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Welcome to episode 349 of Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing.
And this week, I'm extremely excited to welcome on the show Danny Cotton.
And Danny is the former commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, having spent over three decades in this profession.
And we discuss a host of topics from her journey into the fire service,
from fostering diversity by using community outreach programs,
the impact of budget cuts not only on the ability to serve,
but also the mental and physical health of our profession.
And then she tells a story from the Grenfell fire.
Now, Danny was the commissioner during that time and speaks of the heroism that she saw from the responders on scene,
the humanity she saw from the community members on scene.
And then sadly, the demonization of the fire service when blame started being thrown around by political entities.
So many powerful layers to this interview I urge you to listen to from beginning to end.
Before we get to it, as I say every week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on,
subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every five star rating truly elevates this podcast and makes it more visible for people looking for a project like this.
And then as I mentioned every single time, this is a free library for you, the audience, to use individually, to use within your organization.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to the ear holes of every single person on planet Earth that needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Danny Cotton. Enjoy.
So Danny, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast.
Hey, absolute pleasure. I'm really delighted to be here, James.
Well, I'm very excited about this conversation. So where on planet Earth are we finding you today?
So today I'm at home in Orpington in Kent.
Brilliant. All right. So I love to take a chronological journey through each person's life.
So where were you born? And then what was your family dynamic like? What did your parents do and how many siblings?
So I was born in a place called Hawley in Surrey, which is very near Gatwick Airport.
I was the second child. So I have a brother who's 16 months older than me, Alex, who lives in Holland now.
My father worked for a computer company and for the vast majority of his working life worked for Philips.
And my mother was an English teacher and taught English to foreign students.
Did you have any firefighters or police officers in your family, extended family?
My grandfather on my father's side was a police officer in East London, proper East London copper.
Yeah, absolutely. And my grandmother on that side was she brought three children up, four children, sorry, during the Second World War in East London.
So proper tough sort of side of the family. And then she became school secretary and member of the women's institute.
So very kind of strong family. And on my mother's side, very tragically, her father died.
He was a Canadian Royal Air Force pilot and he was a Halifax bomber and pilot flying over Holland and got shot down before she was born.
So my grandmother brought my mother up on her own and very, very, very strong woman and is still going strong today and will be 98 in November.
Amazing. I talk about this quite a bit. The World War Two generation was so incredible.
The men obviously on the front lines fighting and obviously some women, especially the resistance.
And then so many of the women then stepped up and took what we traditionally called male roles.
And it just it saddens me that those lessons were so stark and so entrenched.
Yet we seem to have regressed, which we're going to talk about like women in the fire service.
We seem to regress back to the kind of sexist opinions and even the racial element too,
that we were fighting side by side with Sikhs and Muslims and people from all colors and creeds.
And then we found ourselves in England in the kind of Windrush era where racism was rife again.
Yeah, I mean, it's I just can't believe, you know, so during the Second World War, so women stepped in and did amazing roles.
They were firefighters that worked in munitions factories, you know, and they absolutely did a brilliant job of doing that.
And then suddenly when the war was over and the men that made it came back, you know, and they got their jobs back and women were definitely relegated.
And I think that's sad because there was a real opportunity to kind of work on what had been built on at that point,
you know, about this absolute dynamic of anyone being able to do any job.
But it definitely regressed for a bit. And it's taken a long time to kind of step back into that era where people believe that there shouldn't be gender bias around jobs.
And, you know, it's quite startling when you look at what happened during the war.
Yeah, exactly. I still haven't found someone that can really explain it because it's the same here.
I'm sure it's the same in Australia. You know, we see that everywhere.
All right, the war's over. Get back in the kitchen. I don't understand at all.
But all right. Well, then what about athletics? Were you a sportswoman when you were in the school age?
Yeah, absolutely. Very sporting. I made a huge mistake when I went to my secondary school.
I took an entrance exam for a number of schools and the one I should have gone to was very sports orientated.
But for some reason, I got spooked when I went to my test by some big girls shouting out the window, don't come to this school.
It's horrible. And naive 11 year old, I believe them.
But sadly, went to a very academic school where I was continuously being told off because all I ever did was in every single sports club.
So I was part of the lacrosse team, the tennis team, the gymnastics team, the swimming team, every single sport and just not that brilliant academically.
So, yeah, very, very sporting, very outdoors, always been all my life.
You know, you'll find me in a pair of dungarees, not in a pink frilly dress.
Brilliant. I think a lot of firefighters probably would say the same thing, female firefighters.
All right, then what about career aspirations when you were in school? What were you dreaming about?
Golly, so when I remember going, I vividly remember going to see this sort of careers advisor at my secondary school and asking about some jobs,
because I wanted at that time to do something like forensic science or something like that.
And she just kept tutting and looking at me and saying, no, no, you won't be able to do that.
And then I wanted to be a vet. But you need to have a levels and all the sciences.
And that probably was a step too far at that time for me. So I thought I'd be a police officer.
I thought I'd follow in my grandfather's footsteps and be a police officer.
And I kind of got put off at the age of 14 because there was a lot of problems going on where I lived in London.
And people really hated the police. And I just knew in my heart of hearts, I didn't want to do a job where people hated you, which is really sad indictment.
