Survivors of Grenfell slam fire brigade for advising them to stay indoors

Survivors of a massive fire at London’s Grenfell Tower criticize a fire brigade for advising residents to stay inside the tower.

In tributes from families on Tuesday, Paulos Tekle, who lost his five-year-old son, Isaac, in the blaze repeatedly asked for a reason why they had been asked to stay in their flat on the 18th floor until it was too late.

According to Tekle, the night of the fire on 14 June 2017, the children were asleep, but the family was woken by noise in the corridors.

“I rang the fire brigade and I was told to wait and that they would come and get us,” Tekle said on the sixth day of hearings to remember the victims.

“If I had not listened and left right away, Isaac would be here today. I called the fire brigade again and they told me to stay put.”

He added that at around 2 am, the fire brigade was at the door but told them again to “stay here and put blankets around the door frame. It was a further 45 minutes before they called and told me to leave right away.”

The family eventually left the flat, but their son died after getting lost in the smoke.

Emmanuella Trevisan is the mother of another victim, who died on the top floor of the Tower.

“I don’t feel hate but I feel anger inside me. I hope that will be a positive anger and I hope through this anger to find out the truth,” Trevisan told the inquiry.

The Italian architect Gloria Trevisan, 26, was there for her mother’s wedding anniversary when she died while being inside the tower.

In her last phone call to her family as the flames closed in, Gloria told her parents: “Be strong. I hug you. I love you.”

Trevisan said that whoever took the decision to put the cladding on the tower, should “feel in their conscience the pain and grief that was caused to all of us.”

Ahmed Elgwahry, the brother of another victim, talked about how he kept a phone line open to his sister and mother until the moment they suffocated, trapped by flames and smoke on the top floors of the building.

“The truth is that they were both trapped and there was no way out,” he said.

The fire erupted at the building which was a 24-story, 67-meter high tower block with 120 separate apartments in North Kensington, west London on June 14, 2017.

The cause of the fire, where many of the residents were Muslims, is not yet known and the deadly incident is under investigation.

‘500 residents died in London tower fire’

The death toll of London's Grenfell Tower inferno stands at 500, UK media is hiding the truth, according to DJ Ayla.

According to a local resident, British media censored the death of hundreds of people who lost their lives on that day. 

The more than 500 people unaccounted from Grenfell Tower fire died, Nadia, whose family name was not given, told Press TV in the same month.

Nadia said that only 76 out of some 600 people who were living in the building, were accounted for. 

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