#4 - Grenfell: Response and Recovery

Ricky 00:00 

When I started to go up the building, I knew that I wasn't going to come out. Well, now I'm out, I'm alive. And then my brain goes, but you were willing to not be alive. 

Maan 00:22

Hello everyone and welcome to Prelude, where we share extraordinary stories from everyday people.

What we’re aiming to do in Prelude is to seek out diverse perspectives, from the people who we might not get to meet or hear from every day.  

And in this episode, we hear from Ricky Nuttal.  

Ricky is a firefighter with the London Fire Brigade and was one of the more than 250 firefighters who were called to the fire at Grenfell Tower on the night of the 14th June 2017. 

For those of you who might be listening outside the UK and might not be familiar with this incident, the fire at Grenfell in London was the most devastating residential fire in the UK since world war two.  

It claimed the lives of 72 residents and injured a further 70, and three years on, the incident is still subject to an ongoing inquiry - 

And we’d like to take this opportunity to extend the families and friends of those who lost loved ones that night our deepest and most sincere condolences. And out of respect to everyone involved and affected, we have tried to ensure that we have approached this story with the utmost sensitivity.

Before talking about the events at Grenfell, Ricky shares his upbringing and ambitions to become a firefighter, the intense training that firefighters go through and the unpredictable day-to-day life of a fireman.  

He speaks about how events unfolded for him and his colleagues on the night of the fire and gives a moving account of his role that night.

Ricky also talks candidly about his struggle with PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in the aftermath of events at Grenfell, and about how to cultivate mental strength in the face of adversity.

Why does this story matter now? Why is it so important?

We often take for granted our frontline service personnel and their unheard voices and stories. When in fact they’re the people who help manage, combat, heal, protect, and save us from the dangers and challenges we experience and face in our world.

And it’s so rare to hear the personal experiences of these brave people, to really get into their minds. Like, what made them who they are? How did they come to be in that frontline position? How do they handle the thoughts and feelings that arise during and after the events they encounter daily? How’s their mental health keeping?

It’s so important, and they’re all around us, going about their jobs and their duties, we should take care of them as much as they take care of us, and I think this could start by just listening to them.

We want to warn listeners that this episode contains content that some may find distressing. 

This is Ricky’s story.

Ricky 02:57

My name is Ricky Nuttall. I'm 39 years old. And I'm from London.

I'm a firefighter for the London fire brigade, Now. I've been doing the job for about 15 years coming up for 16 years. It's something that I always wanted to do as a kid from a very young age. 

Like lots of children, I had a mild fascination with fire engines, it seemed like a really exciting job. And it seemed like the kind of job where even to an adolescent mind, I would be in a position where I could help people. 

And that's always been in my nature to help people. So I figured if I can do that in an exciting way, and get paid to do it, and play around fire engines and hoses and squirt water and stuff, hey, why not? 

Outside of work, my life's kind of quite varied really, I would say my main passion is playing football. Sadly, I've only reached the dizzy depths of Sunday league. 

I would like to have played at a high level at some point. But sadly, my eye to foot coordination didn't allow for that. So, Sunday league it is.

But I really enjoy playing football still. Even at the age of 39. It's still satisfying. If I can keep up with the 19 and 20 year olds on a football pitch, I get a real sense of satisfaction out of that. 

Other than that, I weight train. I've always trained since I was about 14 years old. My granddad actually used to be a strong man in like a traveling - I guess you'd call it - like a traveling show. That's where he met my man. She was a tiller dancing girl, I classy dancing, not pole, I hasten to add. And my granddad was like a strong man. And they did this balancing act and stuff. 

So he got me into fitness and weight training. When I was about 14, I sort of wanted to do it. So he showed me some things. So I've always done that, kept myself in shape. 

Other than that, I've done a bit of boxing for London fire brigade been quite successful, if I don't say so myself, I've always enjoyed, it mostly wins. 

A couple of reminders of why you need to train hard before you get in the ring and get punched in the face by someone. They were the two losses. But other than that, fairly successful. 

I'd say like away from physical stuff. I actually write poetry as a sort of catharsis for general trauma that I take on through the job, every incident you go to as a firefighter, has the potential to leave what I guess what I'd call a watermark on you. 

And you can ignore it, or you can process it or you know, everyone deals with these things in different ways. And for me, it's writing.

05:41

In terms of my daily role, it is really so hard to explain to someone an average day because it just doesn't really exist in the fire brigade. You don't have an average day. 

The way I get around this problem, the way I explained to people is this; If you have a medical emergency, you'll call the ambulance service. If you witness a crime or involved in a crime, in whatever way you would phone the police. 

For absolutely everything else. It's the fire brigade; toe stuck in a tap, fire brigade, hand stuck in a toaster, fire brigade. 

People don't realise the scope of work. And at my station particularly well my station and four others in London. 

We're technical rescue centers. So the scope for work is huge. We will do rope rescue, abseiling work. 

The reasons we'll get called out for that stuff could be someone has decided that they want to end their own life. So they'll get into the position. They'll go to do it. They'll change their mind, then ironically too scared to come down. So we'll have to go up, put them in a safe rope system, lower them to the ground. 

That's one example, a lot of things would be crane rescues with crane operators having had heart attacks, things like that.

In terms of the type of person you need to be to be a firefighter is really difficult to say, because I don't think you know what type of person you are, until you are a firefighter. I think the training process teaches you a hell of a lot about yourself.

You never really know how you're going to react when you're confronted with a situation where I don't know, it's a car crash, and someone's had a leg torn off. You can't there's no, you can't train for that. 

It's the case of either you can cope with it or you can't. And unfortunately, you don't really ever find out those things until after you finished your training. That's the case of you know, you get to your station that you're allocated, and you slot into your watch, you start work, and you see how you go. 

And you have to just hope that you are the kind of person that can cope with stuff. And you have to believe in your own abilities. And I suppose really importantly, you have to be aware of your limitations as well, because we all have them.

And the people that wear their blinkers, and believe that if they tell themselves, there i’ll Okay, enough times that they will be okay. They're the people that you need to look out for, because those people will end up in a bad place. 

So what type of person do you have to be, you'd certainly have to have empathy, you have to care about strangers, which sounds like a really obvious thing. But it's actually for a lot of people quite a hard thing to do. 

I have been in situations where I have genuinely thought that I was going to lose my life or being prepared to lose my life for an absolute stranger that I've never met. And that isn't because I'm a hero, or because I'm any better than anybody else. 

That's just because that's my job. And that's what I'm prepared to do. But the actual training process itself is pretty brutal, really, because you come in off the street with no knowledge of anything. It's such a unique environment to work in. 

It's bespoke, there's nothing else out there like it. It’s not like you can be doing a job for 10 years and then go “I’ll join the fire brigade, it's fairly similar.” No, it's not, there is no similar job. 

So irrespective of the environment you come from, you're turning up to a training center, that's when I came through training was quite militarised, still, you have to refer to your instructors as ‘sir’, you had to march, you had to parade. 

And there are lots and lots of elements of it, that we're still quite military or military based. So it's a real baptism of fire, and you're learning like so much information has been thrown at you out of the out of nowhere. 

And you're having to retain it and retain it and practice it and drill it. And it is hard, you're learning stuff mentally, you're learning stuff physically. And you're being pushed physically from a training perspective, in terms of your cardio fitness, and weight training, and circuit training, and all of these things that are making you do because, obviously, it's great, having a knowledge it’s great having a technique, if you don't have the fitness, to get there, to use your knowledge and implement a technique, then you're largely you know, you'll be fairly worthless. 

So you need to have the trio of things all working in unison, and 16 weeks seems like a long time. But when you're being bombarded with stuff from day one, equipment you've never seen or heard of. And you have to learn policies, procedures, you have to learn first aid, you have to learn about building construction signs and symptoms of building collapse. 

You have to learn about water, the dangers of water, you have to learn about fire behavior, fire science, you have to learn about chemicals, how they react to fire, you have to learn, I can go on forever, so much information. 

And you have to kind of like driving a car, you have to learn enough to be competent enough to not kill yourself or somebody else when you get outside and you get to your station. And once you're at your station, that's when you learn how to be a firefighter. 

11:23

I think it's important to understand who you are as a person at any stage of your life. And the hardest, to my mind anyway, the hardest person to be honest with is yourself. Because you have to face some uncomfortable truths about your flaws. 