But at that point, after that, I was kind of floundering a bit as to what to do.
Well, it's so pertinent at the moment, because we're seeing that I don't know if it's bled over into the UK at the moment, but my God, it's horrendous here.
And I've worked alongside these men and women for a decade and a half.
And, yeah, I've seen the occasional shit bag here and there.
But these people leave their families and put their lives on the line for all colors and creeds.
And the way they're being painted now because of the mistakes of the few, which, you know, some were malicious, some were gray area, but it's just awful to see.
Yeah, it's shocking. And we're having a lot of that over here as well.
That's been reflected in a lot of violence, a lot of sort of protests.
And what I don't understand is, you know, that it's as you say, it's a very small proportion of people who are the ones who don't get it right for whatever reason.
But actually, the vast majority of our police forces are decent, hardworking people who, as you say, come to work, put their lives on the line.
And we've had a couple of police officers both killed and tragically seriously injured recently in the UK, just doing their jobs.
And I think that people, you know, are very quick to be judgmental, but then they're very quick to want the police to come and sort them out when they've got a problem.
And I think they are, you know, there are too many people who are attacking police officers and getting away with it.
And there are a lot of campaigns in the UK at the moment to change the law, to actually protect emergency responders and to ensure that they are, you know, that if people do attack them, that they get appropriate sentences.
Yeah. Well, just as a tangent, no, we're not on to this point in your career yet.
But tell me about the violence on first responders, because I think one thing the fire service and EMS specifically have here is overall outside of maybe some of the very heavy gang areas, we're actually received very well.
And I have strong memories of driving down one of our worst towns or worst streets in Orlando.
And the people I know that were hiding from the police would wave at us because they knew we were the ones that would save them if something went wrong.
So I find it kind of foreign now being British, but working over here, that there would be such violence against fire and EMS.
Yeah. And I think that it is increasing, although having said that, you know, there have always been areas in pockets in London where anyone wearing uniform is sort of subject to being attacked.
When I was station commander in Greenwich Borough, we had a particular state where, you know, the firefighters would get called out and then people throw fridges off balconies or they would lure them into dead end streets and then fire fireworks and missiles at them.
And actually, we did a great piece of work with the local police there to identify the problems and to actually get people arrested and banned from the area because it was becoming too common.
But I mean, on the whole, you know, you're right, the vast majority of people still view the fire service positively and still welcome us, which is great because it means that we do have access to vulnerable people in communities and that we can identify problems.
But there is this increasing growing trend that, you know, during times of unrest and difficulty.
So during the 2012 riots in London, firefighters were being routinely attacked, fire engines were being smashed up.
And you just can't understand that mentality of these are the people who, when you're having your worst day, we're the ones who are going to come and save you.
And yet when you're, you know, you've got the hump about something, you're turning around and attacking us.
Now, what do you think is behind that?
Because, again, like you said, it doesn't make any sense the same way.
It doesn't make any sense to burn down your neighborhood when you're angry at something that happens somewhere else.
You know, so there's a lot of insanity here.
A lot of people obviously come in from outside purely to cause trouble.
But where do you think some of this disconnect has happened between the people and some of the first responder agencies?
I think that when people are really struggling because they're having, you know, for whatever reason, they're feeling that unhappy with their life and their community,
I think that it just is a roll on from anyone in authority.
And I think that, you know, even though they recognize the fact that the fire service will be the ones that will help them,
when they're at that heightened state of emotion, anybody who represents authority or government or any kind of power or control or uniform just becomes a fair target.
And it is the same lack of logic that, you know, encourages people to burn down their local, you know, pubs and shops and restaurants.
And those people, you know, the people that run those are the people in the local community.
I remember seeing a terrible story about a firefighter somewhere in America who had just spent his kind of life savings setting up a bar
to be able to provide for his family, you know, he's off duty times and it was burnt down as part of the recent violence.
And I just thought, you know, these are local community members, they're people who live there.
And yet you're taking their livelihoods away as part of a protest against the police.
And there is no sense to it, is there?
No. Well, especially, I think for me, having traveled, having worked in different fire departments, lived in different countries,
you get to see the common denominator, which is all these issues are coming from a much bigger problem that are more often than not stem from some sort of power, greed, drive from a few people.
And I think one thing I talk about a lot is drug prohibition, for example, that was started here in the US that was actually kind of forced on the UK.
But that came out of racism, really, from back in the 30s when alcohol prohibition showed what a complete nightmare and failure that was.
And it has been the cause of millions and millions and millions of deaths.
And so the violence we see right now and the same as you see on the streets of London is being caused by, in my opinion, the illegal drug trade is behind so much of it.
So you've got people killing people, you've got people killing police officers, you've got police officers killing people.
And the underlying issue is they're all players in the same game, which is prohibition.
So when we take a step back and reverse engineer, where is the true root of this problem?
You realize that all the first responders and the members of the community are actually side by side kind of victims of this this policy that's created so much death and destruction.
Yeah, and actually, you know, that something needs to be done.
It's just not, you know, people can't think around the edges anymore.
And there is a massive issue around money and power and deprivation.
And, you know, all you have to do is go into certain areas of London and, you know, it's the same anywhere you go and look to see the levels of disparity between those who have and those who haven't and those who are trying to make their best.
