Great debate on the future of the Grenfell Tower

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The idea stemmed in part from 42-year-old Marcio Gomes, an IT technician who lived on Grenfell’s 21st floor for a decade with his wife Andrea and their daughters. Gomes’ description of the night of the fire is appalling.

He remembers waking him up at 1.30 with a knock on the front door. Smoke was gathering on the podium in front of his apartment. He filled his tub with water, placed wet towels on the gap around his neck, as he had learned in school, and hid in an apartment with Andreja, who was seven months pregnant at the time, and their daughters, then 12 and 10 years old. But the smoke soon invaded. It smelled toxic.

Gomes tells me he had four phone conversations with firefighters, some of which were replayed earlier in the Grenfell investigation.

At 2.21, the operator assured him that firefighters would come to their aid. But just after 3.25, after nearly two hours of shelter, a fire engulfed his apartment. He told his frightened family to hold hands and form a human chain and go down the stairs – and to continue whatever happened.

They wrapped wet towels around their heads to protect themselves from the smoke. Every time Gomes inhaled, his mouth closed and he felt like he was going to vomit. It was so dark that they had to feel with their feet where they were going.

He stepped on several corpses. At one point, someone who collapsed grabbed him by the calves, but Gomes had to keep going.

In the darkness, filled with smoke, he separated himself from his wife and daughter, who collapsed on the stairs. Before leaving, Gomes told a passing firefighter about where they were in the building – miraculously all three were rescued.

Andreia inhaled so much smoke that she was put in an induced coma at the hospital with a 50/50 chance of survival. Their unborn son Logan died.

He was born stillborn by caesarean section – the youngest victim of the Grenfell fire. The first question Andreia asked after waking up from a coma was, ‘How’s the baby?’

Five years later, the family is still severely affected. Gomes ’daughters suffered nightmares and stopped school activities: boxing, swimming and trampoline clubs. Even the view of the tower seems traumatic to Gomes.

The family has since moved to another part of London, but he goes there several times a week to visit his brother and attend football training sessions. ‘It’s like a wound that never heals,’ he says. ‘It’s covered [but] you know exactly what’s behind that cover. It will always be hard to go.

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