And you have to sometimes feel a bit or be a bit arrogant in the promotion of your pluses of your positives. We should celebrate our positives. 

You know, if someone graduates from university and gets a degree, what do they do? they have a picture of they pose, they celebrate it, and they should celebrate it. 

Likewise, as a human being and all too often with, we're called arrogant or we're told we're showing off if we celebrate our achievements, but I'm a firm believer of the fact that if you can't celebrate your achievements, how could you possibly be expected to remonstrate with yourself about your negative attributes, if you're going to hide the positives, you're definitely going to hide the negatives. 

So I think it's really, really important to know who you are, to start with, at any, as I said, at any stage in your life.

When it comes to my job as a firefighter. Again, I don't think you're never really going to know how you're going to react emotionally, or how you're going to cope mentally, to situations that you've never been exposed to. 

So again, I guess, really, you come back to knowing yourself, being honest with yourself, and being honest enough for me, as I've learned in recent years, more than ever, if you come across trauma, and it affects you, it's not a problem that it affects you. 

It's not a problem that you've experienced, the trauma is only a problem if you pretend you haven't, it's only a problem if you don't deal with it. And the way I deal with it, and I've always dealt with it is by talking.

I make no bones about opening up and talking to somebody about anything that's going on in my life, if they're the right person. And again, and again, that's key for me, it needs to be the right person, you need to be speaking to, don't just choose anyone, you need to choose someone who's willing to listen, and who isn't always going to try and fix the problem. 

I think moving around a lot, as a kid certainly pushed me to be adaptable. It certainly pushed me to be able to be in one environment, be pulled out of it at the drop of a hat and dumped in a different environment. 

And you have to be resilient, you have to build resilience for something like that. Because if you don't, you just get swallowed up by the world. And I was a similar story to lots of people in this world. 

Sadly, my mum met a man who she thought was the right man. And he turned out to be a bit of an arsehole to us as kids, he was physically abusive in terms of it sort of, you know, beat us and that kind of stuff, unnecessarily. 

He’d do things like he'd have a pair of slippers, he'd write my name on the bottom of one of my older brother's name on the bottom of the other. And then if we were in his eyes naughty, or in my eyes, being a child, he would send us upstairs to get the slipper. And if we came down with the wrong one, i.e. if I came down with the one that had my brother's name on it, he would beat me with a slipper with my brother's name on then send me back upstairs with that slipper to put it back to get the slipper with my name so that I could bring that to him, so that he could then punish me with that slipper. 

And to my, to me that is kind of like a bit sadistic. It's a bit, it's gratuitous aggression towards a child who was guilty of nothing other than the playing. And that theme carried on for quite some years. And I feel lots of people don't understand it. They think that I would feel anger towards my mum for allowing it to happen. 

But the reality is that my mum had no future until he came along. She divorced my dad, she had three children under the age of six. And she was, we were living in a real shit council estate, but it was just awful. It's an awful place to be as a kid and my mum didn't want us growing up there. 

And on the face of it, this man seemed like he was going to be her savior. And I think she tolerated a lot of behaviour because she could also see the good that was coming from their situation. And again, I know a lot of listeners won't understand a mum that allows something to happen, but you have to add, or you have to think about the fact that she was also living in fear. 

She was, she was, scared to leave him. She was scared in his presence. She was scared of what he might do to us if she ever remonstrated with him or took him to task over the way he was treating us. 

And we were scared of what our dad would do to our stepdad if we ever told our dad. So it largely went without anyone knowing anything about it to a point. Until one day we decided enough was enough things had got really bad at home. 

So we waited, my dad came to pick us up for the weekend. And we'd waited until we'd got a decent enough distance away from the house that we thought it would be too far for my dad to turn the car around and drive back. 

And then we told him what been going on. And he drove us straight to the police station at Amen Corner in Tooting, funnily enough, literally across the road from where we’re recording today. 

And we made an official complaint to the police for child abuse. And that was the last time I ever went home. It was a crazy situation considering at that time, I was 11 years old, I was a very good grammar school in Kent. That was, I think there was one Asian kid in the whole school, the rest of the school was white. That's the demographic that I'm in. And because of the accusations towards my stepdad, and the subsequent court case, etc. My dad needed us in schools in London.

So I was sent to Ernest Bevin in Tooting. And whilst I'm still friends with some students from the school, and the teachers were okay, the school in itself was a million miles from what I was used to. 

I was one of six white kids in my whole year, compared to one Asian kid in my whole school. I was having to adapt to a whole new way of thinking in a school where they were teaching me stuff for the first time that I'd learned a year and a half ago in my other school. 

And the culture was so different. I hadn't, growing up in Kent, I hadn't really been around any ethnic minority groups, literally, like almost zero.

 I guess what you learn is, you learn a bit of humility. You learn a lot about ignorance I would say. I was a very ignorant child, not through choice not because I was rude or because I was racist or just because I was a product of my environment. 

I was there by circumstance, and the life I knew in the area I was from, and the people that I'd grown up with no longer existed.

You've got to adapt quickly. And I guess that's something that I did, I adapted quickly. And I learned very quickly that it was quite a violent school. And in my previous school, the posh white Grammar School, if you had a fight with someone, you got expelled, there were no fights. 

At this school, if you had a fight with someone, you'd hope that a dinner lady broke it up before someone got their teeth knocked out of their face. And you'd hope that you didn't fall over at any point, because then everybody else just booted you while you're on the floor. 

It was in my mind, it was like the fucking Wild West. It was crazy. So I learned my own way of surviving. And again, I guess that ties in with adaptability, what I learned to do was not to pretend I’m someone else, or to forget who I am, but was to adapt who I am in order to fit in better to my environment, to as I call it now to chameleon myself

And on top of that, what I found was, people actually respect you, if you're yourself a hell of a lot more, you don't have to be the same as someone to have their respect, you just need to be you. And I think if more people realise that the world would be a much, much better place. 

So ultimately, I guess from childhood, including the move from Kent to London, and the school and the upheaval and a stepdad and all of the different elements that all sort of come together. It's made me I believe, a very adaptable person. It's made me someone who's able to be dropped into a difficult situation, and analyse it, and work out the best way out of that situation with the least amount of damage. 

And that is something that stood me in good stead with my career in the fire brigade because that's literally what my job is. And maybe that's why I feel so suited to it because my job is about turning up to somebody's worst day of their life and making it a bit better. 

But I never really know what I'm going to until you're there. We'll get tip sheets that come through on the printer at work. And the tip sheet basically is a sheet that tells us - very old fashioned dot matrix stylee print out - tells us the incident we’re going to. 

But the information we have is really limited. Because primarily that information is coming from a member of the public. So what they think is a big fire might not be a big fire to us. 

So we think we're going out to a massive fire we get there and it's a small fire. So we never really know what we're going out to until we arrive which means when you arrive more often than not, you're faced with a completely different set of problems a completely different set of circumstances a completely different set of parameters within which you have to work and you have to immediately formulate a plan and know how best to negotiate that situation that incident, how to give the best treatment to any casualties that are involved, how to resolve the incident the fastest, smoothest most professional way and what is that if not the definition of adaptability.

22:24

So within my role with the fire brigade we regularly attend, as I said before, all manner of different incidents, some of them have been really challenging, some big fires. 

Some situations I've been in where I thought, I don't know how this one's going to pan out, I don't know whether this is the one where I'm going to get injured, some particularly hot, dangerous, difficult fires, some RTAs, some suicides, things that leave trauma and leave an imprint on you. 

And how I always, the analogy I will always use is it's like; imagine a tap being turned on to a regular sort of flow, as if you're going to get yourself a glass of water, and then putting a jug underneath that tap, tilting it 45 degrees. That jug is your capacity for trauma. And that tilt is allowing that trauma to flow out the top before your jug is full. 

All the while that's happening, you can cope, there's always a bit of room in that jug for the trauma to come in because some trauma is leaving. Every now and then an incident will come along, that stands your jug up. 

And it just fills up and it overflows. And that's when you need support from friends or family, friends and family. Maybe counseling. Some people will need a combination of counseling and actual medication for antidepressants, things like that. 

Something that I was involved in was the equivalent of that tap being turned on full blast, the jug being smashed in half, and then being stood upright underneath that tap. 

