It was payday – Emma Louise O’Connor and her partner Luke had treated themselves to a pizza and gone to bed in their 20th floor flat, only to be awoken by a fire alarm in the early hours. The date was 14 June 2017 and, 16 floors below Emma’s home in Grenfell fire, a fridge-freezer in Flat 16 had caught ablaze.
At 1.21 am – less than 40 minutes after the fire began – Emma, who has mobility issues, and her partner managed to leave the building, taking a smoke-filled lift down to the ground floor. They had escaped just before the blaze took hold across the tower block, engulfing the flammable cladding, in a tragedy that killed 72.
“I went into shock,” says Emma. “I remember being dragged away from the scene by my partner who took me to my mum’s nearby. Looking at the building burning, I couldn’t actually believe what I was watching.”
The memories of that night are still clear in the 35-year-old’s mind but, for her and other survivors – as well as the wider community in West London – the search for answers and accountability goes on.
On Wednesday, the Grenfell Inquiry will return its final report, focused on how the tower block came to be in the condition that allowed the deadly fire to take hold and spread. The phase one report, published in October 2019, focused on the events of that night and the response, but campaigners criticised the failure to take action on the back of its recommendations.
“Justice looks different to many people but, for me, justice has definitely not been served,” says Emma, who has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor’s guilt.
“I want to see them get rid of the cladding on buildings everywhere. I also want to see the government sort of shape up now and start giving funding back to our fire brigade which has been stripped of funding over the years.”
Damel Carayol, 61, was overcome with emotion as he talked about his cousin Khadija Saye and her mother Mary Mendy who died in the Grenfell Fire.
Khadija, aged 24, was a celebrated photographer of Gambian heritage, on the cusp of wide recognition for her work at the time of death.
Her mother, Mary, was a carer by profession and Mr Carayol fondly remembers her as a warm, family-oriented woman who loved to cook and take care of people. Sometimes Khadija would help her mother to look after the clients she’d care for.
“They both tried to escape,” Mr Carayold, who visited the scene after the blaze and retraced his late relatives’ final moments, told The Independent.
“My main thing was to go and leave a bunch of sunflowers in the tower on that day – on the eighth and thirteenth floors, where Khadijah and Mary were found – and to go through the journey that they must have gone through from their 20th floor flat.
“It was an extremely painful and difficult thing to do.”
Grappling with the void left in his family’s lives and the ongoing fight for justice has been a difficult process, Mr Carayol, a singer who lives in north London, explained.
“It’s a double whammy, trying to grieve and deal with what’s happened while fighting people who are trying to evade responsibility,” he said.
Damel criticised the inquiry’s structure, arguing that it has allowed those responsible to avoid accountabilty.
“Phase two should have been the phase one. Focusing on the firefighters and the response of the night – as was the case in phase one – is important but the causes and what led up to the fire should have come first,” he said.
“From that alone, my feeling is they’ve turned it around and allowed people who are responsible to get off the hook.”
Damel says he hopes the new Labour government will act on the report, adding: “There is hope about the report. I don’t think the inquiry can miss and not report on the crucial evidence that has come out. It’s what happens next. How will it be responded to? How will recommendations will be implemented?
