Grenfell inquiry: Firefighter stopped man from 'deadly' climb

Thomas Abell was one of the first firefighters to arrive at the building on the night of the fire

A firefighter has told how he persuaded a man not to attempt an "impossible" climb down the outside of Grenfell Tower to escape the fire.

Thomas Abell noticed a resident in an upper level flat who had tied bed-sheets together which he was going to use to rappel down the building.

He shouted to the man until he was satisfied he was not going to exit via the window, an inquiry heard.

Mr Abell has since met the man, Oluwaseun Talabi, who ran to safety.

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Mr Abell said climbing down the building would have been "an impossible and deadly task".

"I was concerned for this male's safety, and I also did not want other residents to follow this male's example of trying to rappel his way down the side of the building," he wrote in a statement published at the public inquiry.

"At one point this male was on the window sill of his apartment.

"I shouted as loudly as I could, I instructed him to stay where he was and not to try and exit the building via the window."

Mr Talabi previously told the BBC how he was preparing to climb down from the 14th floor on the makeshift rope of tied-together bed-sheets, with his four-year-old daughter on his back.

He later ran to safety through the stairwell.

Mr Abell also described how he helped rescue two men from a fifth-floor window using a ladder, which members of the public helped carry.

In his statement, he wrote how he "coached" one of the men on to the ladder.

He said: "Understandably this took a bit of time as it was a daunting experience for the male, but slowly he managed to climb on the ladder and descended."

People 'were going to die'

Justin O'Beirne, another firefighter, told the inquiry he was on the fifth floor of the tower and, by looking through a letterbox, saw the fire had spread to that floor.

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He said the fire "didn't seem normal" and the way it was behaving "didn't make sense".

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He said once he got up to the 11th and 12th floors he realised how serious the fire was because of the amount of smoke.

"I thought there would be people who were going to die," he said.

The public inquiry into the tower block fire in west London, which caused 72 deaths, is currently examining what happened when the blaze broke out last June.