It removed my capacity to cope overnight in an instant. And it left me in a real bad way. And that's what I'm going to come on to talk about now which was the Grenfell Tower fire on the night of 14th of June 2017. 

The night shift itself started off like any other night shift. It was inventories, checking the equipment. The banter with the guys was the same. You know, again, as I said earlier, with my job, you never know what's going to happen on any particular shift. 

And you always have to be prepared for worst case scenario. But no one was prepared for Grenfell. No one believed anything Grenfell could happen. It wasn't on our radar. It wasn't a thought process we ever went through, because it shouldn't have ever happened. It shouldn't be able to be possible, a fire like Grenfell. 

So the night itself, as I said, was going on as normal. We have stand down time in the fire brigade between midnight and half six in the morning, which means we have beds, we can go to sleep. Obviously we respond to shouts. Generally on a night shift, you always get some shouts. 

So you do get some sleep, but it is broken. It's not particularly refreshing. But it's better than a lot of emergency service workers get, like, you know, doctors, nurses, police when they have a night shift they're up all night. So I don't want to sound - I just put that caveat in because - I don't want to sound ungrateful. 

But I was woken up with the bells going down. So the protocol in a fire brigade is we have a turnout time of 60 seconds, which is day or night. So from being asleep in my bed in my pants, the bells go down. Within 60 seconds, I will be dressed and driving a fire engine out of the front of the fire station. It is a quick turnaround. It's an emergency call. So the clue is in the name, we do not hang about, we do not mess about. 

But when the bells went down this time it was a bit different. I came down the pole, ran into the watch room. I looked at the tip sheet. And I remember standing there for a few seconds and just staring at it. 

And I remember trying to process it and trying to work out what was going on. Because it wasn’t anything I'd ever seen before. And it was just a list of fire engines that have been called to this incident. 

And we were going on what we call ‘make pumps 20.’ So that means however many fire engines are at the incident already. They now need the total number to be there to be 20. So if there's six there and they make pumps 20 that means they need an additional 14 if there's already 12 there, they’re requesting an additional eight. 

So I don't know how many were there at this point, but I know that we've been ordered to go to this fire quite a way off our ground. And we're on the make pumps 20. So that tells me this is a fire that's been burning for a while and it is getting worse, not better, then I see that it's a high rise. So then I know there are a whole different set of parameters, a whole different set of protocols involved, for what we need to do when we attend. 

So Grenfell tower is in Ladbroke Grove, their local fire station is north Kensington, to put the distance away into perspective, I work at Battersea fire station in Clapham Junction. So that tower is way off of our patch, it's not, it's not an incident we'd normally be called to, other than a major incident which this had now become. 

We grabbed our gear, we jumped on the truck, and we pulled out of the fire station. With any incident with as a firefighter, there is always a mixture of emotions on the back of a fire engine.

We are extremely professional. And I don't say that lightly. We are extremely professional, we are paid to be professional. And we know that lives literally hang in a balance on the decisions that we make at an incident sometimes. 

So the first thing that we're doing on the back of a fire engine isn't being a bit sleepy or whatever, we're at the back going, “right? What are we going to? What equipment are we going to need? What are our set procedures for this type of incident? If it's not like this, and it's like that, what else can we do? Who are we going to see that whatever trucks are on this call? Who do we know that's going to be there? Who can we team up with what crews have we worked with before? Where are we going to site the appliance? What is our access route?  What direction is the wind blowing in? Are there any other problems that we could potentially encounter on our way to that shout or once we arrive at that shout?” 

You're trying to anticipate everything, and then you think specifically about your procedures. So I know we're going to a high rise, we have a high rise procedure and policy, which dictates what equipment we take up with us, it dictates where we're going to set up an entry control point. 

It dictates how many people in each crew, we're going to go in with what kind of emergency crews we need. There is a whole huge set of parameters involved in a high rise fire. 

So we're thinking about a multitude of things in the back of this fire engine on the way to the show. Within about two minutes of pulling out the fire station, we heard a radio message come over the radio again. And it said this is now a 40 pump fire. That meant in the two minutes between give or take in between us being mobilised. We need 20 fire engines here. In those next two minutes, enough had happened for them to decide we need another 20 on top of the 20 that are already on their way. 

That is insane. That is a huge amount of resources for one fire. And the second part of that message. And I still remember to this day. It makes me feel emotional when I think about it, and I remember it sending chills down my spine when I heard it come across the radio. It said there are 100 and I think 157 fire survival guidance calls in progress. 

Now to put that into perspective, for the listeners, a fire survival guidance call is this; You're involved in a fire, or you're in a tower block, there is a fire in your tower block. You phone the fire brigade to say there's a fire in a tower block. The fire brigade will say to you, “are you safe? Is your flight involved? Can you breathe? Is there smoke in your lobby area? Can you get out safely if you need to?”, all of these questions. 

If you turn around and say I'm not involved in the fire, there's no issues with me. They'll say “okay, cool, you're not involved, therefore it's safer to stay where you are: stay put.” 

Now they are two words that will ring a lot of bells with a lot of ears; ‘stay put’. That's the advice. And that is the correct advice for a tower block that is built correctly. And for a tower block that is safe, ‘stay put’, you're not involved. Your flat isn't involved. Stay where you are. 

If however your flat is involved, and you say you cannot get out of the danger area, i.e. if there was a fire in your front room and you phoned the fire brigade to say there's a fire in your front room and they said “Can you get out?” and you said “yes”, they'd say “leave”, because fire is in your flat... It's not safe for you to stay put, the fires in your flat. So get out. And as long as there's no smoke In a lobby or wherever it's safe for you to leave. 

If, however, the fire is started at your front door, and therefore you are trapped in your flat, and they say, “can you leave?” and you say, “No”, you become a fire survival guidance call, which means the operator that is talking to you at brigade control will stay on the phone with you until one of two situations. 

One, you are rescued by firefighter/firefighters, two; you are dead. 

We have around between 11 and 15 depending on what night is etc. brigade control staff working at control. That's enough.

There were 157 fire survival guidance calls in progress. It's overwhelming and it sent chills down my spine because that meant there are 157 flats where people are trapped and are saying they cannot get out due to smoke or fear or mobility issues or whatever it is. And I remember thinking that is impossible.

That cannot be possible in London, that can't be dealt with, 157, there's not even enough people that control to deal with that. And it later came to light that what control were sadly having to do was stay on the phone with somebody until the line went dead because they just died. 

And then they would hang the phone up. And they would pick the phone up again. And I would say hello London fire brigade. What's your emergency? And it could be someone going “oh I’m stuck outside my flat? I think I've left some cooking on. But I don't really remember. And I can't get back in because my keys are inside. Can you send a fire engine?” 

And that that control operator has to deal with that person professionally. Even though they're potentially thinking “you time waster” or whatever. They've just listened to somebody die at one of the most traumatic, well, the most traumatic fire that's happened since World War Two. And now they're dealing with that person and that control operator and this is why I have so much respect for them, and why it frustrates me that they are the unsung heroes of any Fire and Rescue Service. Because that person has to have enough about them to be able to go “Yes, sir. A fire engine is on its way. Is there any smoke at the window? Is there this is there that” And switch off from having heard somebody die on the other end of the phone to them. seconds beforehand. Deal with that call, put the phone down, pick it up again. Another fire survival guidance call from Grenfell tower. What a night those people must have had...absolutely insane.

I guess we were probably driving -  and my memory is a little bit hazy so - but I reckon we were probably driving for about 15 minutes on the bell, give or take. And the longer we were on the bell, the more we're thinking about what we're going to have to do when we get there. 

We are, I would say, largely emotionless at this point, because we're in work mode, and your emotions in a work environment like mine hold you back. Your emotions are not your friend in a situation where you have to make some life or death decisions and split second decisions that some you know, sometimes those decisions that you're making aren't based on what's morally correct, or what kind they're based on facts and figures. And it's quite regimented. And you're making the decisions that are the right decisions. But sometimes not always for the right reasons. 

If you act emotionally in my job, under certain conditions, it can cost you your life and the life of the person you're trying to save. There is no room for emotion at that point. The emotion is after the emotion is later. 