And then those who will seek to make their money from crime and the fear and terror that brings local communities.
You know, and you've got people who are literally terrified to leave their own front door to travel to the shops because of the level of violence.
And it's frightening because these are, you know, lots of people in those areas are very hardworking.
They want to do their best for their families, but they are just sucked into this vortex of, you know, downward spiral of bad areas and violence.
And you can see how young people in those areas are influenced by money and that if they see, you know, there's money to be made by dealing or helping the drugs dealers and there's no money elsewhere.
You can see how easily young people get attracted to that lifestyle.
And if there is nothing else and if there is nowhere else to divert them to, then, you know, that's when we get problems.
Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, then back to your career choices.
When you were doing the test, just kind of reminded me, did you ever do the career test where they supposedly punched your data into a computer and it spat out the jobs that you should be doing?
No, I wish I'd been able to. That'd been interesting to see what they thought I should have been.
But no, I never really had that. And to be fair, looking back now, very little career guidance from, you know, schools or anything like that at all.
And it was a real gap for me because I did genuinely struggle to think what I wanted to do.
Yeah. Well, I had the test done and I can't remember exactly.
I'm going to be a little sarcastic now, but it was so like set the bar low.
It was like squirrel, squirrel grooming and, you know, stick collecting.
I mean, this is it. This is what you think of me. So it was completely demoralizing.
But I think it's funny you said about career. What I know is a lack of was motivation.
And one of my favorite teachers, who I'm still friends with now on Facebook, was my PE teacher.
He's one of the only people I remember that actually seemed like he believed and, you know, inspired and kind of bred that you can do anything element.
Whereas I found in my kind of school time, it was like you were saying, being told a lot that you weren't good enough and you weren't going to amount to anything.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that and for me, you know, I think we need to do far more targeting of young people to help support them,
to think, you know, to believe that they can be what they want to be, because so many people are stopped by themselves.
There is nothing else that stops them. It's their own lack of belief and lack of ambition because nobody ever supports them.
Absolutely. Well, speaking of that, so you obviously found an ambition for the fire service. How did that happen?
So I left college with no idea what I wanted to do.
Basically, I had to earn some money. So I went to do one of the most hideous,
tempting jobs I've ever done, and I was on a switchboard.
And the switchboard was for a company that did credit checks on people.
This was long before the days where you could go online, do your own credit checks.
So it was all every time you went for a loan or mortgage or whatever, the, you know,
the bank, whoever ran a credit check on you. And then they just came back and said yes or no.
And then you had to apply for your credit file to try and discover what it was that was stopping you getting credit.
So the company the switchboard I was on was a company who was a credit check company.
And basically all the people phoning up had been refused credit.
So there was not one happy person phoning. They were all miserable.
They all wanted their credit files. But actually, what they wanted was somebody to shout out because they hadn't got their mortgage loan card, whatever.
And I vividly remember to this day, and the company doesn't exist anymore, I don't think, the company was called UAPT InfoLink.
It scarred me at the age of 17. Good morning, UAPT InfoLink.
All I could do was say, please, can you send a stamped self-addressed envelope and we'll send you your credit file.
And literally there was no one else. It was just the switchboard.
So what was worse was the fact that all these people, they didn't believe it.
They wanted to be put through to someone. They wanted to abuse you because they haven't got credit.
You know, all these people were just shouting and it's continuous.
And there were two of us. And I just remember looking across at the other girls working with them.
We just like roll our eyes as we got another load of verbal down the phone.
And while I was doing that on my lunch break, I was reading the local newspaper, the Croydon Advertiser,
and there was an advert in it that said London Fire Brigade are recruiting.
And we particularly welcome applications from women and people from black minority ethnic backgrounds.
And I thought, oh, that's interesting. London Fire Brigade cut the advert out, thought, well, OK, that might be something to look at.
And went and showed a few people and the instant response pretty much from everyone was, no, no, you can't do that.
That's not a job for girls. I know it says so on the advert.
It actually says they want women. No, no, no, they don't really mean it.
It's just a political thing. So and you can't do that. And no, no, it's very dangerous.
And I'm the kind of person more people say to me, no, you can't.
The more I think, well, maybe I can. And why can't I?
So it kind of stemmed from there. And the more people reinforce the fact I shouldn't do it,
the more I thought, well, I'm going to do it because it sounds like a job for me because it talked about teamwork.
It talks about helping people. Talks about being outdoors and being practical.
And I thought it ticks all my boxes.
But it's amazing how many people step up to tell you that you can't do something.
I mean, that's you're talking about the teacher element to inspiring people.
I think people don't like success.
Some people, you know, and it's easy for to tear them to tear someone else down and to to inspire someone.
So, yeah, go for it. You know, go go chase that dream.
Yeah. So, you know, and part of it, so some of it was people who were anxious because they thought it was a really dangerous job.
And some of it was genuinely born out of the fact that not long before I applied,
there was a woman firefighter who had been in London, who had been treated really badly and had made quite a big press story.
But at the age of 18, I suppose I just never thought it would happen to me.
I thought, no, no, I really am inspired by this.
And then went on and applied. And I remember walking through the doors of training center and thinking, oh, my goodness, I'm actually here.
