Grenfell chiefs failed to discuss fire escape plans with disabled tenants, inquiry hears

Disabled survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire and relatives of disabled victims have claimed the council landlord knew about their conditions but failed to provide them with fire evacuation plans and still housed some on the building’s highest floors.

Hisam Choucair, whose mother, Sirria, used a stick and was among six of his family members to die in the June 2017 disaster, told the public inquiry he was “shocked that there does not appear to have been any consideration of my mother’s needs” when it housed her on the 22nd floor.

Shakila Neda, who lived on the 23rd floor with a muscle-weakening condition, claimed the council and its tenant management organisation (TMO) had known about her condition, but neither had “discussed fire safety with me after they became aware of my disability. They also did not discuss an escape route in the event of a fire.”

She was helped down the smoke-filled stairs by her son Farhad, who carried her part of the way. Her husband, Saber, died. Mahboubeh Jamalvatan, a disabled mother of two who lived on the third floor, said she had had to bump down the stairs on her bottom to escape.

Lawyers for the bereaved have described the fire, which killed 72 people, “as a landmark act of discrimination against disabled and vulnerable people”.

The inquiry has heard that 52 of the 120 flats had disabled occupants and that 15 of the 37 residents classed as vulnerable were killed. But on the night of the fire a TMO document only listed 10 disabled residents.

Michael Mansfield QC, who represents several of the survivors and bereaved, has said the failure to facilitate evacuation of disabled people was one of two “principal failures as responsible persons” by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and its TMO. The other was the absence of working fire doors on some of the flats.

Maher Khoudair, a ninth-floor resident who suffered polio, told the inquiry he “did not understand why there was no escape route suitable for disabled people as I could not run or walk through the stairs as easily as other people”.

“The council or the TMO did not give me any fire safety information,” he said. “The council did not prepare any personal emergency evacuation plan for me as a disabled person on crutches to explain to me what I should do in case of emergency. In case of fire, I did not know what to do.”

An 11th-floor resident, Rosita Bonifacio, whose husband, Elpidio, is partially sighted and had mobility problems, said: “The TMO never spoke to me about moving to a lower floor in the tower. The TMO also did not offer to make adaptations to our flat to make it suitable for my husband and more accommodating for his disabilities. They never carried out any kind of assessment of our needs. It made me feel like they did not really care.”

The inquiry also heard how residents were treated when they raised complaints about other issues in the block before the fire, including faults with fire doors.

Betty Kasote, a nurse who lived on the seventh floor, complained in 2014 about her front door not closing so the TMO sent a workman who removed the closer.

“The person that did the work told me it was not an issue and that it was ‘causing complications’,” she said.

It was never replaced. Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the chairman of the inquiry, has already concluded: “Ineffective fire doors allowed smoke and toxic gases to spread through the building more quickly than should have been possible” and cited “the absence of effective self-closing devices, some of which were broken or had been disabled or removed”.

Kasote also said she had been treated as “a troublemaker” when she complained about water leaks into her flat.

“The TMO just got annoyed with me, rather than trying to sort out the problems,” she said.

When a repair man came to fix the floor, he had rushed the job, damaged the toilet so it could not be used, ripped a PVC step and took away her rolled-up rug, which was never returned, costing her hundreds of pounds to replace. During the refurbishment workmen had broken some of her furniture and left paint on the floor.

The inquiry continues.