I seem to remember the journey there being fairly quiet. Initially, there was a bit of talking because we're discussing highrise procedure. We're talking about the kit we've got to get out where we're making sure that our minds are channeled in the right direction. And I seem to remember after that, there was a fair chunk of time where my thoughts turned to my son and my girlfriend, my mom, my dad, my brothers, because I knew that I was about to go to something that was the biggest thing I'd ever been to. I didn't really know what to expect and I didn't really know how I was gonna perform.

And again, you have to question your abilities you have to, you have to really look at yourself and go “right, am I ready for this? Am I good enough to be in this situation, hold down my own shit, save some lives, do my job, pack it all up and go home the same person?” And that is a hell of a lot to be doing in one very short period of time. 

So the journey there was a strange one, it was a mixture of initial hustle and bustle and sort of it was a bit frantic and rushed, and your adrenaline's going, and then a strange sort of calming period, before you arrive, where all of that franticness comes back again. And all of that adrenaline surges back again, and your mind doesn't ever go back to family, friends, children, your mind, you are 100% in that moment, at that incident, doing everything you can to help as many people as you can.

When we pulled up, there already so many fire engines there and already so much going on that we couldn't actually park particularly close to the tower, which was the first time in my career that we've had to get off the fire engine, get the equipment we think we might need, including our BA sets, our breathing apparatus sets, that's what we we use when we go into the fire so we can breathe in the smoke.

And then walk towards the incident ground. I've never had to do that before. And it was a really strange thing. It was the thing that kept repeating itself throughout the evening. And I don't want to sound overly dramatic when I say this. But I'm not the only person to have drawn links, it really had a feel of 9-11 about it. 

And I don't want to say that to insult anybody I know that 9-11 was a different level of of incident compared to this, certainly in terms of lives lost and all of that stuff. But from the perspective of a firefighter, I am walking to an incident because I cannot park close enough to it. With my BA set over my back, a bit scared, full of adrenaline towards a Towering Inferno, where I can see people at windows, screaming to be rescued. 

There was a distinct feel of 9-11 about it. And although we didn't speak about that at the time, we did speak about that afterwards. And I was quite surprised really to find how many people actually said the same thing. And that was the theme, as I said, that repeated itself throughout the incident, which is something I'll get onto. 

So we arrived at the bottom of the tower and it was absolute carnage. There there was, the side of the building was melting, sheets of metal falling down, engulfed in flames setting fire to trees, cars. At one point stuff was falling on one of the fire engines and we had to quickly disconnect hose and get the fire engine moved because that was going to catch fire. The building was just falling down around us. Flaming bits of metal and insulating material, setting light to shit as it as it came down. And it made access to the actual tower itself really difficult. Because you're having to look at what's coming down. As well as thinking about everything else you've already got to worry about just in order to get into the tower.

So initially, on our arrival, there was quite a bit of work to do outside in terms of hose management, getting equipment ready, helping casualties as they came out of the building rescued by firefighters already in there. Eventually, I joined, sounds like a crazy thing to say, but I joined a queue to go into the building because that's what you have. 

So for the listeners, I'll clarify some terms. You have, at a high rise fire, you have a specific procedure which I spoke about earlier, which is for arguments sake, if the fire is on the sixth floor, we will go to the fourth floor. That's where we set up what we call a bridgehead, an entry control point. So we'll have an electronic board that we put electronic tallies into that come out of our breathing apparatus sets. That relays back and forth, so that when we're in the fire, outside the fire, they can still see how much air we have left, our rate of air consumption, they can work out how hard we’re working, so that they can - most importantly of all - see if anything changes drastically, like we stopped moving. And then an alarm will go off, which will notify them that we're not moving. 

And then everybody is directed, every firefighter in that job will then be directed to us, we are the primary focus in terms of a rescue, we have a hierarchy of rescue. So the hierarchy of rescue is; the firefighters that are most important for people at any scene after that, so it would be me and my crew, then it would be the other crews working around me, then it would be people not involved in the incident, because we don't want them to become involved, because that exacerbates the problem. 

And last of all, is the people already involved, they are the least priority in a fire situation. It sounds crazy, but in terms of our ability to rescue them, we need all of the other stuff to be happening in order for us to have the facilities and the time to be able to get to them. 

So it's of paramount importance as a firefighter that you keep yourself and your crew safe at all times. So we have these very strict procedures and parameters in place for high rise fire. So we will have our bridgehead setup, we'll have our entry control point, we'll have our entry control board, we'll put our tallies in within breathing under clean air. We will then go up one floor below the fire floor so this would be to the fifth. Then we would set in with our hose which means connecting up to the dry riser, which has been filled with water from the ground level, we test our hose to make sure we've got water, we then proceed up one more floor to the fire floor, tackle the fire.

At no point ever, for any reason, do you enter a fire floor or go above a fire floor without water. The smoke given off by a fire is effectively petrol. It can explode. It can spontaneously combust. It can catch fire like petrol. So if you have a smoke layer above your head, and that gas is hot enough, you'll see flames lick through it appearing and disappearing as an ignition source is introduced, which could be from embers from the fire that's nearby or whatever. So a technique we use is gas cooling, we’ll spray water into that smoke layer to cool the gas down. So it's below its auto ignition temperature so that even if an ignition source is introduced, that smoke cannot catch fire, therefore we're safe. 

Two things that happen if you don't do that are one you can have a backdraft, which is a term lots of people are familiar with, which basically means that, if a fire has gone out in a sealed compartment, but it's hot enough that that gas is above its auto ignition temperature. You then open the door and you introduce fresh oxygen, which a fire needs in order to burn. Once that mix reaches the right levels, it’s ideal mix, that smoke can spontaneously reignite with an explosive force, which can take you off your feet, rupture your internal organs and burns at 1000 degrees Celsius plus. So if you're in a backdraft, it is not like the film, very unlikely you're going to survive. So it's a real dangerous threat. But it's a contained threat in the sense that that only happens if a sealed compartment. So if you're onpoint and you recognise the signs of a backdraft you can avoid one from happening. You can open a door, spray some water in, cool the gas down, shut the door, open the door, spray some water in, cool the gas down, shut the door, you can deal with it. 

The other one is a flashover and it's a lot more dangerous and much harder to deal with because that is something that occurs in a room that you're in. And that basically is where the heat builds up so intensely that everything in that room any combustible material in that room, sofas, chairs, TVs, whatever it is, reaches its auto ignition temperature and even though the flame is not actually near it is now hot enough that it will just burst into flames. And in that situation a room can change from 400-500 degrees Celsius to temperatures in excess of 1000 degrees Celsius in the space of two or three seconds. And if you are in that room and that happens you are dead. There is no second chance for a flashover. 

So our procedures exist for a very, very good reason you do not go above a fire floor. Because if that floor below you flashes, you're trapped, and you've got no water, you're dead. If it happens on the floor you're on and you've got no water, you're dead. If the fire from a floor below burns through the ceiling, and the smoke in the corridor that you're in, is hot enough, that flame is introduced to that smoke through that floor, that smoke catches fire, spontaneous combustion, raging inferno, you've got no water, you're dead. 

To put my task into perspective, initially, it's no secret that the fire for Grenfell started on the fourth floor. My first briefing was to go to - out of respect for the people, the families of the deceased, I won't mention specifics - but one of the higher floors in the building, I had no water. I had a length of road up hose. I had a nozzle, like a branch we call it, I had an enforcer which is like a battering ram to put a door in. And I had a thermal imaging camera. And then I was told to go to the floor I was told to go to try and rescue someone who was on the phone to the brigade control. It was a fire survival guidance call, as was the last information we received. So I'm now looking I'm going right, I've got a breathing apparatus set standard duration, that does not give me enough air to get to the floor I need to get to and to get back out again.

I'm also now being told to go through over 10 floors engulfed in flames with no water. No way to protect myself or my colleague, no idea if we are going to have water when we get to the floor we need to get to, and very little chance of getting out again with the air that we've got. I was and - I don't say this lightly - 100% certain that I was not going to come back out of that building. When I was given that brief, I thought, that's me. I'm not coming out. And to feel that way I can't, it's really hard to express it accurately.

Or even with enough emotion, but it's a real fucked up thing for your mind to deal with when you say to yourself, “oh well, guess that's me then.”

All I thought was that I am going to do - if this is going to cost me my life if this is me now if this is me done, this is the end if I'm never going to see my three year old son again, or my girlfriend again and my parents again, my friends again - I’m going to make damn sure the journey is fucking worth it.

