Grenfell firefighter's guilt after leaving victim behind in tower

A former firefighter who was forced to leave a desperate victim behind in Grenfell Tower has revealed he was riddled with guilt for years and suffered post-traumatic stress disorder.

Ricky Nuttall tried to rescue a person trapped on the 15th floor of the building but was forced to turn back as he was running out of oxygen and temperatures were in excess of 550C.

Seventy-two people died as the horror blaze ripped through the Kensington tower block in June 2017 after many residents were told to stay in their flats.

Mr Nuttall told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Wednesday: 'We could feel our skin burning through our fire gear, we still hadn't secured a water supply, we had a tangled hose - and our emergency whistles were going off on our breathing apparatus, telling us that we were running out of air.

'We realised in that moment that there was no way that we could try and attempt to rescue [them] because we felt that if we tried in that scenario, there would have been three people in mortal danger rather than one.

'It's a really harsh scenario and one that I have wrestled with for years post-fire. The guilt of leaving another human being behind is very hard to come to terms with - especially when you find out that person did, in fact, die.'

Mr Nuttall's comments were made ahead of the publication of the final report of the inquiry into the tragedy that killed 72 people in June 2017.

The report concluded that the disaster was caused by 'serious deficiencies' in building standards, 'dishonest' manufacturers and a local authority with an 'indifference' to fire safety.

Significantly, the report found that the deaths that resulted were 'avoidable'.

Mr Nuttall had worked for the fire brigade for 12 years when he was woken up in the middle of the night and called to Grenfell Tower.

Unsure what to expect, he previously said that he was stunned when he heard a call over the radio for another twenty fire engines while en route.

He told This Morning back in 2019: 'It was like nothing I have experienced and hopefully will ever experience again. I think that was the same for every firefighter who attended.

'You turn up expecting to see a fire in a window or in two windows. You don't expect to see flames from the first floor to the twenty fourth floor.'

Mr Nuttall explained that every firefighter who entered the building understood that the work could be fatal for them.

He called it 'harrowing', saying: 'With any fire there's always a potential that something might go wrong. You're dealing with an unpredictable force.

'I think every firefighter that went in was concerned about whether they were coming out, to a certain extent.'

As the firefighters desperate attempted to control the blaze, Mr Nuttall told how they tried to focus on their work.

He said: 'Your mind immediately turns to your training, your resources. If you've got 200 firefighters all trained to do the same thing, you're going to get the best possible outcome, you hope.'

The Grenfell Fire tragedy was caused by cladding panels that were put on the exterior face of the tower during a refurbishment several years previously.

They were Reynobond aluminium composite material (ACM) rainscreen panels with a highly flammable polyethylene (PE) core.

In his first report for the public inquiry, chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick concluded the cladding panels were the 'principle reason' why flames shot up the side of the 24-storey block.

He said the flammable core of the panels 'acted as a source of fuel' as the inferno raged out of control in a matter of minutes.

The fire claimed the lives of 72 victims - the names of whom were read out at the conclusion of the inquiry on Wednesday.

These included an up-and-coming artist who pleaded for her friends to 'pray' for her as her apartment filled with smoke and a mother who filmed her final moments before she and her two children perished.

Some families tried to run, but never made it out, and one 12-year-old, who firefighters desperately tried to save, begged a 999 call handler 'Please can you hurry up?' before the phone went dead.