‘It could have been me’: The Grenfell children who survived the blaze

Published

4 months ago

September 2, 2024

admin

Sixty-seven children lived in Grenfell Tower when the west London block caught fire in June 2017. Eighteen of them never got a chance to grow up.

For many of the others, the traumatic loss, anxiety and PTSD that followed the disaster has shaped their childhoods and young adult lives.

They lost friends, family and everything they owned; spent months or years in hotels; and missed valuable school time.

In the seven years since the tragedy, more than 1,000 children and young people have been treated for mental health issues, according to the NHS Health and Wellbeing Hub, set up in the wake of Grenfell.

They were traumatised by what they saw or heard from friends and family, by having to cope with the loss of a friend or a neighbour, their natural sense of safety shattered on the night of the fire.

New referrals still come in each month.

This week, the Grenfell Inquiry releases its final report into the fire that cost 72 lives.

Sky News has spoken to some of the children who survived the tragedy. These are their stories.

Luana, 19: ‘I feel guilty that I’m here living’

Luana Gomes was 12 at the time of the fire. She managed to escape, with her sister and her pregnant mother, but they were in a coma for weeks. Her baby brother, Logan, was stillborn – the youngest victim of the disaster.

Now 19 and standing at the base of the tower, Luana can’t help but smile at some of the memories.

Pointing to where their flat was on the 21st floor, she recalls looking out the window and calling out to her friends in the park below.

“Every time my friends were down there I’d shout their names. I don’t think they could hear me,” she says, laughing.

She recalls how her friend Mehdi would knock on her door and be scared of her dog: “She was so tiny and sweet but he was terrified of her, which was funny.”

Eventually Mehdi won over his fear of the dog. He died in the fire along with his sister, brother and parents. He was eight.

Luana pauses, takes a deep breath and says: “I feel a bit guilty.

“When you think about your friends and family members and neighbours – I feel guilty that I’m here living and doing all this stuff, and they didn’t get the chance to live and do the stuff they wanted to at such a young age.”

The last seven years have been difficult. She has suffered from anxiety and depression. She missed weeks of school by being in hospital, and remembers being painfully behind when she went back to the classroom.

But she has found solace in dance. This month she goes to university to study it. It’s a cliche, she says, but “dance allows me to express my feelings in a way I can’t say in words”.

She doesn’t want to speak about the little brother she lost, but shows us a message to him written years ago on the memorial wall.

The message says: “Logan. I love and miss you so, so, so much and know that your big sister is always thinking of you. RIEP Brother.”

Abem, 12: ‘It could have been me’

Abem Abraham’s memory of his first home is hazy, but he remembers watching the tower burn, and he remembers the best friend he lost.

As the fire raged, four-year-old Abem was taken down the smoke-filled stairs by his parents – then to a friend who lived nearby. He was safe.

But before falling asleep that night, he looked out of the curtains.

“I see a tall building block engulfed in flames. I don’t know what it was,” he recalls all these years later.

“And then later I realised that it was my own home.”

The cruellest part of the tragedy was losing his best friend, five-year-old Isaac Paulos.

“He was my best friend from my school at the time,” he says. “He was a bit older than me, like a brother. Like a big brother.”

Abem is a kind, smart and energetic boy who loves Formula One, basketball and football. He plays a Manchester United song on the piano, and proudly shows me his new PlayStation 5 – a present from his uncle for having done well at school.

But this 12-year-old also has a message for the politicians and developers.

“They need to remove the cladding off of every UK building because that cladding is deadly. When it comes to fire, it can destroy houses within minutes, within hours, like it did to Grenfell. Everyone, please, please remove it.”

He wants the children who died to be remembered for their “bright dreams”.

“One of them wanted to be a footballer, wanted to be an engineer, wanted to be an architect. All gone in one flame,” he says.

“It could have been me.”

Ines, 23: ‘I was known as Grenfell girl’

As her family ran from the burning building soon after the fire started, 16-year-old Ines Alves grabbed her textbooks.

The next morning, with her home a smouldering ruin, she sat her chemistry GCSE exam.

In the days after the tragedy that destroyed her home, Ines became known as “Grenfell girl”. She has spent much of the past years trying to escape that title.

Initially, she was a viral inspiration. In the months that followed the tragedy, she gave interviews about the disaster and updates on her grades and results to eager journalists.

But it was the following year’s AS-level exams that triggered a mental health crisis.

“My biggest trauma was watching the building burning and people screaming, as I was revising for my GCSEs,” she says.

“So just revising and concentrating generally just kind of led me to dark places after that.

“When June came around it just kind of all came rushing back. And I had probably the biggest mental breakdown. It was just a horrible time.”

She ended up retaking the academic year. It was difficult seeing her friends go off to university without her – but she eventually found her own path.

For Ines, Grenfell is a story in her past, one she doesn’t want to define her future.