What have I done?
Well, lead us up to that. So I know it wasn't too long before you got hired that there weren't women in the fire service.
So when did that change and why?
So it's changed. So there was the labor led authority in London at the time.
Were the ones who were very proactive in looking at all jobs and making sure that, you know,
that people weren't being put off from joining different jobs by their, you know, by their race or their gender.
So they were the ones who practically set out and basically told London Fire Brigade,
no, you need to recruit more diversely from your community.
And that was in 1985, the first woman joined London Fire Brigade.
But when I joined in 88, I was one of 30 women out of 9000 firefighters in London.
Wow. So tell me about obviously, there's a very significant incident that happened early on in your career.
But before that, what was training and what were the first few months like being one of the first,
you know, the pioneer women in the fire service in the UK?
Yeah, training school. Training school was a blur of kind of hell, mainly of being, you know, lots and lots of physical work,
lots of mental work, because the you know, I don't think people appreciate how much information you have to learn and store about equipment
and about has the substances and all those, you know, really important things and just the physical demands of the job.
I absolutely loved it. I'd say it was a mixture, equal mixture of kind of love and fear.
One of the things that stood me in really good stead was when I joined, it was still quite militaristic.
And there was a lot of marching and a lot of making things shiny.
And I'd been an air cadet, so I could A, march very well and B, make things very shiny.
A lot of time shining the shoes and things for various members of my squad, because I was really good at it.
And I found it quite therapeutic so I could make things shiny.
So that kind of I was, you know, I was always smartly turned out and that helped.
But when I started off, there were three women on my course, but unfortunately, both of them dropped out.
So I was left to being the only one. And it was a miserable time.
So there were some definitely some guys in my training squad that didn't want women in the fire service and would seek to do everything not to help me.
There were some who were friendly and who were great. And I'm still friends with now.
But I found training school really difficult. My instructor was really unpleasant to me.
When I challenged him some years later, because we are still friends, he said to me,
Oh, I just did that to prepare you for what was going to happen when you went station.
So it was a kind of warped protection of, you know, I'm going to be really unpleasant because that's what's going to happen.
But it was it did make things really difficult.
But the sense of pride and the love of being a firefighter just carried me through all of that.
And turning out to my first fire station, I remember turning up there for the first visit.
And I went there just before my training school.
But before I was due to start work, they get you to go and drop all your gear off.
And I remember being told to turn up on a night duty.
And as I walked in, literally, the bells went down, they went out on a shout.
And the governor just walked past me and barked, don't move.
And they all turned out in the fire engines. I'm stood there leaning against the wall thinking,
OK, what happens if they're out for hours? But I've just been told to stand here.
So I did stand there and they came back after half an hour.
And I sat and had dinner with them because they invited me to dinner.
So I thought I should stay for dinner and probably had the worst meal I've ever eaten in the fire service.
But I sat and ate my way through it while everyone was throwing loads of abuse at the mess manager guy who cooked it.
But I literally ate my way through it. I remember them looking at me thinking, why is she eating that?
Because luckily, my mother brought me up to eat everything that was put in front of me.
So the fact I had rubbery pork strips that were kind of gray in color, I was persistent and I ate them.
But yeah, it was there was a very mixed attitude when I first joined.
So several of the guys on my watch absolutely did not want to work with the woman and put into transfer before I got there.
Then there were other guys who wanted to do everything for me and treat me like a little girl.
You know, I was only I was 19 when I passed out.
So, you know, I was the age of their daughter and things.
So they every time I went to do something, they went to pick it up and help me.
And then the complete opposite of the guys who just wouldn't speak to me.
And that made it really difficult.
Now, a question for you, because this is an observation I've made over 14 years, excuse me,
is the ones that bark the loudest about women in the fire service or even just other firefighters
are usually the ones who are one of the shittiest firefighters themselves.
So, again, it's it's a kind of way of disguising their inabilities.
Is that something you saw as you progressed through your career?
Yeah. And the other thing was and I kind of worked out, it didn't take me a little while,
but I got there was the fact that one of the issues was the
that firefighting was such a macho job and it was such a hero status job
that a lot of the guys had this view that if a woman could do it and was allowed to do it,
it took away from them being heroes and it took away from that very macho firefighter
running into burning buildings, saving babies because a bloody woman could do it.
And I met a lot of guys who had that attitude that they should never allow women.
It's tarnished. It's ruined it.
And the other ones who are quite entertaining, of course, the guys who had wives at home
who did not want them to be working with a woman because they feared that we would
steal their such gorgeous hunky men and run off with them because we were having to share
facilities with them. So I shared a changing room. I shared a dormitory.
You know, there was no separate sleeping accommodation, no changing accommodation,
everything together. And they just had this fear that because of that, I was going to
completely and utterly corrupt their husbands and run off with them.
And that was quite funny because those guys were in fear a lot of the time
because their wives had told them that they shouldn't work with me.
That's so interesting here in different perspectives on that.
Well, you were only a few months on when you had what most of us would define as a
career incident. So tell me about the Clapham Junction rail crash and how much time you had
on and what your journey was like on that day.
Yeah, so I've gone out, I've been posted and started on Fire Station in the August
and definitely been a sort of bumpy ride work. We hadn't had anything significant.
