THE Grenfell Tower fire victims who burned inside the building were dead or unconscious before flames reached them, an inquiry has found.
A harrowing report into the 2017 tragedy revealed further details on the victims’ cause of death.
An inquiry has found Grenfell victims burned inside the tower were dead before flames reached them
PAAll of the tragic 72 victims of Grenfell[/caption]
The report found that all of the victims burned by the fire were dead or unconscious due to “inhalation of asphyxiant gases”, primarily carbon monoxide.
The disaster also claimed five other victims, including three who jumped from the tower, stillborn baby Logan Gomes, and 74-year-old Maria del Pilar Burton, who died in January 2018.
Chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick said expert evidence suggested it was possible for residents to descend the tower’s stairs “without danger of collapse” by 1.49am.
After that it was still possible but “more hazardous due to the dense smoke and absence of visibility”.
The report said: “In light of Professor David Purser’s evidence, we think it likely that those who died in the tower after having left their flats inhaled most of the carbon monoxide that killed them while they were descending the stairs.
“Those who did not survive the journey down the stairs had inhaled a significant amount of asphyxiant gases while in their flats and before entering the stairs.”
The report added that the “key distinction” between those who survived and those who died is that “those who survived left before the fire spread to the outside of their flats or the rooms in which they were sheltering”.
It concluded that “all the deceased were comatose, and in most cases dead, before they were exposed to significant heat”.
“The severe burning of bodies was likely to have occurred in all cases sometime after death when the fire entered the flats and consumed the combustible contents,” the report added.
It was also found the tragedy could have been stopped 26 years before the inferno.
Successive governments ignored warnings about the building’s flammable cladding for decades, the reports said.