At university, she craved anonymity. One of her best friends didn’t realise it was her for over a year. “She just said to me, ‘that was you! What the hell?!'”

Now she’s graduated from Leeds with a degree in maths and has been travelling the world – Australia, Thailand and other parts of Asia.

“Trying to live life like a normal young adult,” she says.

“I kind of don’t really like to live life by knowing what I’m going to do in a month’s time.”

Yousra, 19: ‘They’re not just numbers’

Yousra Cherbika is angry. She’s angry about the fire, the friends she lost, the home she can never return to – and the way she feels other children and young people were treated after the disaster.

She was 12 years old when she watched the tower burn, desperately calling her friend Nur Huda who lived inside to “get out”. But she couldn’t, and her whole family perished.

“They’re not just numbers. They’re not just ‘part of 72’,” she says.

“They have names, we love them. They had stories to tell. They had full lives which were cut short.”

Yousra and her family lived on Grenfell Walk, at the base of the tower. Less is known about those residents who managed to escape, but they also lost everything in the disaster.

“There’s parts of my childhood that I just block out and I don’t remember, like the year after the fire,” she says.

“I don’t remember living in a hotel. We were in one room, five of us, and my mum was pregnant.

“I had no home to go back to, no school to go back to. And even when we did go back to school, it was different, because there were empty chairs in our classrooms.”

She feels as though their support as ‘Walk’ residents was much worse.

“We didn’t know what we were entitled to at first, and so many people turned us away.”

Today Yousra is a campaigner, a leader among local young people, volunteering in her spare time.

She is also training to be a primary school teacher, inspired by the form tutor who helped her through her lowest, darkest points in secondary school.

“I just stayed in bed and I just didn’t go into school. But she encouraged me. She motivated me.”

She feels outraged that seven years on, there is still cladding on buildings across the country.

“Why does it take 72 people to die for them to even think, oh, ‘maybe we should take cladding that might kill people?’

“And still, they haven’t done that.”

Watch Sky News’ special programme on Grenfell tonight at 8pm.

UK

UK weather: Scottish hamlet reaches -18C in coldest January night in 15 years

Published

3 hours ago

January 11, 2025

admin

UK weather: Scottish hamlet reaches -18C in coldest January night in 15 years

Temperatures in a hamlet in northern Scotland fell to -18.7C (-1.66F) overnight – the UK’s coldest January night in 15 years, the Met Office has said.

Altnaharra, in the northern region of the Highlands, reached the lowest temperature while nearby Kinbrace reached -17.9C (-0.22F).

It is the coldest January overnight temperature since 2010, when temperatures dropped below -15C several times at locations across the UK, including -22.3C (-8.14F) on 8 January in Altnaharra.

Forecasters had previously said there was a very small probability it could reach -19C.

Met Office meteorologist Alex Deakin said: “Friday night into Saturday morning may well be the nadir of this current cold spell.”

Temperatures for large parts of the UK are set to fall again as the cold weather continues.

Met Office meteorologist Zoe Hutin said: “We’ve still got tonight to come, and tomorrow (Saturday) night could also be chilly as well.

“Temperatures for tomorrow night, it will be mainly eastern parts that see temperatures dropping widely below freezing, so East Anglia, the northeast of England, northern and eastern Scotland as well.

“So another chilly night to come on Saturday, but then as we go into Sunday and into Monday, then we can start to expect temperatures to recover somewhat.

“I won’t rule out the risk of seeing something around or just below freezing again on Sunday night into Monday, but it won’t be quite so dramatic as the temperatures that we’re going to experience as we go overnight tonight.”

On Monday, temperatures are expected to be more in line with the seasonal norm, at about 7C to 8C.

Read more from Sky News:
Ticket re-sales could be capped
Injection room to tackle drugs epidemic

The freezing conditions have led to travel disruption, with Manchester Airport closing both its runways on Thursday morning because of “significant levels of snow”. They were later reopened.

Transport for Wales closed some railway lines because of damage to tracks.

Hundreds of schools in Scotland and about 90 in Wales were shut on Thursday.

Meanwhile, staff and customers at a pub thought to be Britain’s highest were finally able to leave on Thursday after being snowed in.

The Tan Hill Inn in Richmond, North Yorkshire, is 1,732 feet (528m) above sea level.

Six staff and 23 visitors were stuck, the pub said on Facebook.

UK

Government contract ends for controversial asylum barge Bibby Stockholm

Published

6 hours ago

January 11, 2025

admin

Government contract ends for controversial asylum barge Bibby Stockholm

The government contract for the controversial asylum barge in Dorset has ended.

The last asylum seekers are believed to have left Bibby Stockholm at the end of November after Labour said it would have cost more than £20m to run in 2025.

Its closure this month was expected, and on Friday the management firm and the Home Office confirmed to Sky News the contract had now expired.