And then in the December, we were literally just about to finish our four day shift,
so two days, two nights. And we were half an hour away from coming off duty at nine
o'clock on the Monday morning. We got called to go to standby at Battersea Fire Station.
So we were going to provide fire cover because they were obviously out on the incident.
We didn't know what it was. And as we were driving there, we heard all the messages on
the radio about the fact there'd been a major train crash and it was a major incident.
And as the messages progressed, they asked for additional resources.
We were one of the fire engines that was called on as additional resource.
So we literally then drove to the incident. And I just remember this heightened state of thinking,
I'm actually going to something real. I'm really going to go and do a job.
And it was really exciting and slightly scary, but just what you join the fire service for.
And I remember driving, we drove over the bridge and I could just see fire engines
everywhere, police ambulances. And I remember getting off and actually I remember getting off
and dropping one of my gloves. And at the time we just had those rubbish, orangey brown plastic
gardening gloves and I had a pair of those. And I remember dropping one of them and then nearly
getting run over by my own fire engine because I dropped the glove and just bent down.
And anyway, so we got given initially, we were given one task, but my governor got it changed.
And we ended up going straight down to the train and helping to carry the casualties off.
And you just got so involved in the moment of getting down there. And I just remember this
really steep bank and we were taking these people off on stretchers and trying to walk up this bank.
It was December, it was cold. It was a very cold, crisp day, but it was slippery. And I just
remember person after person, we were taking up the ambulances and some of the ambulances were
empty because the crews had gone down to try and help with the train crash. So you were taking
these people, saying what am I supposed to do with them? And I vividly remember a guy who'd broken
his ankle. It was really badly broken. And I was just so acutely conscious that every step we took
was agony for him and did that for a couple of hours. And then as the kind of live casualty
rescue point came to an end, I assisted in some guys that were trying to cut away and free some
people who were trapped. And then I got tasked with another guy from my crew. We were told we
were going to go underneath the train and to start putting bodies into body bags with a guy from the
ambulance service and putting identity tags on them. And that was the moment of reality for me
that really hit home that thought I'm going to see a dead body and I've never seen a dead body
and I just don't know how I'm going to react. And I did have an absolute moment then of thinking,
oh my God, what am I going to do now? And that was quite frightening.
Yeah. So just to put it in perspective, it was a head-on crash, wasn't it? And there were
484 people injured and 35 people killed. So this was one of the biggest disasters in the UK's history.
Yeah. So two trains ended up on the same line head on. And then really tragically,
people who were disembarking from the train following the crash then got hit by a third train
that was running on the line beside it that had no idea that a crash had happened. So
people had literally stepped off and then injured by the train coming from the other way. And it was
a major significant incident. Obviously, thankfully, things like that don't happen very often.
And it took a lot of London Fire Brigade resources, obviously lots of police, lots of
ambulance there just dealing with the volume of casualties. And then the mass extrication piece of
that amount of... And the equipment we had then was so poor. You look at what we've got now for
cutting technology. And then it was so basic, the equipment we were trying to use against crash
trains and all that damaged metal. Yeah. How long did the scene take before you finally recovered
the last body? So we weren't there when the last ones were recovered. So we got relieved and gone
by then. I think it was at least 24 hours before they got the last casualties out, some of the
more seriously trapped ones. Because one of the trains or two or three of the carriages had turned
on their side and there were people underneath. So they had to get very heavy lifting equipment in
from the railways to actually lift them off. And then obviously the lines were damaged. So it was
a very complicated incident. Yeah. And this was all... If I'm right, was it a signaling problem
that caused this? Yes, it was faulty signal. Yeah. So that's obviously going to parallel what we'll
talk about later as far as blame. So then from the mental health element, when you were going
through your orientation, when you got hired, was there any discussion of mental health? I know this
was obviously in the 80s. So we're in a different place now. And then if so or if not, what was that
journey like for you and your crew after such a horrendous incident? Mental health. No, we didn't
talk about that. I remember at training school being shown photographs of dead bodies in the hopes
that it would, I suppose I thought it might desensitize us. Pretty strange thing to do,
but being shown lots of photographs of lots of dead bodies here. This is this disaster, this
dead person. And sitting there in the cold light of day in a classroom looking at dead bodies is a
strange experience. But doing it for real and seeing a real dead body, you know, what was our,
no, there was no mention. The only thing we were ordered to do was to have a shower before we went
home because they recognize the fact we might be contaminated with bodily fluids. So everyone must
shower before they leave the fire station. And in fact, all we did was so the and in some ways,
the worst element was we were going home for four days at that point. So we weren't going to see
each other, but we did all go to the local pub and have a drink before we went home. And then we were
off for four days and we came back in the next week. And people talked about it. We had to write
statements. So, you know, I had to spend a bit of time talking about what you did, but no, there was
no recollection, not to my recollection, there was no mention whatsoever of how it might have impacted
anybody's mental health, whether everybody felt all right about it. There was nothing at all
whatsoever. Yeah, I mean, we look back now and it's so crazy to think that we didn't acknowledge it
back then. But, you know, we didn't. I mean, in the fire service, I can honestly say, I think it's
literally only been about five years where we've really been talking about it the way we should be
talking about it. When you look at the history of the fire service, that's pretty crazy. Yeah, I mean,
it is mad. You know, you think about the people. I'm saying, you know, I was a 19 year old girl,
three months in the job and saw absolutely horrific things, absolutely horrific things.
