London fire: harrowing stories of victims and families emerge

The faces of small children, elderly grandparents and members of the different generations of the same families smiled from the “missing” posters at relief centres in the shadow of Grenfell Tower.

With information about the missing still scarce, friends and relatives have been left to launch desperate appeals for news of their loved ones and to try to preserve hope in the face of mounting reasons to fear the worst.

The photographs circulated on social media, too, as frantic families, facing the helpless agony of waiting, paced out time scouring hospitals. “We have been trying everything – searching all the hospitals twice, three times over,” said Carlos Ruiz, uncle of Jessica Urbano (12), who rang her mother at 1.39am fleeing the 20th floor. “We are aware of other families in the same situation – just waiting. It may take a long time to collect everyone’s details.

“This is a 12-year-old girl, and her parents are getting desperate now, all the family are.”

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A poster saying: "Jessica is 12 years, approx 5ft with brown eyes and long curly hair" was pressed into the hands of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as he visited St Clement's Church in west London on Thursday, amid tearful appeals for his help in finding her.

Adel Chaoui, searching for his cousin, found two of her children, Malek Belkadi (8) and Tamzin Belkadi (6) in St Mary’s hospital after he “begged” a nurse who took pity and said there was a child upstairs who matched the description.

“When we went upstairs, we realised her sister was also in the same ward,” he said. No one knew they were related. One is in a coma, the other sedated. Of their mother and his cousin, Farah Hamdan, her husband, Omar Belkadi, and a third child, Leena Belkadi, aged six months, Chaoui still awaits news.

Boy lost grip

Those clinging to hope include the parents of a five-year-old boy, Isaac, who got separated in the thick black smoke as his mother, Genet Shawo, father, Paulos Petakle, and brother, Luca (3), fled down a fire escape. He was holding on to a neighbour’s hand, but lost his grip. His distraught mother described how they put wet towels on the children after opening their door to be beaten back by heat and smoke.

"I was helping my neighbour put towels on his children, and started helping them down. I had put a wet towel already on Isaac." Only when she got outside did she realise Isaac was missing. "My neighbour said he had lost hold of him inside and couldn't find him," she told the London Evening Standard. "It was so dark you couldn't see anything in the smoke." The couple trawled the emergency centres and hospitals. "I am praying he managed to get out somehow, or someone else saved him."

Among the many others missing was Dennis Murphy, who The Irish Post reported as being Irish. In a social media post on Facebook, his nephew Steve Racz said: "Can I ask all my friends in west London or contacts in west London share this picture.

 "My uncle Dennis Murphy was in the building of the fire. He called trapped on 14^th floor. We haven't heard anything since. Can anyone with information contact me please."

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said it has not been made aware of any Irish citizens caught up in the fire. “We’re not providing consular assistance as we have no confirmation any Irish citizens have been caught up in the incident,” a spokeswoman for the DFA said.

As harrowing stories of families separated in the chaos emerged, it was feared engineering student Mohammed Alhajali (23) was among those who died. He reportedly got separated from his brother Omar (25) who has since been found in hospital. The brothers fled Deraa in Syria for the UK three years ago.

Final phone calls

As he waited to be rescued, Mohammed spoke on the phone for two hours to a friend in Syria. “When the fire reached his flat on the 14th floor, Mohammed bid his friend goodbye, saying the fire had reached him,” the Syria Solidarity Campaign said in a Facebook post.

Terrible accounts of farewell phone calls emerged. An Italian architecture graduate thanked her mother and bade her goodbye in an emotional phone call from her 23rd-floor flat. A lawyer for the family of Gloria Trevisan, missing with her partner, Marco Gottardi, told Italian media there was “no hope” of finding the couple alive.

Trevisan had phoned her family at 3am. “She said goodbye,” said lawyer Maria Cristina Sandrin. “She said, ‘Thank you mother for what you have done for me.’” The line was disconnected shortly afterwards.

Ali Yawar Jafari (82) was separated from his family when he left the lift because he could not breathe. His son, Hamid Ali Jafari, said his father lost contact with his mother and sister who lived with him.

"He was with my mother and sister in the lift and she said the lift stopped on the 10th floor and he said there was too much smoke and he couldn't breathe and he got out of the lift and then the door shut and it didn't stop again until the ground floor," he told the Telegraph.

The families of those not found face the agony of a lengthy formal identification process. Six victims were provisionally identified but, the Met police commander Stuart Cundy said, “there is a risk that sadly we may not be able to identify everybody”.

Among those unaccounted for were teaching assistant Nadia Choucair, her husband, Bassem, their three daughters, aged 13, 10 and three, and the girls’ grandmother.

Footage of fire

Nura Jamal, her husband, Hashim Kedir, and their three children, Yahya Hashim, Firdows Hashim and Yaqub Hashim, had also been reported missing.

Rania Ibrahim (30), trapped with daughters Fathia (5) and Hania (3), had posted harrowing footage of the fire on Facebook Live. She has not been seen. She filmed as she sought help in the smoke-filled corridor before going out on to the balcony. A relative, Ali Ahmed, said: “My brother hasn’t seen his wife and two daughters. No one has seen them. We just came back from the hospital. They were on the 19th floor. It’s too high.

“It’s sad, very sad. No one can give us any information about the whole family, kids or nothing.”

There were fears, too for Abdulaziz Wahabi, his wife, Faouzia, and children Nurhouda, Yassin and Medhi. All lived on the 21st floor of the tower, according to Wahabi’s sister Hana who spoke to him on the night.

“He said he had been told to stay inside, stay in one room together and put towels under the door. I told him to leave.” But he said there was too much smoke. “The last time I saw him they were waving out the window.”

– (Guardian, PA)