{"id":146789,"date":"2018-06-26T16:27:47","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T16:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/grenfell-inquiry-firefighter-in-tears-over-tower-footage\/"},"modified":"2018-06-26T16:27:47","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T16:27:47","slug":"grenfell-inquiry-firefighter-in-tears-over-tower-footage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/grenfell-inquiry-firefighter-in-tears-over-tower-footage\/","title":{"rendered":"Grenfell Inquiry: Firefighter in tears over tower footage"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>                                  <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Michael Dowden\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/F334\/production\/_102206226_de27-2.jpg\"\/>Image copyright                  Grenfell Inquiry<figcaption>Image caption                                      Michael Dowden left the room after the video was played                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">The firefighter who led the initial response to the Grenfell fire broke down in tears after being shown footage of the disaster at the public inquiry.<\/p>\n<p>The video shows people shouting to residents to &quot;get out of the tower&quot; as the blaze spreads.<\/p>\n<p>Recalling that night, Michael Dowden said he had &quot;never seen anything&quot; like it before and had &quot;no previous knowledge&quot; to help his decision-making.<\/p>\n<p>The hearing was suspended for half an hour after he became emotional.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Dowden, watch manager from North Kensington fire station, was the incident commander for about an hour at the fire, which killed 72 people last June.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Grenfell Inquiry: What five reports reveal<\/li>\n<li>Fire chief &#039;untrained&#039; in tower evacuation<\/li>\n<li>Grenfell Tower: What happened<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Giving evidence for a second day, he said he initially believed the fire was contained in flat 16 on the tower&#039;s fourth floor.<\/p>\n<p>But he began to feel &quot;uncomfortable&quot; because &quot;the fire was behaving in a way I&#039;d not seen it behave before&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>He said it was like a magnesium fire, &quot;sparking and spitting&quot;, adding: &quot;That&#039;s not something I&#039;ve seen before.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Mr Dowden, who has been with fire brigade for 14 years, was asked what he thought the material falling from the outside of the building was.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I didn&#039;t know at that point what I know now, in terms of flammable cladding...<\/p>\n<p>&quot;If we were aware of that risk and that hazard at that point as we are now as an organisation we would have put things in place, but I wasn&#039;t aware of this cladding material put on to the external envelope of the building.&quot;<\/p>\n<h2>&#039;Sensory overload&#039;<\/h2>\n<p>Mr Millett asked whether, when realising the fire was spreading across the exterior, the fire chief considered an &quot;evacuation&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Dowden said that would have been &quot;impossible&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I didn&#039;t have the resources at that time - we&#039;re looking at 20 floors above the fire floor with just six fire engines in attendance, one central staircase.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>He added: &quot;At that moment in time, things are rapidly developing and it is a very, very dynamic situation. I wasn&#039;t aware what was happening internally in the building.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I have never seen anything like that but it was almost like I was consumed by that because of the sensory overload.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The inquiry has heard the blaze was spread by the building&#039;s exterior cladding which Mr Dowden said he did not see when he arrived at the scene.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday he told the inquiry he was not trained to decide when to abandon the policy of &quot;stay put&quot; and evacuate a burning tower instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Grenfell InquiryImage caption Michael Dowden left the room after the video was played The firefighter who led the initial response to the Grenfell fire broke down in tears<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":146790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146789","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\/146789","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=146789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}