And yet, there was never ever not one person ever said to me, was I okay, you know, apart from family
and friends, but work? No, nothing. You just get on with it. That's your job. That's what you're
there to do and crack on. Yeah. All right. Well, then I'm a huge proponent of talking about the
chronic effects of what we do. So maybe so many people are listening now, we're never at a giant
incident, a Grenfell or 9-11, you know, whatever it was. But there's that 10, 20, 30 year accumulation
of trauma on top of the shift work and sleep deprivation. But during your career, were there
any other large incidents that you specifically attended? So lots of large fires, but not large
scale, you know, loss of life like that. I mean, that was, you know, and what people call that was
what people call the once in a career, you know, moment, the Clapham train crash, obviously it
wasn't, but you know, but I think that sometimes for me, and this is a personal reflection, the
things that affected me more were things that I could link to something personally. So I remember
very early on in my career, attending a road traffic collision, about one, two o'clock in the morning,
fast fuel carriageway, and a car had veered off the carriageway and had driven straight into the
back of a flatbed lorry that had concrete posts on it. And there were two people in the car, two
young men and the passenger was dead. And the driver walked away completely uninjured. And it
turned out these two guys had been working doing pizza delivery. And they'd finished work and they
were driving home and they think the driver just fell asleep and veered off the road and his
passenger was killed. But he was not a mark on the chap who died, he broke his neck. But he was a
very similar age to my brother. And my brother was a reckless driver. And I couldn't sleep when I got
back. And I just kept thinking that that could have been my brother and someone coming to knock
on our door said my brother had been killed in a road traffic collision. So I think we've got a
personal association or something that links you. I think they can affect people far more
traumatically than people ever realize. Yeah, no, absolutely. Actually, I just finished writing
a book and I talked about one call I had. And it was a little three year old girl that was killed
in a car crash in the back and her car seat was the exact same make and the exact same position
as my son's car seat. So when I got home off shift, I immediately moved it to the middle just to
kind of maximize the chance of surviving a side impact. Yeah, yeah. And then there is those things.
And people, those are the things that people don't know about and don't pick up on. And, you know,
I think those things, the cumulative effect of instances that personally touch you, or where you
feel some personal distress because of it, you know, we are all human beings, we all like to think
we're rough to tough to heroes, but we all have feelings, emotions. And we have a story behind
work. There's a lot of people don't ever know about. So, you know, I think that we don't
recognize that. And even now, when we talk about mental health, we predominantly talk about it in
relation to large scale incidents, to loss of life, to, you know, trigger incidents. But I don't think
we do enough about mental well being in the meantime, you know, we do a lot about firefighters
should eat well, they should keep fit, they should be, you know, cardiovascularly fit. But what we
don't talk about is brain fit and talk about just doing the work behind the scenes. So you're not
constantly doing first aid when things come up.
Yeah, I think I think it was Ricky that brought this up. Another thing that people forget is,
it's not so much the tragedy that we see, it's the effect of that tragedy on the family members.
And I'll never forget, I had a gentleman have a brain bleed and just drop dead. And, you know,
we responded the code actually went flawlessly. So had he had any chance of survival, he would have
made it but it was a bleed. There was no coming back from that. But I where I sat and did my
report in the hospital was six feet from the grieving room where they bring the family and
tell them so I'm there tapping away and then watching these people's just lives destroyed.
And that's a very, very important point to it's the ripple effect of these disasters, I think,
the stay with us as well.
Yeah, and I think that when people sort of, you know, and you know, firefighters by their nature,
they took well, we went to a really good job today, it was a good working job. But the backstory
to that is it's someone's life, it's someone's house, it's someone's business, you know, it's
even someone's car is someone's personal possession that is devastation to them. And I remember going
to a really significant house fire, and just going up and one of the rooms had a load of like
children's toys and things in it that were completely destroyed. And you just think to
yourself, you know, that's everything that that family has lost everything that means
everything to them. And yes, okay, nobody did die. That's great. But they've still lost
everything. And that's, you know, and I think that wasn't it's something that people don't
realize the impact of significantly and it came home to me because several years later,
my mum had a house fire and lost everything. And I was the one who kind of picked up the
pieces afterwards. And I know the devastation from having a fire and losing everything and
how much impact that has on people.
Yeah, that's something I think about when I see some of the social media posts of a crew
standing in front of a fire with you know, grin on the face leaning on the pipe poles, it's like,
well, if the owner sees that, that's not going to reflect very well on, you know, their perception
of your response. All right, well, then what about the physical fitness? So you started
back in the late 80s. What was the emphasis on on fitness back then?
So you know, the initial test I had to pick up a 12 stone person and carry them 100 yards in
under a minute. Because you do that all the time. And then we had to do some really strange chest
expansion tests. The when they traced the history back, it was to do with testing the lungs of coal
miners to see if they had diseases or not, whether or not you could expand your chest by this much.