So at that point is a case of emotion gone; What do I need to do? I need to keep my colleagues safe. I need to keep myself safe. We need to get there as quickly as possible as safely as possible. We need to effect a rescue work out how the fuck we're gonna get someone out of the building in intense heat through four floors, engulfed in flames, probably with no water when they've got no protection anyway.

And we've got to do it all without enough air. So let's do this.

And that and that was that, we set off. We were under air. We started the long climb up the stairs. They were very heavily smoke logged, and when I say heavily smoked people never really understand. If you think about that time you're standing next to a bonfire and the wind changes and the smoke hits you in the face and it burns your eyes and everyone's like “wow, the smoke is following me”. That's what I call thin white wispy smoke. That's not fire smoke. Fire smoke is like shoving your head in a barrel of tar and opening your eyes and trying to see your hand. You cannot see anything. You put water on thick black fire smoke and what you get is a film of carbon particles across your mask across your BA mask which even if you wipe with your glove just smears, the oily residue across the - you've got very very little actual visibility. It's kind of like in good light with the thin wispy white smoke. It's like looking for a frosted glass. In a black smoke, you can't see you literally can't see your hand in front of your face, you may as well be blind. And quite often if I'm in a fire, where the smoke is that bad, I will actually close my eyes, because it's easier for my other senses to pick up the slack to my mind if my eyes are closed, rather than if I'm putting all my energy into trying to make out shapes in a really dimly lit, or completely unlit room full of thick, black, acrid explosive smoke. I don't want to try and see that, I want to be thinking about what I can feel, what I can hear. And what can feel through my feet as I walk. 

We started making our way up through the stairwell. We were trying to - the stairwell was actually...the lighting was still working in the stairwell at the time. And we were trying to read what floor we were on and, brilliant piece of refurbishment designed by whoever did it: They'd placed most of the lights in a stairwell over the top that they'd screwed them into the wall over the top of the floor numbers. So if you lost count of how many flights of stairs you'd walked up, like we haven't got enough to be trying to deal with. You had no idea what floor you were on. So the way we decided we worked out what floor we were on was by coming off of the stairwell onto a floor full of fire with no protection to feel for door numbers for flat numbers on the doors through the back of our hands through thick leather gloves and intense heat, to then work out okay, six floors per six flats per floor, how many floors versus flat number, whatever, and do a bit of maths. And when I'm working out, work out what floor we were on, and then work your way back off of that fire floor back into the stairwell to start trying to count again from where we now thought that we were. And we had to do that twice before we got to our fire floor. 

By the time we got there. The hose that we were carrying, there was if you can imagine that was a lot. It's a very narrow stairwell and it was the only one in the building. We're not the only firefighters in there, the casualty we were going for the person that we were going to rescue was not the only person that was in that building. So the stairwells were manic. There's people spilling out flats, there's firefighters rescuing people, there's firefighters coming past us up and down and, there's so much going on.

You can't count the floors. We weren't able to count the floors, maybe someone could. We couldn’t. Eventually, after going up and up and up. The feeling of the job changed completely. Because it suddenly hit me it was silent. There was no more hustle and bustle, there were no more shouting, there was no more crews fire crews shouting to each other through masks like Darth Vader. There was there was nothing. It was just silence. And that's when it occurred to me that we were probably the two firefighters that were highest up in that building at that time. And the overwhelming feeling of being very alone very quickly hit me like a ton of bricks. It's like we are on our own up here.

There’s no one coming for us if this goes wrong, we are, all this is it. We need to make this shit work. And if we don't, we're dead. And it was a real genuine it sounds really dramatic. But fuck me it was dramatic. It's the only, it's one of, it’s not the only time, but it's the time most in my life when I've genuinely believed this is game over. 

Anyway, we get to the fire floor because of the amount of traffic up and down and stuff. The hose that we were carrying up a rolled up length of hose. If you imagine getting a tape measure, folding in half, and then rolling it up from one end. That's how we carry hose. So the middle of that hose had fallen out when we were carrying out the stairs. So I now had a massive tangled hose across both my arms as well as all the other 60 kilos of equipment I'm carrying. And again, I'm not trying to make myself sound like some sort of superhero. But just for the listeners 60 roughly 60 kilograms of additional weight is what I'm carrying up those stairs. That's including my fire gear including my BA set including the enforcer, the battering ram to put doors in the thermal imaging camera. My colleague has got some of that equipment and his fire gear and his BA set. We're carrying about 60 kilos each. And now I've got a bundle of tangled hose, the only thing that's going to keep us safe when we get to our fire floor if we have water is now a knotted mess of shit. It's just getting worse and worse and worse. By the step, every step we're taking shit is deteriorating around us, things are getting worse. And I'm believing more and more and more and more. I'm not coming out. We finally arrived on the fire floor. I said to my colleague, find the dry riser. Get the hose connected to it, we need to see if we've got water. Because we're now in a corridor I've scanned round quickly with the thermal imaging camera. And that has shown me that at floor temperature where I am kneeling down on both my knees because of the heat, floor temperature, there's no direct flame I can't see any direct flame in the hallway that I'm in landing that I’m on;. it was 550 degrees Celsius.

220 is hot to cook a chicken, and it's 550 degrees Celsius. I can feel my wrists burning, I can feel my neck burning. We're not impervious to heat, our fire gear does not stop all the heat getting in. I'm burning, it is hot. And I'm breathing heavier than I've ever breathed in my life. Because I've just done so much work to get to this floor. If anyone's ever you know lived in a tower block and you get there and that lift is out. And you’re like, God, me mates two floors up, and I've got to take the stairs. And by the time you've knocked in your mates door, you're out of breath. I just done a lot of stairs with an additional, effectively, giving a 10 year old a piggyback in heat twice as hot as an oven wearing ski gear.

That's the equivalent of what was going on. So he plugged it the hose in and I've then knelt down, taking a deep breath, and found the end of the hose. And I've then sat there and started to untangle the hose in complete darkness. Because you cannot put water in that hose unless it's untangled. You cannot use it. So I'm sitting here the whole time just finding the end of the hose, passing it through my hands till I find a loop and a knot. And then going back finding the end of the hose, passing it through that loop, putting it all through again to undo that. Probably had to do that I reckon sort of three or four times for that hose to be untangled. And the whole time I'm sitting there, I've got explosive smoke building up above my head that could ignite at any second. And all I can do is pray that I'm getting this hose sorted out quick enough that that dry riser is going to give us water and I can cool this smoke down before it all goes Bandy. And at that point, my low pressure warning whistle goes off on my BA set to tell me that I'm running out of air. 

At that point, shit has got real. I'm now at the top of the building engulfed in flames. And I've done the timeline photos on Grenfell tower. And I know what times I was in that building and I've looked at the outside of that building at the times I was in it and it gives me chills to this day, I'm horrified at the fact that I was in that building when it looked like that from the outside. It's fucking scary.

And, so my whistle is going off. I've managed to get the hose untangled. We've got the branch the nozzle plugged in. I've told my colleague to turn the water on, and I felt the hose fill with water. And I've never been so fucking relieved in all of my life, a few pulses up into the ceiling to start cooling the gases down until, so if you if you pulse the water up and onto the ceiling and the water hits the ceiling and droplets of water come back down, you're good.

If that water turns to steam, and the water doesn't come back down, that gas is hot, you need to keep cooling it, that's our gauge temperature check. So few pulses water starts to come back down again. Okay, cool. I'm not happy that we're safe from that particular part of the danger. We're now outside the person's flat that we need to rescue. Our low pressure warning whistles are going off telling us we've got about 12 minutes of air left. 

We're high up in a building, and we’re now faced with a real horrendous decision as to what we do next, do we, do we take a risk? Do we put that door in? Do we try and save this guy, and potentially all die. Because we've got no way of getting him out, realistically.

The only way for him to come out is to go through 500 degrees Celsius plus of heat, floor after floor after floor, fire after fire after fire, with no protection for himself with no oxygen. And our whistles are going off telling us that we're running out of air as well. 

So we are faced with a decision of choosing whether to save this person or not. And we chose not to, we had to make a decision based not on emotion, but on logic. We had to choose to forsake a human life to save our own, so that I could go in another two times and rescue more people. It wasn't a selfish act. It was a simple case of if I get into trouble, everybody else in that building is in more trouble because every firefighter in that building is going to be sent to me. You have to look at the bigger picture, you have to remove emotion from it. And you have to make a judgment call.

