A FATHER described yesterday how he thought it was "the end" after hiding in a bathroom with five of the six people who died as a blaze engulfed their tower block.
Rasheed Nuhu said he wished he could have done more to save his neighbours' lives and criticised the response of the emergency services.
Six people, including a mother and her three-week-old daughter, perished in the fire at Lakanal House in Cambe
rwell, south London, on Friday night.
Mr Nuhu said he gave refuge to Helen Udoaka, 34, and her baby daughter Michelle before they all hid in the bathroom of his next door neighbour Dayana Francisquini with her three-year-old son Filipe and six-year-old daughter Thais, as his 11th-floor flat filled with smoke.
Mr Nuhu, his wife and two children were filmed by onlookers as they escaped on to a balcony, where they were later rescued by firefighters.
All five others died, along with Catherine Hickman, 31, who also lived on the 11th floor.
Mr Nuhu said he felt guilty for surviving while others were taken, adding: "It's very traumatising, it's extremely traumatising, and I'm still trying to come to terms with that.
"It's almost indescribable to me the trauma that came out of all this, knowing the people we were in there together with died.
"We could have stayed in there. I did not go outside to try and get away myself. I went out to do something (in] readiness when the need arose. Because of the fireball, I saw I had to do something."
Mr Nuhu said he felt let down by the emergency services.
"I was expecting things like helicopter (to] come and drop a ladder or commando-type rescuer," he said.
But the ladder "couldn't even reach us" and he had to wait about an hour and a half to be rescued, he said.
"The moment I thought, 'We're not going to get out of this', was when the ladder could not reach where we were.
"That's when I thought there was no chance. I thought this was the end."
Assistant commissioner Nick Collins said firefighters were at the scene within five minutes of the first call and started tackling the fire "immediately".
The single staircase in the middle of the 12-storey 1960s building was at the centre of the investigation yesterday after doubts were raised over whether escape routes and fire prevention measures were adequate.
The London Fire Brigade said a "unique situation" caused "one of the most significant fires in some time". It could be "some weeks at the very least" until the cause of the blaze, which is believed to have started on the ninth floor, was known.
Family and friends of those who died paid tribute to their loved ones.
Ms Francisquini's husband Rafael Cervi, 31, described how the last words he heard from his wife before he lost her and his two children were in a phone call, in which she told him she was struggling to breathe.
"They were what I lived for. Now everything is gone and I have nothing," he said.
Mbet Udoaka, 37, watched helplessly as his wife and newborn baby died in the fire.
His cousin Mary said that his wife called him to say she was trapped in their flat on the 11th floor and he raced home from work. He stayed on the phone until his wife lost consciousness, but police and firefighters would not let him enter the burning building.
The full article contains 591 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