But so the initial test wasn't, you know, it was odd, it wasn't tricky. The physical demands of
training were massive. But I think once, you know, once we got station, you're pretty much kind of
left your own devices, we had gyms on stations, and we were encouraged to use it, but there was no
mandatory gym training. So the people who didn't want to didn't, you know, I've always been kind of
sport inclined and minded. So I've always done stuff. My first watch we did, you know, once we
sort of settled in, we did quite a lot of running and I did a lot of running training with them and
things. So, you know, we did a fair bit of it, but there wasn't the the targeted emphasis that I
think there needs to be combined with the lifestyle choices, because you know, you do still look
around a lot of fire services and see firefighters who are not fit, who are overweight, and who are
walking heart attack sort of victims. And, you know, that's not a good place to be.
No, well, that's the thing I talk about over and over again with this project is, there's the
ownership side, there's us watching what we eat, us going to the gym, us, you know, having good
sleep hygiene, but there's also the environment that we put our men and women in. And, you know,
the shifts over here, a lot of the US have 56 hour work weeks, which I know I've had so many
sleep experts on here that have confirmed that that creates an absolute maelstrom in the body and
sets these men and women up for disease, for obesity, for mental ill health. So, you know,
it's such a, it's not a tricky thing, actually, it's a very easy thing. But when you're up against
politicians and budget cuts and all this stuff, the same with with the police service, you know,
if you want these men and women not to make poor decisions, then you need to give them great
training, you need to give them rest and recovery. And so what I see is a lot of people in the fire
service here in the US, at least, are fit despite the conditions they work in, not because of the
conditions they work in.
Yeah, and that's absolutely true. And I think, you know, a lot of firefighters have an absolute
pride in their job and in their ability to do their job. And they know that in order to do that,
they need to be as fit as they can be. But, you know, the sleep is an issue. And I think, you
know, what isn't really recognised and what is kind of hidden thing that people don't talk about
is that for a lot of firefighters, the firefighter pay is very low, and they have to get a second
job. So, you know, if you're working your firefighter shift, and then you're coming off
duty, and then you're going and doing whatever it is you might be doing, whether it is sitting in a
taxi, or whether it's working on a building site, you're doing another job just to be able to look
after your family. And you have that weight responsibility of, you know, being, you know,
being someone who has to earn money and keep your family and the whole of the impact of that together,
you know, and it's not, you know, people say it's not the fire brigade's fault that they've got a
second job. Well, you know, the fact that, you know, the basic pay of firefighters is low, and
it's not enough to live on in London, you can't get a mortgage on a firefighter salary, you know,
that does mean that people have to go out and have additional work and that all impacts on them.
Absolutely. And it's so backwards, you know, when you look at priorities, look at the hierarchy of,
I'm blank on it now. Anyway, the hierarchy of needs, there we go. You know, the security element
is the base. And that's what we provide, provide that feeling of security to people. So if you're
going to ask someone to put their life on the line, and for example, in Grenfell, climb 20, 25 floors
in horrendous conditions, that's not the person that you need to be paying a pittance to, that's
the person you need to be equipping well, training well, and like you said, paying a salary that
allows them to just focus on that one job and then go home and recover. If they want to buy a Range Rover,
then get a second job, but they should be at least be able to support themselves. Absolutely.
Right. Well, then I remember as a young boy, seeing the fire brigade on strike a lot, you know,
there were there were the union issues. And obviously, what we just spoke about, I'm sure
was behind it. So just give me an overview of the struggles the the British Fire Service has faced
when it comes to funding and staffing and those kind of areas. Yeah, so I think that, you know,
it's been recognised for a long time that the fire service has been a poor relation in the funding
for public sector work. And I think, you know, for far too long people, and all the while things
are going well, and all the while there isn't a disaster happening, then, you know, politicians
see fits to make cuts to budgets for fire services, because, you know, we are an insurance policy,
we're there when you need us, but the vast majority of insurance policy sits in a drawer,
you never need to use it. That's great. However, when you do need it, you want to make sure you've
got the right insurance policy that is going to pay out for your house. You know, you need to have
the right service, fire service that's got the right equipment, the right people, right number
on duty, they're trained properly. But that doesn't happen. And it's not till something terrible comes
along, be that, you know, large scale significant fire, be that a terrorist incident, whatever it is,
when people suddenly realize, oh, we're a bit under resourced in the fire service, and, oh,
we haven't got enough firefighters, and then there's a big drive, and then something else
takes priority. And so the focus goes away again, and once more significant cuts are made. So I
think, you know, for years, the fire service has been on this roller coaster of make a load of
cuts, it's all fine, nothing goes on. Yeah, firefighters are quite noisy when, you know,
you close fire stations quite rightly, they make a lot of protests. But trying to engage
communities to get involved with that is quite difficult. And I think that, you know, it's quite
sad that a lot of people are just very complacent, because they think we'll always be there and will
always turn up. And they don't realize the detrimental effect of reducing resources. And
it means you might not get that fire engine when you need it. And then, you know, there have
definitely been strikes over firefighter pay. And so quite rightly, because firefighter pay is not
good, you know, and it's, it's a very low start, it's quite difficult to, you know, get an increase
in your salary. And if you want to have people who want to be career firefighters, who you know,
