A series of highly charged and emotional tributes to those who died in the Grenfell Tower fire launched a long-awaited public inquiry into the disaster as its chair, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, pledged that survivors’ testimony would be treated as “integral evidence” in proceedings which could run into 2020.
Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts and nieces of the dead were among those who spoke or provided statements about their loved ones as the inquiry began just over 11 months after the fire, which Moore-Bick described as “the single greatest tragedy to befall [London] since the second world war”.
Seventy-one people were killed in the blaze and its immediate aftermath and a 72nd victim died in January.
The family of Mohamed “Saber” Neda, a Kabul-born chauffeur who had lived on Grenfell’s top floor since 1999, played a harrowing recording of his last phone message as the fire took hold. He said in Dari, an Afghan language: “Goodbye. We are now leaving this world. Goodbye. I hope I haven’t disappointed you. Goodbye to all.”
Marcio Gomes, the father of Logan Gomes, the disaster’s youngest victim who was stillborn after his mother went into a coma, showed the several hundred gathered survivors, support workers, lawyers and journalists an ultrasound scan of his son and told them how he had been left “broken”.
He said: “I held my son in my arms, wishing, praying for any kind of miracle that he would open his eyes, move, make a sound. As we know that never happened.
“You don’t know what you are made of until you are broken,” he said, hugging his wife, adding: “Without her strength and courage I would not be here.”
The family of Mary Mendy, originally from Gambia, and her daughter, Khadija Saye, showed a short BBC film of Khadija at home in Grenfell talking about her art. She was a celebrated photographer who had exhibited at the Venice Biennale before she and her mother perished. When pictures of Grenfell tower were displayed, another victims’ mother covered her eyes.
“The pain is unbearable,” the family said in a statement read out by a solicitor. “There are no words to describe the emptiness that’s in our hearts.”
As Khadija Saye’s aunt, Betty Mendy, wept on the stage, a statement from her cousin Marion Telfer was read out. It said: “I hate night-times because night brings silence and silence brings tears of sadness, because that’s when I start to remember the blaze, the fire. There will be two empty chairs on the table for every birthday, Christmas and New Year’s, but they will for ever own a position in our hearts.”
The inquiry began at the Millennium Gloucester hotel in Kensington, three miles from the burned-out skeleton of the 24-storey London council block. Testimonies were often harrowing, bringing many of those present to tears.
There have been months of tension over the level of trust survivors feel in the inquiry process and the commemoration hearings were agreed to by Moore-Bick after representations from lawyers including Michael Mansfield QC, who argued they played an important role in the Hillsborough stadium disaster inquest. They will continue this week and next, with the majority of the victims expected to be represented.
Before the commemorations, Richard Millett QC, counsel to the inquiry set out how the fire started at just before 12.54am on 14 June 2017 in the kitchen of flat 16 on the fourth floor and that “within minutes the fire had broken out of the flat and into the cladding. By 1.29am, the flames reached the top of the tower and by 2.54am all four elevations were ablaze.
“Grenfell is not a lawyers argument or a scientific experiment,” he said. “Grenfell Tower was not a public space. Grenfell was home. Its flats were private and a supposedly safe space where individuals could live their lives. It was a human space for human lives, each unique.
“That is what a home is … It was a joined up community whose members worked, lived, played and prayed together … and many of them died together.”
The heartrending evidence was heard by an audience that included Elizabeth Campbell, the leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which owned the tower, and Commander Stuart Cundy of the Metropolitan police, who is overseeing the criminal investigation into the fire. Campbell looked harrowed by what she had heard as she left the first of what are expected to be six days of tributes.
“I want to bear witness and pay respects,” she told the Guardian. In a side room, she was buttonholed by Nabil Choucair, 43, who lost six close relatives in the fire. He remains in temporary accommodation, along with 71 other households who have not moved into permanent or interim housing. He said key workers assigned to them were “not showing compassion and care”. Campbell said she would try to help.
Some families were speaking publicly for the first time about their loved ones. Flanked by relatives, Anne-Marie Murphy gave tribute to her brother Denis, 56, a London-born father of one, who died on the 14th floor of Grenfell where he had lived since before 1997.
She recalled his last phone call at 2.52am as the flames rose, during which she and Denis’s son Peter had “reassured him we were on our way to him, not imagining we would never get to speak to him again”.
“We as a family feel strongly that there is no reason in the world why anyone should have death forced upon them in such a horrific way,” she said.
A handful of coins were the only possession of Murphy’s that could be recovered from his incinerated home.
Anne-Marie Murphy described her brother as the lynchpin of their family, adding: “His three biggest loves were family, friends and Chelsea football club. Not always in that order.”
Speaking afterwards, she said: “It has been a very emotional day for us with all the stories. It has been an honour to pay tribute to Denis publicly. It is the first time we have done that. We don’t want any of the victims to be one of the 71, to be a number and we have brought them alive today by being able to pay tribute to them.”
David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham and a friend of Khadija Saye, said he spoke to her father by phone after her family’s tribute. “He was watching on TV and he was moved and reassured his daughter was brought to life in the room,” he said.
The shortest contribution came from Sam Daniels, who spoke for 17 seconds about his father, Joseph, who had lived at apartment 135 at Grenfell since 1982. He requested that no one clap afterwards, as happened with some of the other commemorations.
“The events of that night took his life and all trace of his existence in this world,” he said. “He never stood a chance of getting out. It should never have happened.”
The first phase of the inquiry is due to run until the end of October, with evidence from experts and firefighters before an August break, and testimony from survivors and local residents from September.
A second phase, examining the refurbishment and the decision-making that led to the fire, will not begin until at least November.