{"id":146231,"date":"2018-06-25T14:26:53","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T14:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/grenfell-tower-inquiry-fire-chief-untrained-in-tower-evacuation\/"},"modified":"2018-06-25T14:26:53","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T14:26:53","slug":"grenfell-tower-inquiry-fire-chief-untrained-in-tower-evacuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/grenfell-tower-inquiry-fire-chief-untrained-in-tower-evacuation\/","title":{"rendered":"Grenfell Tower inquiry: Fire chief &#8216;untrained&#8217; in tower evacuation"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>                                  <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Michael Dowden\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/784E\/production\/_102189703_de54-1.jpg\"\/>Image copyright                  Grenfell Inquiry<figcaption>Image caption                                      Michael Dowden was the first incident commander on the scene when the fire began                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">The firefighter who led the initial response to the Grenfell fire said he could not remember receiving training about when to order the evacuation of a tower block.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Dowden was asked at the Grenfell inquiry about the policy of advising people to stay put in a fire.<\/p>\n<p>He said he had received no training on how to reconsider advice given to residents when a fire worsens. <\/p>\n<p>Victims&#039; families criticised the stay-put advice given to residents.<\/p>\n<p>Most high-rise towers are designed so fires can be contained in the flats where they start, but this did not happen at Grenfell Tower, where 72 people were killed last June.<\/p>\n<p>One expert has said the fire service should have abandoned its advice to residents to stay in their flats much earlier than it did.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Grenfell Inquiry: What five reports reveal<\/li>\n<li>Why was &#039;stay put&#039; advice so disastrous?<\/li>\n<li>Why are people told to &#039;stay put&#039;?<\/li>\n<li>Grenfell Tower: What happened<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Counsel for the inquiry Richard Millett said according to policy, incident commanders &quot;should understand&quot; when an evacuation would be necessary and asked Mr Dowden what training he had for that situation.<\/p>\n<p>After a 17-second pause, Mr Dowden said: &quot;I can&#039;t remember any time when I&#039;d actually been on a training course that would facilitate that.&quot;<\/p>\n<figure>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/720x405\/p067zvzb.jpg\"\/>Media playback is unsupported on your device<figcaption>Media captionGrenfell Tower inquiry: What questions will be answered?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>He said it was &quot;very difficult&quot; to rehearse high-rise fire responses and the advice to residents was &quot;borne out of the way a building should behave in a fire&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Dowden, who has been watch manager of North Kensington red watch since February 2015, was the first incident commander on the scene when the Grenfell inferno began.<\/p>\n<p>He said he had not realised the tower&#039;s exterior cladding, which was the &quot;primary cause&quot; of the fire&#039;s spread, could act in such a way.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Dowden was also asked about a familiarisation visit he and his crew made to Grenfell Tower in February 2016.<\/p>\n<p>He said he did not familiarise himself with the tower&#039;s construction, escape routes, sprinklers, radio blackspots or vulnerability of residents.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Dowden was also asked if he looked at the cladding.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;That&#039;s something I didn&#039;t look at,&quot; he said, but he added: &quot;Knowing what I know now, that is certainly something I would look at.&quot;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Grenfell InquiryImage caption Michael Dowden was the first incident commander on the scene when the fire began The firefighter who led the initial response to the Grenfell fire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":146232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}