And that call is something that will haunt me for the rest of my life. It's a decision that no one should ever have to make. And it's not just me that made it that night, firefighters on every floor of that tower at some point. I know some had to make decisions over which people to take. Imagine that. Imagine being there looking at a family of five and deciding which two you're going to save and telling the others you'll come back for them knowing that you probably won't. You’ve got to live with that.

Going back to the part of the conversation earlier when you talk about your ability to deal with things emotionally and to cope mentally with things. Somethings you can't cope with. You can't. You can't cope with that. You can't be in that situation and make those decisions and those choices and then just come out and crack on with Tuesday.

Do you know what I mean? life doesn't work that way, and a human mind doesn't work that way. And I will forever feel eternally guilty for not opening that door. I know it was the right decision. I can sit here now and say 100% that was the right decision. And if I was back in that same situation now, would I make that same decision? logically, yes. But knowing how I feel now, three years after that fire, I would not make that same decision. Three years later, feeling how I felt for three years, I would put that door in and I would try and rescue that man. And if I died with him, then that's what I do.

And that, ironically, is the selfish choice. Because that would probably mean other people in that tower would die. But struggling to cope with the guilt. I know that that person died. Struggling to cope with the guilt of that every single day. Still doing the same job. Still worrying. Still feeling physically sick every time you see a tower block, because you imagine it on fire. That shit.

So there we are, on the landing, wrists neck still burning, wrestling with our consciences as to whether we're making the right decision or not. All the while knowing that we're still running out of air, our warning whistle, the warning whistle by the way that's going off that tells us we've got about 12 minutes of air left shouldn't be going off while you're in the fire that is a safety probe protocol built into the sets, the the idea and the policy is that will be out of the fire before that whistle goes off. That is in case you're in deep shit. We were in deep shit. 

We've then made our decision. So we had a quick chat and we said right what we'll do is we'll leave the hose behind. We'll leave the breaking in gear. All of the stuff that's gonna weigh us down and, and slow us down. And we're gonna pass it all on to control, to entry control, when we get outside and let them know we made it to our floor, we've accessed water, the hose is untangled and laid out ready to go, all they’ve got to do is send two people up there as quick as possible. They've got everything they need to deal with what they need to deal with. And they'll be able to get that guy out. Because they won't have gone through the same stuff that we've gone through with the same kit they’ll have more air. That's what we'll do. That that was our decision. 

We then made our way out. And when I say made our way out, I don't know if you ever used to hang around like in your mate’s blocks of flats, or whatever. And sometimes you'd be going down the flights of stairs, you'd have one hand on the railing, and you'd have one hand on the wall, and you'd sort of swing yourself, you'd like almost miss all of the steps, right? And from bit to bit. That's how we came out of Grenfell tower, wearing our BA sets, under air, like that. And that's how we had to come out to make it out, with some air left. And I'm still to this day amazed that we made it out.

And when we did, we handed over the information to the person in charge of the entry control point. We told them what we done, we told them where the hose was, we told him all of the information. And, to my knowledge, that person, well, I know that that person died, to my knowledge, that person, no one was ever sent back for that person. And that wasn't a fault of the brigade. That was just circumstance. That was because it was too high up the fire changed too much, things progressed too far. And that person was then deemed unsavable. So that person's last chance was us.

And again, that's something that will always play on my mind will always haunt me. Because no human should ever have to choose whether or not they're going to save another human's life. And they certainly shouldn't have to weigh it up. How do you quantify the value of a human life where you're weighing up against. It’s crazy. And the thing that really, I think really played on my mind, that person aside, was when I started to go up the building I knew that I wasn't going to come out. Well, now I'm out. And that fucked with my mind. Because then it was a case of I'm alive. And then my brain goes, but you were willing to not be alive. You were willing, you knew that you weren't coming out. And you went and did that anyway. And I'm not saying it like this because I want anyone to go wow, what hero? No, it's fucked up. It's suicidal almost.

And that was the first time I went into the building that night. And I went in another two times after that. So it was a mad, mad, mad, mad mad night. I was so hot, when I came out after the first wear, after the first entry, we call it a wear, if you've worn BA it's one wear. So I had three wears that night, I went in three times.

After the first time I sat down on the grass bank opposite the tower, and I'm talking probably only 15-20 meters away from the base of the tower. Our protocol then is where I need to find a fresh air cylinder. I need to service my BA set. I need to change my cylinder over and I need to get ready to go back in. That's my job. I remember being so hot, I stripped my fire gear off. And even though it was a warm night, June 14th, is a warm night. All of the windows at the tower block were open because it was so humid. And I remember looking at that and feeling horrified because I knew that that fire was spreading on the outside of that building. And all those windows are open. And it was the perfect storm in that respect.

And I knelt down on this sort of grassy bank, opposite the bottom of the tower. Stripped my fire gear off, I took my T shirt off, I wrung my T shirt out, I'd sweat that much. And I suddenly felt really really faint. Really dizzy, really lightheaded. I had these sort of rushes of, almost like you know, that feeling you get when you feel embarrassed, that sort of rush of blood sort of comes over you. And just at that moment, a paramedic that I knew walked past me. Clocked that I looked very pale and not very in very good shape and was like, are you alright. And I was like, I was a bit dazed. And I was like, I don't know. And he was like, wait there, came back with a bucket of water for me to put my hands in, something we do in a fire brigade called radial calling, you put your hands and wrists in cold water. And it's your flow and return in your wrists. You know your arteries that will carry that blood will cool and will carry around your body and it instantly makes you feel better. So I had to do some radial cooling for a few minutes before I could finish servicing, I was going to pass out, I had just given more than everything, to achieve nothing in that fire.

And now I'm outside, sorting my BA set so I can go in again. And one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever witnessed in my entire life was sitting there on that bank and staring up at one of the windows and seeing someone there at the window waiting to be rescued, shouting for help and waving their arms about couldn't hear them. But you could see that they were shouting and waving and. And then suddenly the room glowed orange, and thick black plumes of smoke filled the window. And you could you could sort of see the shadow of the person silhouetted in the flames. And then the room just went black. And I literally, I just realised that I just sat there and watched somebody die.

I just remember tears rolling down my cheeks. And I just thought this is fucked. How can this be happening? And I knew that I just given everything that I could give. And it made no difference. And then I started to question: what else can I do? What else Can I give? That's everything. And I've and I couldn't help one person. I've just watched another person die. I'm failing, we are failing. And it wasn't because we weren't doing the right things. It wasn't because our procedures weren't right. It wasn't because we weren't trying hard enough. It was just shit circumstances. 

It was just one of those horrendous situations that you don't ever think you're ever going to be involved in. Where everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. And we were in fire brigade terms; pissing in the wind. We were chasing our tails, there was everything we were trying to -and don’t get me wrong - we rescued a lot of people that night. And in terms of the firefighters, I don't know if anyone that isn't a job can really appreciate what we did that night. But I can say proudly, and say in front of anybody; we achieved something incredible that night. And I know that sounds like a real shit thing to say when 72 people, human beings lose their lives. 72 families are ripped apart. But would have been a hell of a lot more if it wasn't for the efforts of the firefighters that were there that night. 

It's a strange, strange thing. Fire situations and directly its relation to time. Because to describe something like I just have, it would be easy to think that's taking place over a space of hours. And in reality that was probably about 35 minutes, start to finish the whole thing. It's probably taken me longer to describe it than it took me to do it. Time goes really really really quickly at a fire. And this fire particularly we just didn't stop. We arrived there. I believe just after midnight. And we left there at 2pm that day.

So we were there for 14 hours. And we weren't there for 14 hours milling about, we were there for 14 hours grafting our nuts off. We went for 14 hours working harder than we'd ever worked before anywhere ever. And we were exhausted. absolutely exhausted. And it was a real sort of juxtaposed thing. It's an image I will never ever, ever forget because as morning came, the fire was probably at its worst really. And Grenfell tower looked like a chimney. And lots of people would have seen images on the news and if you haven't, look them up.

By the time dawn had broken. Grenfell tower was, you could see the bottom three floors, everything above that pretty much was just engulfed in a plume of smoke.

