do that safely, how we then take them to the triage point for the Ambulance Service to then take them, and then make sure we're recording who's coming out at the same time."
"I was concerned by the number of people being evacuated from the tower who were walking the streets and who appeared not to have been swept up and in the care of Police or the Local Authority. I had spoken to a number of people when I'd walked back to the command unit, and they were wandering round in a complete daze having come out of the building, clearly in shock. I was really concerned that nobody had put them somewhere, not least of all for identification purposes. The Local Authority Liaison Officer from Kensington and Chelsea was there but they were completely over-whelmed by the volume of how much needed doing and how many people there were."
"It was overwhelming to see how many people had been committed into the fire and had clearly worked so hard. This is where I encountered several firefighters in floods of tears. A number of firefighters, not known to me, had physically burst into tears in my arms. I've never ever had that on the fire ground
Generally, firefighters will see a traumatic event, such as a fatality, but they will carry on dealing with the incident I've never seen people actually in tears on the Fire Ground like that, I've never experienced such an overwhelming volume of people absolutely physically drained and exhausted and in visible shock from what they had seen and experienced.”
Witness Statement - LFB - Dany Cotton MET00012492
Commissioner Cotton has been criticised by Chairman Moore-Bick, by the mass media and by some elements within the Grenfell Community, notably by members of Grenfell United (especially their leadership), who continue to excoriate her for what has been described by Moore-Bick as her "remarkable insensitivity" and by GU for what amounts to nothing less than dereliction of duty. Indeed some have called, not just for her resignation, but for her prosecution. As recently as 13th November ITV News reported on a meeting GU recently had with London Mayor Sadiq Khan in which they repeated their demands for her resignation. They are clearly continuing to conduct a vicious personal vendetta against her and against the senior leadership of the London Fire Brigade which appears to be, not just misguided, but downright vindictive.
From my reading of the four paragraphs above, quoted from her written evidence, Commissioner Cotton appears to me to be anything but 'insensitive'. On the contrary she strikes me as a sensitive, compassionate and empathic woman who takes her duties and responsibilities very seriously and cared deeply, on the night of the Grenfell Fire, for the welfare of her fire crews and for both the victims and the survivors of the fire.
When she said she would have changed nothing that the LFB had done on the night I don't believe she meant any disrespect but was just trying to be realistic and to pay tribute to her fire crews who had performed with such courage and tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds. I believe she was trying to say that was the best they could have done given the inadequate training and equipment they had to work with and the absolutely unprecedented nature of the fire which they had encountered and the odds that were stacked against them.
In closing I feel I should clarify one final detail. Those who have expressed a marked antipathy to Commissioner Cotton seek to hold her personally responsible for the delay, on the night, in suspending the 'stay put' policy. It is important that such people are properly informed and clearly understand that after 02.00am conditions in most lobbies and in the stairwell had deteriorated significantly so that by 02.20am they posed a risk to life. After 02.20am conditions had deteriorated even further, but not to such an extent as to create a completely impassable barrier to anyone who attempted to leave the building.
Dany cotton was 'on call' that night for only the most serious of emergencies. She was duly called out but was unable to reach Grenfell Tower until 2.50am. The decision to suspend the 'stay put' policy had been taken at 2.47am, just minutes before her arrival. She therefore played no part in the decision making process related to the 'stay put' policy.
ENOUGH SAID?
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