Date of Incident
Publication Date
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- A coalition of lawyers representing bereaved families, survivors and affected local residents
Additional Funding
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Exhibitions
Grenfell Testimony Week was a private event and exhibition featuring contributions from individuals affected by the 2017 Grenfell Tower Fire who wished to speak about the impact it has had on them and those they care about.
The event formed part of a Settlement Agreement signed in 2023, which was the result of a civil claim brought by a large group of bereaved family members, survivors, and nearby residents affected by the Grenfell Tower Fire, against a group of Defendants comprising private companies, local government bodies, central government departments, and the London Fire Brigade.
Testimony Week provided a space for those bereaved individuals, survivors, and nearby residents to speak directly to representatives from the Defendant organisations considered by many to be jointly responsible for the fire, and to an invite wider audience.
The following video interviews were screened during Testimony Week for the first time, and are now being made public.
Eleven individuals affected by the Grenfell Tower Fire—bereaved family members, survivors, and nearby residents—worked with researchers from Forensic Architecture, at Goldsmiths, University of London, to tell their stories for Testimony Week. Here, we share some of those videos publicly for the first time.
This collaboration utilised an interviewing technique developed by Forensic Architecture, called situated testimony. In this case, the practice of situated testimony involved the use of 3D models of Grenfell Tower and its surrounding environment as an interviewing tool, to help survivors and witnesses to access their memories of the night of the fire, in a safe environment. Together, we were able to reconstruct the event in the way they remembered it.
Piecing these reconstructions together with our own analysis, and video and audio data, we developed a feature-length film which presents a shared story of the night of the fire. That film, Situated Testimonies of Grenfell, is yet to be made publicly accessible. It was screened at Testimony Week in a trauma-informed environment.
Marcio Gomes
Marcio lived with his wife and two daughters in Flat 183 on the 21st floor of Grenfell Tower. Their unborn son, Logan, was the youngest victim of the fire.
In his situated testimony, Marcio speaks of the faulty installation of new windows as part of the refurbishments which took place between 2012 and 2016. The new windows were smaller than the original ones and left gaps between the frames and the original concrete columns. Together with FA, Marcio reconstructed the way in which fire broke into his flat through the edge of the window and enveloped his child’s cradle. Marcio was on a call with a 999 operator at the moment this happened, and knew at this moment he had to leave his flat. From that point on, the call lasted for over 30 minutes—the time it took him to make his way down the tower with his daughters and pregnant wife—making this 999 call an invaluable document of the conditions inside the tower at the peak of the fire.
According to an expert report submitted to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry: ‘The detailing created around the old and new windows meant that the materials, and the arrangement of those materials, increased the likelihood of a fire breaking out of the flat and increased the likelihood of that fire breaking into the large cavities contained within the cladding system.’
Nazanin and Shahrokh Aghlani
Nazanin and Shahrokh’s mother, Sakina Afrasehabi (4 April 1952 – 14 June 2017), lived in Flat 151 on the 18th floor of Grenfell Tower. On the night of the fire, their aunt, Fatemah Afrasiabi (15 November 1957 – 14 June 2017), was also staying in Flat 151.
In her situated testimony, Nazanin describes twenty years of discrimination in housing allocation by the council of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC). Despite well-documented mobility issues, Sakina was given no option but to live in an unsuitable property. Eventually, she felt pressured to take a one-bedroom flat on the 18th floor of Grenfell Tower in 2016.
At the request of Nazanin, and with her collaboration, FA used evidence submitted to the inquiry to develop an illustration of the experiences of Sakineh and Fatemeh on the night of the fire. This illustration considered the testimony of survivors; the speed, direction, and intensity of the fire as documented from outside; and the sounds of helicopters and smoke alarms between 01:05 and 03:33. The sisters left Flat 151 between 01:25 and 01:30 and went up ten flights of stairs to the 23rd floor. Trapped by fire and smoke, they made a phone call to Shahrokh: a reconstruction of the soundscape that Shahrokh heard through the phone is part of this situated testimony.
Disabled residents of Grenfell Tower died in disproportionately high numbers on the night of the fire. No disabled residents had been assigned a personal evacuation plan. In 2020, Nazanin, Shahrokh, and their family took legal action against the government, seeking to force those responsible for high-rise buildings to make personal evacuation plans for every disabled resident.
Nicholas Burton
Nicholas and his wife Pily (10 Aug 1943 – 29 Jan 2018) lived in Flat 165 on the 19th floor of Grenfell Tower.
