The Sunday Times Magazine • 19an internal email. He told colleagues to keep
the results “very confidential!!!!”
Grenfell’s cladding was cassette. In a
prescient warning of the tragedy, Arconic’s
French marketing manager had written
to colleagues in 2007 to say that wrapping
a big tower in 5,000 square metres of
ACM added the “fuel power” of a 19,
litre oil tanker. He then pondered the
manufacturer’s responsibility if a block
with this cladding “is on fire and will kill
60 to 70 persons”. He suggested shifting
towards fire-retardant ACM.
Yet Arconic kept selling the flammable
version in Britain, where rules were less
strict than in Europe. In 2014 Deborah
French, then UK sales manager, sent the
BBA certificate, based on a now-defunct
rating, to the Grenfell project team. No one
read the certificate in detail.
Over this period the technical manager
Wehrle sent increasingly blunt internal
warnings as nonfatal fires ripped through
ACM façades on buildings in Europe,
the Middle East and Australia. After an
ACM tower in Strasbourg was nearly set
alight in 2016, Wehrle emailed: “We are
in ‘the know’ and it is up to us to be
proactive ... AT LAST.”
Wehrle and two colleagues refused to
testify at the Grenfell inquiry, claiming
they could be prosecuted under a rarely
used French law if they appeared at a
foreign tribunal. Arconic said its plastic-
filled ACM cladding was “capable of
being used in a compliant manner”. At
Grenfell it was “used by others in a wholly
unsafe manner and in combination with
other wholly inappropriate components”.
The UK executive Deborah French did
testify, but said “I can’t recall” or similar
more than 250 times.2.17AM: A FULL INFERNO
It was eerily quiet when four firefighters
reached the Belkadis’ flat on the 20th floor
at 2.17am. One shouted through the
letterbox. Omar opened the door, then ran
back in to get his three children. “I’ve got
kids! I’ve got kids!” The acrid black smoke
tasted like burning tyres. “My baby! Don’t
forget my baby,” his wife, Farah, shouted.
They could not even see the door, let alone
their rescuers.
“We’ve got to go now,” the firefighter
Vincent Williams urged them. They froze,
so he grabbed the smaller girl into his arms.
Malak followed, then they all came.
The stairwell was pitch dark and hot. The
five-year-old girl screamed into Williams’s
chest as he raced down. “She wrapped her
legs around the top of my leg and squeezed
like you wouldn’t believe ... She was holding
on for dear life.”
Halfway down, an exhausted Williams
passed her to his partner. Then firefighters
carrying a man blocked their way. The stairs
were only 104cm wide. Williams jumped
past; his partner passed the girl back over the
man. She was limp now. He had just enough
air in his tanks to get her out at 2.25am.
Behind them, a third firefighter told Omar
to follow, holding on to his air cylinder,
with his partner walking at the rear. Omar
collapsed halfway down the first floor. The
two firefighters grabbed Omar’s legs and
armpits, but they could not carry his tall,
sturdy frame. The low air pressure alarmeach had sounded. One went to look for
help further down. The other stayed until
his air was completely finished, then —
leaving Omar with two new firefighters
— ran all the way down.
In the blackness Farah and her eldest
daughter, Malak, felt their way down the
stairs. At the first half landing Farah tripped.
She fell with her foot wedged behind in
the banister and she could not get out,
cradling Leena in the sling. Malak collapsed
beside her.
About half an hour later two of the few
firefighters with double air tanks found
them. “I was tugging and tugging but I
couldn’t move her,” Nikki Upton testified
about Farah. “If we spent more time trying
to free the woman, we would be
jeopardising the child’s life further.”
By 3.07am, when Malak was carried out
beneath riot shields to protect her from
the big sheets of metal wafting down like
bits of burning paper, she had been in
the smoke for 42 minutes longer than her
younger sister. In the mayhem downstairs
commanders were writing flat numbers
on a wall to keep track of rescues. The
El-Wahabis’ flat 182, where the football-
loving Nur Huda was still trapped with her
whole family, was on that list. No one got
them out.
In the windows of the tower people
trapped inside waved fairy lights, phone
torches, cushions, shirts. Samira could not
look any more. Farah’s window was
engulfed. Jessica’s mum stood sobbing next
to her. “My daughter is in there,” Adriana
said. “My sister is in there,” Samira replied,
embracing Adriana.W
hile it is true that Kingspan’s
insulation covered just 5 per cent
of Grenfell Tower, its role in the
scandal was much bigger. The
inquiry heard how it influenced
regulators to allow many types of
flammable panels on other towers
without the need for any tests whatsoever.“MY BABY! DON’T
FORGET MY BABY,”
FARAH SHOUTED.
THEY COULD NOT
EVEN SEE THE
DOOR, LET ALONE
THEIR RESCUERS
Four members of the Belkadi
Hamdan family perished:
Omar and Farah, top, their
daughter Malak, left, and baby
Leena, above, who was found
in her mother’s arms ➤