It’s currently unclear when Bibby Stockholm will leave Portland and what it will be used for next.

The Conservative government started using the vessel in August 2023.

It said putting nearly 500 men on board while they waited for an asylum decision was cheaper than paying for hotel rooms.

However, it was controversial from the start and sparked legal challenges and protests.

Days after the first group boarded there was an outbreak of Legionella bacteria in the water system and it had to be evacuated for two months.

In December 2023, an Albanian asylum seeker, Leonard Farruku, died on board.

A Home Office spokesperson said the government was determined to reform the asylum system to make it operate “swiftly, firmly and fairly”.

“This includes our accommodation sites, as we continue to identify a range of options to reduce the use of hotels,” the new statement added.

“We are already closing some hotels and will continue to engage with local authorities and key stakeholders as part of this process.”

UK

How is your local NHS coping under winter pressures?

Published

6 hours ago

January 11, 2025

admin

How is your local NHS coping under winter pressures?

Pressure on hospitals is particularly high this winter, with more than a dozen declaring critical incidents in recent days.

Hospitals struggle every winter with additional pressures due to the impact of cold weather, but the early arrival of flu this season and high volume of cases meant Christmas and New Year’s weeks were even busier than usual.

There are currently at least 20 hospitals that have declared critical incidents in England, although this is a fast-moving picture, and some trusts will go into critical incident for as little as half an hour.

The latest NHS winter situation reports give a more detailed look at the level of pressure experienced by individual trusts, including those with the worst ambulance handover delays and highest levels of flu patients.

Ambulance handover delays

When a patient arrives at a hospital in an ambulance, clinical guidelines suggest that it should take no longer than 15 minutes to transfer them into emergency care.

It is now common for handovers to regularly exceed this timeframe, however, when emergency departments are overcrowded and lack the capacity to keep up with new patient arrivals.

This is risky for patients because it delays their assessment and treatment by clinicians, and also reduces the availability of ambulances to respond to new incidents.

The trust with the longest delays was University Hospitals Plymouth, with an average handover time of three hours and 33 minutes over the week – two hours and 40 minutes longer than the average for England. It also recorded the longest average handover times for a single day, at five hours and 14 minutes on New Year’s Day.

Use the table below to search for local ambulance handover times:

On 7 January, University Hospitals Plymouth declared a critical incident at Derriford Hospital due to “significant and rising demand for hospital care”, though this has since been stood down.

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust had an average ambulance handover time of three hours and 15 minutes, increasing by more than an hour from one hour and 51 minutes the week before.

In Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, 83% of handovers took more than 30 minutes, the highest share among areas dealing with more than five ambulance arrivals per day.

This area also recently declared and then stood down a critical incident.

In total across England, 43 trusts out of 127 had average handover times of more than an hour, while nine areas had average handover times of more than two hours.

Flu

This winter’s flu wave arrived earlier than usual and has hit health services hard.

Over New Year’s week, there were 5,407 flu patients in hospitals in England on average each day, more than three times higher than during the same week last year and increasing by 20% from the week before.

The worst impacted trusts were Northumbria Healthcare and University Hospitals Birmingham, with 15% and 13% of all available beds occupied by flu patients respectively in the latest week.

Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust had among the biggest increase in flu patients from the previous week, more than doubling from 18 to 42 patients per day on average.

Use the table below to search for local flu hospitalisations:

There are some indications that flu activity may have now peaked, with national flu surveillance showing a decrease in positive flu tests in the latest week, though activity remains at high levels.

Bed occupancy

Current NHS guidance is that a maximum of 92% of hospital beds should be occupied to reduce negative risks associated with overfilled beds.

These risks include the impact on patient flow resulting from it being more difficult to find beds for patients, and negative impacts on performance and waiting times, as well as being linked to increased infection rates.

In the week to 5 January, 92.8% of 102,546 open hospital beds were available each day on average, not far off the recommended level.

However, bed occupancy was very high in some trusts, with more than 95% of beds occupied in 43 trusts on average over the week.

The trust with the highest rate of bed occupancy was Wye Valley NHS Trust, with 99.9% of 332 beds occupied on average throughout the week.

There was only one day when beds weren’t fully occupied, on 3 January, when two beds of 322 were available.

Use the table below to search for local bed occupancy:

Kettering General Hospital NHS Trust recorded bed occupancy of 98.5% over the week. This trust declared a critical incident on 8 January.

Part of the problem for bed availability is prolonged hospital stays – also known as bed-blocking.

This is often linked to pressures in other parts of the health and social care system, for example when patients can’t be discharged to appropriate social care providers even though they are ready to leave hospital.

Just under half of beds occupied by patients in English hospitals last week were occupied by long-stay patients who had been there for seven or more days.

In seven trusts, at least three in five beds were occupied by long-stay patients, while in Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust the figure was more than four in five beds.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.