You know that that's all you could see. And the backdrop for this, I don't wanna use the term Towering Inferno cuz it sounds really crass. But this Towering Inferno, this giant chimney of a building, the backdrop was the most beautiful blue, clear sky, that you could ever wish to see. It was a stunning day, it was an absolutely beautiful day weather wise. And then you've got this horrendous fire in front of you, with people crying, and I mean, I won't go into details about casualties and victims and stuff. Because they, as I said is I just think it's appropriate, but it was horrendous. It was absolutely horrendous and an hour at that job felt like a week. 

1:19:06

The strange thing about my job, especially when you're at an incident of that magnitude. Is that we are 24 hour, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year service. So there is no time off. Unless it's your time to have time off. We finally went off duty at 4pm on the 14th of June, I was back on duty at 8pm on the 14th of June. I had four hours between going off duty from the most devastating fire the country's ever seen, to being back on duty again, to continue my normal everyday job. 

So it was a bit nuts. And the next night was just a straightforward, regular normal night, like any other night. And it was only strange in that we all acted like it was a normal night. It was like Grenfell, it never happened. And we were back in the zone. And as I found out later on, that was all a process that was all a way of my brain processing what was going on. And the immediate place it went to seemed to be; we’ll box that away for a minute. We don't really know what the fuck to do with that, because that's some crazy stuff. So we just box that away, I will crack on as normal, until we need to deal with that again. And then my brain didn't deal with it again, I didn't deal with it again. With a fire of that magnitude is never out the news. And it wasn't it was in the news every single day, the death toll rose every single day. I went back there two days later, with Urban Search and Rescue team from my station to help the police with body recovery. And I had to stare every single failed rescue in face. And I had to witness the stories, the backstories of the people that hadn't survived by the scenes that I then had to see during the body recovery process. And what that means is you build a picture of the final moments of those people's lives. And that absolutely fucked my head up. It was heartbreaking. The situation some of these people were in before they died. It absolutely fucked my head up. They must have been so scared. And again, it all comes full circle to what we were saying earlier about how do you deal with trauma? How did you deal with this, how to deal with that, and you never know. You never know until you're in that moment and that situation. And because Grenfell was never out of the news, the reality of what you'd seen what you've done what you'd heard, what you'd felt what you'd smelled what you tasted, none of it ever went away. It was just there constantly.

And it was the only thing that was on anyone's minds. It was anything that anyone that works spoke about. It was the only thing anyone at football spoke about. It was anything that anyone down the pub spoke about. And the problem that I had is I was there, at the risk of sounding like I owned Grenfell as an incident, it’s so hard to be so heartbroken over one thing, and then hear people express idiotic, ridiculous, racist opinions about shit and not tear the heads off. Strangers in a pub; “oh did you hear about Grenfell loads of them were immigrants anyway, blah blah”...I will tear your head off your shoulders. 

It was so hard. And thing is you explode and you go mad at someone and all you look like is a lunatic. All  you look like is someone who's broken and is lashing out at the world. You're just boxed in, you're in a rock and a hard place. And all the while that's going on, I'm still trying to be a father to my son, a boyfriend and girlfriend, a son to my mom and dad, a brother to my brothers. I'm trying to be a firefighter at work still going in every day and doing this stuff. And my soul was broken. It was snapped in half, it was chewed up, it was smashed to pieces. I was just a shell of a person. And the scary thing about it, and to anyone who suffered with PTSD or depression, they will probably understand what I mean when I say; you never know that’s what you're in, that's what you're going through until you start to get better.

And you can look back and you can go Holy shit. I see it now. But at the time, I was angry at the world. Anything that went wrong, it was somebody else's fault. If I was being an asshole, somebody else's fault. Something tiny happened, it made me angry. It was that person's fault. And my anger was justified, must be justified, because that's how I feel. And the reality was I was spiraling into post traumatic stress disorder, and depression. And things got things got so bad for me that at one point, as embarrassing as it is to say, at one point, I genuinely sat on my own and considered suicide. And that wasn't, I'm not saying that to be dramatic. And it wasn't because I thought the world would be better off without me or no one loved me. It wasn't any of that. It was a real, real simple thing. And it's something that I'd never thought of or considered before. And it was literally this simple. I felt so sad, so desperately sad, to my very core, that I genuinely thought if I feel this way, every day for the rest of my life, I'd rather be dead.

It wasn't I thought the world would be better off without me. It was I didn't want to feel that shit every day for the rest of my life. And it was easier to be dead than to feel that sad. And to put the sadness into context because I always find sad to be quite juvenile word. The reason I use sad is because everyone's felt sad at some point in their life. And if the listeners imagine the saddest they've ever felt, and then times it by thousand, and then have it in you every single minute of every single day and night. When I kissed my son and told him I loved him. I felt sad. When my girlfriend told me she loved me. I felt sad. When the sun was shining. And I was taking my boy over the park to ride a bike or push him on the swings. I felt sad. When it was my birthday. I felt sad. When it was Christmas. I felt sad. 

I remember waking up in the night to go for a wee and I went to the toilet and on the way to the toilet. I started crying. I was literally crying and pissing at the same time. I wasn't unhappy. I was sad. And I was sad. It was like all of the joy and love had been removed from my soul. And it had just been replaced with misery and sadness. And it was never ever, ever, ever going to go away. 

And the final straw for me. I remember being home I'm on my own. And I got off the couch. And I think I got up because I wanted to make a drink, or I don't really remember. But I didn't make it far from the couch, probably a couple of meters. And then I sat down on the floor. And in that sort of position where your feet are on the floor, but your knees are up, and I put my head between my knees, and I burst into tears, and I started crying. And I was still crying in that same position four hours later. 

And I don't know if anyone can imagine feeling that sad. I had nothing to be sad about that day. Nothing had gone wrong that day. That's how I felt every single day. I felt like I would always about to burst into tears at any second. And that is now what I realised was, you know, part and parcel of PTSD and depression. And it was that moment that I realised I was in serious, serious trouble when I needed some help. That was my rock bottom. And thankfully, and I say this seriously, thankfully, that was my rock bottom. Because for a lot of people that rock bottom is swallowing a bottle of tablets, or cutting wrists or self harming or for a lot of people, it's worse. And I can't imagine how much worse those people must feel in order to do that. Because I felt shit. And I wasn’t at that point. 

So I decided, I was already seeing the Brigade Counselor, and the counseling process is a strange one in that I kind of feel like you feel worse before you feel better. And I think that's a common theme. It opens a lot of stuff up, it unlocks doors. There's a lot of me talking about my relationship with my stepdad and how I felt he treated me, my relationship with my older brother who bullied me for a lot of years. I hasten to add in case he hears this, I love him to pieces now when we get on like a house on fire is one of my best friends. But it wasn't always that way, such is life. But a lot of that stuff came up in counseling.

And so I guess the floodgates have been opened, which whilst I don't doubt there was doing some good. I had deteriorated to the point where that wasn't doing enough fast enough. So at this moment, head between my knees, crying, on the floor for hours, inconsolable. Everyone's despairing for me. I went to my GP and spoke to her, explained what was going on. And she prescribed me with some antidepressants. I had spent years hating antidepressants, because of family members that have taken them and I felt that they were a mask for problems, not a solution to problems. I felt like they made you feel like everything was okay, so you didn't have to deal with what was actually affecting you. Soon as you stop tablets, lo and behold, problems are still there, you're never gonna get any better. You're just prolonging the agony. 

In actual fact, the reality that I found, and again, I love an analogy, the analogy I use with my counselor was that the counseling process for me was, I felt in my emotional state, I felt like I was in a in a room with no doors and no windows, dark room and no doors and no windows, just fucking blackness. But the counseling process had opened a skylight in the roof, so some light was getting in. That's now my only route out of this depressive state is PTSD through that skylight. But that's skylight is 12 foot off the floor. No matter how much I jump. There's nothing to climb on. I cannot reach that skylight. So I can see that there's a way out. And I can get a bit of light coming in by cannot get out of that room, that room of depression that room with PTSD. 

And going on these antidepressants was the equivalent of someone lowering a footstool into that room, so that I could now stand on the footstool. And I could get my fingertips on the sill of that skylight. And although it was still going to be really hard work to pull myself up to that level where I could then climb out of that room, it was still going to be hard. But those tablets gave me that footstool and it was the combination of the antidepressants and the counselling that enabled me to truly start my path to fixing my head.