In his situated testimony, Nicholas gives an account of his first 999 call to the London Fire Brigade (LFB), in which he was told to ‘stay put’. Residents of Grenfell Tower, like all residents of high-rise buildings in the UK during fire emergencies, were advised by the LFB to remain in their flats; the ‘stay put’ policy relies upon the assumption that any high-rise building has sufficient fire-stopping measures in place that a fire inside a single flat cannot spread around the building. At Grenfell, the fire spread rapidly onto and across the building’s external cladding, making internal fire-stopping measures redundant, and directly leading to the resulting 72 deaths.
As smoke levels increased, Nicholas and Pily took refuge in their bathroom. By the time the fire brigade knocked on their door to rescue them, the lobby and the stairwell were filled with thick, dark smoke. Nicholas and Pily were separated in the tower’s stairwell, and reunited when they reached the ground. Pily was hospitalised that night; seven months later, she became the 72nd victim of the fire.
Edward Daffarn
Edward, a co-founder of the Grenfell Action Group, lived in Flat 134, on the 16th floor of Grenfell Tower.
In his situated testimony, Edward drew attention to what he saw as a careless approach by RBKC and their Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) to dealing with residents in the years preceding the fire, including an interaction in 2015 concerning the malfunctioning of a self-closing device on the door to a nearby flat on the 16th floor. The malfunction of this same door on the night of the fire allowed smoke to penetrate throughout the 16th floor:
‘They never replaced the “self-closer”. It seems to me they must have just removed the Perko, because there wasn’t a Perko on the night of the fire. At the end of the day, this was the reason Sheila never escaped. Joe never escaped…’ —Ed Daffard
Nina Masroh
Nina lived with her four children in Testerton Walk, part of the residential block contiguous with Grenfell Tower. Nina’s situated testimony includes her experience of gathering with dozens of her neighbours along the Grenfell Walk during the first hours of the fire, with the hope of offering their help to those trapped inside the tower. Nina’s reconstruction included a detailed account of the movement, behaviour, and density of the smoke along the façade.
With the aid of FA researchers, Nina also pieced together a wide range of sound samples of the roaring fire, the breaking of windows, and the calls for rescue. These sound samples were used to build the soundscape of the night.
‘They have to hear it. And they have to see it. I mean, the Inquiry, and the ones who made the decisions and put us here.’ —Nina Masroh
David O'Connell
David lived with his partner Viviana on Barandon Walk, also part of the residential block complex connected to Grenfell Tower. David witnessed the events of the fire from the communal gardens underneath the tower, staying there until around 05:30 in the morning.
In his situated testimony, David reconstructed the space and soundscape of the communal garden. This included the sounds of the helicopters and the sound of the cladding panels exploding under extreme heat. Together with FA, he modelled the size and shape of the charred and blackened debris falling from the building, including pieces that landed on him.
On the night, David was woken by his partner around 01:00 and shortly afterwards left and ended up in the garden area in front of the tower. Around 03:00 he became aware of the police evacuation of Barandon Walk. He was still in the garden and in close proximity to the tower at the time.
‘I felt that I couldn’t leave… I remember thinking, how the hell are you supposed to get away from that if you are inside? How would you be able to escape that…?’ —David O’Connell
Sarah Ali
Sarah lived with her family, also in Barandon Walk. During her testimony, Sarah reflected on television and social media’s role in her experience of the fire. On the night of the fire, she watched images and videos of the burning tower on their living room television. Sarah reconstructed her memories from later on the night of the fire, as she was evacuated from her flat. After she left her flat, she opened her phone and watched a live-streamed video, recorded and shared to social media by a woman inside the tower calling for rescue.
‘I saw that video, and it kind of made it real. I mean, I knew it was real, but it hit me then that people are dying… that this, this is a trap. So you know that if the smoke doesn’t get you, then the actual fire will get you. Everything was extremely vivid for me…’ —Sarah Ali
Sarah’s video interview includes her own video recordings of the fire from that night.
I Don't Remember, I Don't Recall
During the Grenfell Tower inquiry, ‘I don’t recall’ and ‘I don’t remember’ were among the most common responses given by employees of the companies considered jointly responsible for the Grenfell fire, when asked about their knowledge of the management and refurbishment of the tower block.
Forensic Architecture produced this video at the request of two individuals from the bereaved families and survivors of the fire, Hanan Wahabi and Sandra Ruiz. The video was first presented in January 2024 at Grenfell Testimony Week to the representatives of the defendant organisations.