Residents of a tower block in Easton which saw a fatal fire last month are still waiting for answers about a lack of fire safety measures. Council chiefs failed to turn up to a residents meeting to respond to questions on why no sprinklers have been installed in Twinnell House.
A mother who lives in a flat opposite the one where the fire started described how she struggled to carry her six-year-old son barefooted down 16 flights of stairs, during the meeting on Thursday, October 13, in a packed hall at the Easton Christian Family Centre, after smoke entered her home.
People living in other council tower blocks in Easton and Lawrence Hill questioned why they were still waiting for Bristol City Council to install sprinklers in their homes, despite the council promising in January 2019 it would spend millions doing so over the next five years.
Read more: Twinnell House residents to press council chiefs for answers on fire safety
Shaban Ali lives in Barton House, a nearby tower block. He said: “This could have happened to any one of us and the reason we’re here is to prevent it happening again. I’ve lived in Barton House for seven years, and I have two children, they’re aged two and are twins. It would be a nightmare if that happened in our building, and I live on the 11th floor. If a fire were to break out, the lift would stop, so we would all have to go out through this narrow corridor and the steps are really slippery.
“The reason we’re here is to make some demands of the council: fit fire sprinklers throughout the BS5 towers; employ day and night fire wardens in all blocks until sprinklers have been fitted; and carry out fire safety checks at least once a year, with findings and action plans made public. What lessons have been learned from Grenfell? In January 2019, Bristol City Council announced they would be fitting sprinklers in every tower block by 2024. There has been nothing done to our blocks—what is going on?”
A few council tower blocks do have fire marshals patrolling around the clock. Four blocks in Barton Hill—Ashmead, Barton, Harwood and Longlands—will see waking watch wardens patrol the blocks while works take place to improve fire safety measures.
Two empty chairs were placed at the front of the meeting, after Bristol mayor Marvin Rees and cabinet member for housing Tom Renhard didn’t accept invitations. But Cllr Renhard wrote to Acorn, a community union representing the residents, asking to hear the details behind their concerns about fire safety. He also said that “all fire safety systems worked correctly” in Twinnell House on September 25, the night of the fire which killed one person.
In the letter, Cllr Renhard said: “The accidental fire at Twinnell House last month affected and deeply upset us all. Since then, we have been creating as many opportunities as we can to listen to comments and thoughts from residents with regard to fire safety, as well as other safety concerns too. Conversations have also taken place at numerous meetings locally close to Twinnell House, including a meeting at Twinnell House with the mayor and myself in attendance on September 29. The mayor also visited again last week on October 7.
“While all fire safety systems worked correctly at Twinnell House, the news may have caused some concern among residents at other tower blocks. We have contacted all our tower block residents by text message to say that reminder fire safety information specific to their block will be circulated through their letterboxes in coming weeks. Be assured that at Twinnell House: the stay put policy allowed the fire service to quickly control the fire and put it out; the cladding did not cause the fire to spread outside the building; and the fire doors and compartmentation prevented the fire from spreading.
“As the fire did not spread, damage to other homes and the top floor was very limited and most residents are now back in their homes. Four residents remain in temporary accommodation while a corridor on the top floor of the block is fully cleaned and repaired. We expect to be able to help all residents who are in temporary accommodation back into their homes very soon.
“We continue to spend £2.5 million a year across our 62 high-rise tower blocks on fire safety. We have also recently agreed an additional £1 million to review our fire safety plans and make sure they’re in line with the very latest government standards. If Acorn wishes to collectively gather residents’ concerns and share them with us, we will investigate and look into any issues with relevant tenants or particular blocks.”
One important issue is how smoke from the fire reportedly spread into other flats. Eight people from Twinnell House were treated for smoke inhalation on the night of the fire. Selma Muuse lives on the 16th floor of the tower block, opposite the flat which caught fire. She told the meeting how she was forced to flee with her son after smoke began to fill up their home.
She said: “I turned on my light and there was smoke everywhere, it was coming through my door and I felt it on my feet. I tried to open my door but the door handle was hot, very hot. I opened the door and I saw smoke everywhere, fire in front of my neighbour’s door, and the door was wide open. I think somebody tried to escape and they left the door open.
“I closed the door because I didn’t want more smoke to come into my flat and for my son to inhale it. I have a six-year-old son who is autistic. I was scared for my life and my son’s life. I ran to my son’s room and I woke him up. I said ‘Ahmed there's a fire, we’ve got to go’. I couldn’t think clearly about what I was supposed to do. I put a big scarf around my head and I wrapped it around my face because I was scared of inhaling it, and I wrapped a scarf around his head as well.
“He was so scared and he said ‘mummy I don’t want to go, I’m gonna die’ and I said we can’t stay here because we are gonna die if we stay here. I thought about Grenfell Tower, when I saw they were waiting for the fire service to enter, and I didn’t want to wait because I was scared. So I took the decision to leave with my kid. We opened the door, everything was hot and I thought even if I make it out with burns, I’m fine as long as I make it out.
“It was hot, smoke was everywhere, and I ran with my son barefoot in my pyjamas. No fire alarm went off, no smoke alarm, even though there was smoke in my home. My smoke alarm didn’t go off, nor did my neighbour’s. If I had heard a fire alarm, I would have woken up in flight mode, I would know that there was a fire somewhere in this building. But because that didn’t go off, I wasn’t expecting to see what I woke up to.
“I ran away with my son, we went downstairs, from the 16th floor down, all the way down. I kept saying to Ahmed ‘come on, run’. He’s autistic and has leg problems, so I had to carry him but I couldn’t carry my son any longer because my legs felt so numb. I carried him as much as I could and then I put him down and said ‘Ahmed you’ve just got to run’. I told him ‘we’re almost there, we’re almost there’, but I didn’t believe myself that we were almost there because it felt so long, and all we could hear was ‘help me, help me, help me’. I didn’t know where it was coming from and my son was saying ‘mummy they’re asking for help’ but I said ‘we’ve got to help ourselves, Ahmed, we have to save our own lives’.
“Finally when we made it outside I was just in shock, I couldn’t speak to anybody. My phone kept on ringing. The fire alarm didn’t go off. People in the community had to ring each other, to say there’s smoke and they have to get out because they didn’t hear the fire alarms.
“I went to the rest centre after that, which was in the church of St Nicholas and they helped us out. We didn’t have any clothes and we were barefoot. They gave us some shoes and my son a jacket and we stayed there and waited until they took us to a hotel. They’ve been transferring me around from hotel to hotel. This will be the fourth hotel I’m going to next week.”
A minute’s silence was held at the start of the meeting for Abdul Jabar Oryakhel, 30, who died after falling from a window on the 16th floor of Twinnell House. On November 1, tower block residents and Acorn members will go to City Hall and present their demands to the council for sprinklers, fire marshals and annual safety inspections.
