Two emergency chiefs who supported Grenfell survivors in the days following the disaster have spoken out for the first time about the chaos of the relief operation following the fire and the failures to learn lessons from it.
Rupinder Hardy and Philip Lee-Morris, managers at Ealing council at the time of the fire, were drafted in as part of the Pan-London Emergency Response in the days after the disaster, when it became clear that the response from Kensington and Chelsea council (RBKC) was inadequate. They have not been called to give evidence at the public inquiry into the disaster.
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Lee-Morris said: “Learning opportunities are being disregarded for fear of further reputational damage to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.”
Hardy, Lee-Morris and their team were drafted in three days after the fire. Both were part of a 200-strong team from Ealing and took over responsibility for the Westway sports and fitness centre, which had been turned into an emergency rest centre for residents displaced by the fire.
When Hardy and Lee-Morris arrived at the rest centre just before 7am on Saturday 17 June last year, about 27 people were sleeping there.
“It was chaotic,” said Hardy. “There appeared to be lack of overall leadership. Standard response procedures should have been implemented, but we couldn’t see any sign of that. So over the course of the weekend we established an operation which started to meet the urgent needs of those affected, from access to donations and services such as housing to NHS support, legal advice and financial aid.
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“What was needed was strong, compassionate and empathetic decision-making that had survivors at its core,” Hardy continued. “The volunteers were doing everything to support the survivors and the community. Together we wanted to turn this from an area of conflict and mistrust into a rest centre survivors would want to come to and where we could meet people’s needs.
“Things like getting outdoor tables and chairs set up for the iftar meal so Muslim residents could break their fast together during Ramadan, helped to build trust.”
The decision to change the management from one borough to another is without precedent in this kind of crisis. In the space of 12 hours the Ealing council team drew up a detailed internal document entitled Grenfell Assistance Centre, Standard Operating Procedure, a document that under normal circumstances would have taken months to put together.
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It had to be done so hastily because there was no existing emergency plan in place to deal with the immediate aftermath of a disaster on such a scale. The document was the blueprint used by other local authorities who subsequently took control of the centre on a rotational basis after Ealing left.
Hardy was later seconded to RBKC for several months to work with Grenfell survivors and residents. She said she had sent her report on lessons learned from managing the immediate aftermath of the disaster and providing meaningful support to survivors many times to officials at RBKC but had received no response.
Loubna Aghzafi, a key community volunteer who supported survivors, said: “After so many broken promises, a year on I don’t believe the various entities have learned from their mistakes.”
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The survivors’ distress and grief was compounded by what they saw initially at Westway: lots of police tape around the rest centre making it look like a crime scene, along with police riot vans parked outside. Hardy and Lee-Morris asked the police to move both to make the centre look less threatening and more welcoming.
Lee-Morris overheard one official saying to a survivor trying to enter the rest centre, still wearing the burned clothes in which he had escaped from the fire: “What proof do you have that you’re a resident?”
He intervened saying: “Isn’t a charred T-shirt enough evidence?”
Aghzafi had collected donations and was helping to sort them in the street with hundreds of volunteers. “On day one when the tower was still burning, I took some donations and ended up at the Westway,” she said. “I attended one of the RBKC briefings that night and asked officials if they had anyone who spoke the languages that many people in the tower and the community spoke. When people are traumatised, they want to speak in their first language.
“The main reason I stuck around was because I could see how the bereaved, survivors and overall community were being treated. It was as if RBKC and central government had gone into complete shock and didn’t know how to handle this. As a result, the community and the volunteers dictated the initial emergency response. There was zero communication, zero empathy, no process and no procedures to deal with such a tragedy.
“I remember vividly begging one of the politicians to help bereaved families get news from hospitals about the missing and avoid them having to run around town with no news being shared. The bereaved and survivors were not cocooned – that should have been the role of the state.”
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Hardy and Lee-Morris said they did not see any previous situation reports recorded during the first three days. They began recording everything in twice-daily situation reports dealing with everything from low-key visits by singers Adele and Marcus Mumford to ordering sofas so survivors could relax inside the rest centre, and getting rubbish cleared. Officials from five different government departments arrived at the rest centre along with senior members of the royal family and local government officials.
There were rumours of a “rage” march and briefings seen by the Guardian at the time warned of anger among survivors on 21 June as tensions in the community mounted.
One family insisted on being rehoused together. The case was flagged as “politically/reputational sensitive” while another had been told to return to their home near Grenfell Tower despite witnessing the whole fire and some bodies falling from the tower. Some staff from RBKC were noted as “still abrupt with victims and volunteers”.
Lee-Morris said: “Residents were not treated as if they were the most important people but as a temporary irritation.”
He said that some hotels refused to take in survivors even when they still had vacancies. “One hotel manager said to me: ‘How many more of these people are we going to have in here?’”
Hardy said: “I hope that something like this will never happen again. But if it does I would certainly volunteer my time again. I couldn’t do anything to take away the pain, loss and suffering of the tower fire tragedy from people, but I did what I could to offer comfort and to help when people needed us most. We couldn’t reach everyone, but we did our utmost to help those that came to Westway.”
Aghzafi echoed her sentiments. Despite her reservations about the response of RBKC and central government she praised the response of the community and ordinary people.
“I saw the best and the worst of humanity. There was an outpouring of love for this community, a community who had to fight for so much before the fire and after it. I think history will remember most the community response, the ordinary people from all over London and other parts of the country who ran to the area to offer support.