The journey from that point forward was a strange one, because every time I thought that I was fixed, I found out that I wasn't. And it was a constant reminder to me, that I may be better as in better than I was. But I'm not better. If you take physical fitness. If you do a 10 K, you run a 10 K, and you do it in 60 minutes. Cool. If you then run a 10 K, one a week for a year, the chances are, by the end of that year, you might be doing it in 50 minutes, you might have taken 10 minutes off your 10 k time, maybe more, but maybe 10 minutes. That's great. But how hard it was at the start of that year? How hard it is at the end of that year is exactly the same. You're running faster. Yeah. But you're still pushing yourself hard to run that fast.

So the effort level has remained the same. So the only gauge you've got for an improvement is your actual time. Because if no one ever told you how fast you were running, you probably assume you're running at the same time that you did before, because it feels just as hard. And that to me is how the fixing of the brain is, it’s never really fixed.

There's always work to be done. And no matter how much work you do, the stronger your mind gets, the more you're able to challenge yourself, the more you're able to look at yourself objectively. And the tougher you'll be on yourself, so that you will always see room for improvement, you will always see that there is more work to be done. And therefore realistically, I don't think I will ever class myself as fixed in terms of my mental ability, my mental state, I don't think it will ever be fixed. I think there will always be some work to be done. And I think that's healthy. I think that's good. 

But there were specifically several setbacks in my journey to being better from certainly from when my counseling stopped. Because I felt like I was great, I thought I was brilliant. And then some old habits would creep in some anger would creep in some other things that creep in. And luckily, I'd be able to go; woah hang on these, this is too similar to where I was before. And because, with the beauty of hindsight, I could see where those feelings and where those thought processes lead. I was able to self counsel.

And I write poetry. And I wrote two very poignant poems through my process to becoming better again. One was called the darkness and one was called the light. And the darkness was a very brutal description of how I felt in the midst of my depression. And the light was a very short poem about the moment I realised that there is light at the end of the tunnel. And there is a way back, and I might not be there yet, but at least I can fucking see that like, at least I know that there is a way out now. And never has it ever been more important than since the time of Grenfell. In the last three years. I've been writing a lot. I wrote one in the immediate aftermath of the fire, which is about how I felt about the actual fire. And as I said earlier, I then wrote two further ones. The one about depression, PTSD, at my lowest point, that one was written when I just came out of a counseling session. And I literally walked out of the building in tears, straight to a pub, bought myself a beer, and then wrote a poem about how shit I felt, basically. 

And then, a few months after that, I wrote another one, as I was starting to feel better, and that was the first point, I guess, really when I felt like there was light at the end of the tunnel. 

So the three poems, the first one's called The Firefighter. And that one is, as I said, about how I actually felt the night of the fire. And this was turned into a short film like a two and a half minute film which can be found on YouTube, if you google Grenfell voices the firefighter, you'll be able to see the film adaptation of this poem that I wrote. So I'll read the firefighter now. And hopefully this will give you a decent idea of how I felt a few weeks after the fire.

I'm staring blankly Frankly, I'm broken. My heart can't be mended, befriended or woken. An emptiness consumes me. In sorrow, I'm soaked. My Words can't be heard. As I'm strangled, and choked. As tears stripe each cheek with a trail of sadness, my soul is stained black. With the screams with the madness. The pain of such tragedy, the waste of such life, the death of a husband, his children, his wife. The stairs were too many. My breaths were too few. My body exhausted, now mentally too. The silence of death, my smoke stained hair. A hole in my soul that will never repair. The feeling of failure and pride that combined to leave me confused and abused in my mind. My lips wet with tears. I'm lost. There's no plan. Emotionally ruined. One broken man.

You know as I said earlier, the second one was about my journey through PTSD and depression. And hopefully, it can be something that people can use to explain how they feel if they can't find the right words themselves.

So this one's called the darkness.

My house became a home. Now it's just a house again. The love that I know exists, is numbed by this pain. My windows are open. But I can't hear the birds. My head is left dizzy. Amidst the confusion of words. The sun's shining brightly as the world leaves me alone. But the light never reaches me. Inside the house, that was a home. I wake up, but outwardly, as inside I sleep. My motivation is gone. It's sadness I keep. You see me a smiling and bubbly person. But inside the darkness that set in will worsen. Until eventually, everything I once was, is gone. I'm lost inside myself. And I've lost track of what's wrong. The path back is missing and try as I might. I'm left walking a tunnel with no end and no light. You say the right things. You tell me you know? But you don't understand. Or you'd leave me alone. Or maybe you'd hug me and tell me you're there. It won’t matter to me, I won't believe that you care. This sadness consumes me a constant ally, a darkness that ebbs out my love till I'm dry. I'm less of a person than my shadow itself. I'm just one more person with poor mental health. 

Again, as I said that one was written off the back of a particularly hard counseling session. And at the back end of about four pints of Stella Artois. So is a very true account of how bad I felt at the time. And hopefully that's conveyed well enough that anyone as I said he was suffered with mental health. Hopefully you can associate with that. And hopefully this next one, the last one will give you a bit of hope.

It certainly did when I wrote this, this that I wrote this one, it was a bit of an epiphany. It's certainly not my greatest work. And it's not my favorite pen I've ever written for by a long, long shot, but it's nonetheless it's a poem that is very definitive in my path to, to being mended.

And it's permanent, means a lot to me purely because of the words that are in it and how I felt when I wrote it. It's not going to win any Pulitzer Prizes. But yeah, but this one's called the light. And as I said, this was the turnaround point for me. 

Emotional turmoil, internal confusion. A pain painted heart, with love and illusion. Steps filled with hope, a destination unclear. My back's on the rope, and I choke on my fear. I feel my chest racing, a tremble sets in. I shake as I stand. But if I stand, I can win. The future’s uncertain, no answers will come. Many questions to ask and too fast, I'm undone. But each day, I will rise. Every hour, I will fight as I marched down my tunnel, to the end, to the light.

So my journey back was a long one, it was a hard one. It's something I've had to fight for. And it's something that I continue to fight for. That journey isn't over for me. But I'm in a good place now.

Something that I'm often asked is what advice would I give to someone in my position? And the answer is none. Someone in my position, or in a position I was in, doesn't need advice. They need support, advice is pointless. The people that need advice or the people around that person.

So the advice I would give is this; to anyone who knows anyone, look after them. To that person sitting next to you at your desk in your office, the day they come in, stop talking about their relationship, that's the day there's a problem. Speak to them, tell them you've got a problem in your relationship, see if that helps them open up. There's a technique in the fire brigade. Where if you're in a fire situation, and you notice your colleague start suffering from heat syncope, heat stress, if you tell that person, you are not coping, you need to leave, you will be met with resistance 100% of the time they will say “I'm fine, shut up, what are you talking about? Let's just crack on.” Whilst they make bad decision after bad decision.

If I say to that person, I'm struggling. I need to get out. That person will go into protective mode. And will make sure that I'm okay. And in doing so, probably turn around and say I am too. Let's get out of here.

So the advice that I'm giving isn't to the people that are struggling because those people who've got enough on their plates, they don't need advice. The advice I'm giving is to everybody else. Look out for the person next to you. Look out for the subtle changes in their behaviors. Look out for subtle changes in mood, whether it's at work or at football, or wherever.

And if you ask someone how they are, be prepared to want to know the answer. Don't ask someone how they are, if you think they're struggling, if you're hoping for a generic answer, because that is not what that person needs. If you ask someone who you think is struggling, “how are you?” be prepared for a lot of information coming your way. Because that person, if they're able to open up, will want to know that when they do, it's been received well, and they're being listened to and being supported. 

And every single person listening to this podcast has a very, very unique opportunity to literally and I mean, yes, and I don't say it lightly to literally save somebody's life. If they listen properly, and if they care. 

I've been to a place where I didn't think I could go on. And because of the people around me, I'm here doing this podcast. So my advice, listen to the person next to you, care about the person next to you. And if everyone does that, everybody has someone that will listen to them, and everybody has someone that will care about what happens to them. And our world is an infinitely better, more supportive, kind place.

Maan 1:47:56

Thank you for listening to Prelude. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please support us by leaving a review, subscribing to the show and following us on social media. 

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We’ll listen to you, we hope to talk to you, and in any way possible we’ll aim to help.

And we hope you’ll join us again soon for the next episode of the Prelude Podcast.

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