and it's really important that we have people who just stay as firefighters and are brilliant at it,
and are the really knowledgeable, well trained, you know, the ones who impart knowledge and
invent or young people, then we need to pay them the right amount of money. Because if we don't,
you end up with people now who just leave the fire service and go and do other jobs, because,
you know, I know a load of firefighters recently who've left to become train drivers,
because it's so much better paid. Yeah, it's terrible. And like you said, with the mentorship,
what I see in the US is kind of the same problem. So you get people flying up the career ladder,
then. So you get people in lieutenants or chiefs positions that really don't have the experience,
or even maybe just the, the mental capacity to be in those jobs. And you know, we're losing
the veteran firefighter, the veteran engineer, and the people that are actually on the fire ground,
making it happen. So now you've got rookies, you know, having to facilitate rescues, having to do
the operational side. And do you know, do you want a 1520 year man or woman? Or do you want a 15 to
20 month man or woman coming to rescue your child? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know,
people don't really see and understand that. And, you know, thank goodness due to a whole
load of reasons, you know, our fires are reducing, you know, safer equipment, you know, so smoking's
been reduced, fire retardant, you know, materials, all those things that really considerably helped
and campaigning to reduce fires. But it means that you've got conversely get this thing where
you get a lot less experience. So you do have a lot of people and I see it very much that we have
a lot of junior officers and you know, middle managers who don't have that level of experience,
and who definitely lost them, don't have the right level of people engagement and people experience,
but want to get up the career ladder and want to promote. And then you end up with really difficult
situations. And it's really important that you've got the right person leading when you're doing,
you know, very high pressure operational incident. But equally when you're back in station,
and you're trying to manage those people, you need the right people who are doing that as well,
because that's where we spend a lot of our time, you know, out in the community doing training and
all those things. And if you haven't got the right people leading and looking after people
on fire stations, you've got a big problem brewing. Yeah, well, a parallel always uses if you imagine,
you know, the Secret Service for the President or the, you know, the parallel organization for
the Prime Minister, they're not turning to them and saying, look, if you're not having gunfights
every day, then we're just going to have to cut staffing. You know, I mean, we don't they don't
want to use them. They're there just in case but the goal is to never have to fire a shot. And
that's how I see the fire service and the police and EMS and everyone else. When we're looked at
as, oh, if you're not busy, then we need to cut you that is such a short sighted and backward way
of looking at, as you said, your insurance policy. If we're not running calls, then the emphasis
should be well, you need to be training. I'm totally for that. And then having rest and recovery
built in as well. But I see it here in the in the fire service in America, where they call it busy
work, or we'll go turn hydrants, we'll go install smoke alarms, we'll do all this, it's PR, but but
okay, great. I'm the best world's best smoke alarm installer, but I can't freaking pull a hose line
properly because I haven't trained. That's so backwards. So yeah, I think that's one thing
that the public needs to be educated is you need us to be the best when you need us. So that does
not involve us being out all the time or in a God forbid, like you said, closing a fire station.
Yeah, yeah. And, and I think people, you know, in general, the public don't think about fire service,
you know, people don't, if you ask someone, I've been, you know, involved in countless surveys,
where we've tried to go out to the public and say, what do you want your fire service to look like?
What do you want us to do? And they just want the shiny red thing to turn up and deal with their
problem when they've got a problem. And they don't really fundamentally care beyond that. So they
don't think about it. But you can rest assured that when they are in their dire circumstances,
and they're in a vehicle collision, there's been some terrible chemical incident, you know,
as a terrorist attack or a fire, they absolutely want the best trained people, the best equipment
to be responding and looking after them. Yeah. Well, the NHS is a great parallel at the moment.
You know, when I was watching from, you know, across the Atlantic, with the impact of COVID on
London, it's, it spoke very clearly to me that this wasn't that this disease was just sweeping
through Londoners and murdering everyone. It was, to me, a glaring sign that the NHS has been cut
and cut and cut and cut by these politicians. And it was underfunded and understaffed. And again,
when you need us, that's when you want to have that full workforce. They may not be busy every
day, but that's a beautiful thing. Then you filter your money into prevention. But, you know, the
COVID, you know, the, the Grenfell fire and all these things, they are litmus tests for if you are
actually supporting these first responder medical organisations. Yeah. And, and the NHS, you know,
I just felt so desperately sorry for them, you know, under resourced, understaffed and without
proper protective equipment. And yet they knew they didn't have the equipment and they'd run
exercises where they knew they didn't have sufficient stock and numbers of it. And nobody
had done anything about it. Yeah. And what was nauseating, one of the, one of the, I think it
was someone else on the podcast, I heard say this, but they're absolutely spot on, is people would
refer to, you know, the first responders and the people in the hospitals and even, you know, the
other frontline personnel as heroes. And it was kind of like a get out of jail free card. Oh, we,
we called them heroes. So we're good. Carry on working, you know, but you're our heroes. We'll
turn on the lights, you know, every night at a certain time. No, we needed people to come in and,
and help and, and add staffing and bring equipment and all those kinds of things. So I think it was,
it was a hugely disrespectful just to label them heroes and not support them in any way.
Well, and I think that, you know, the labeling of heroes was very short-lived as well. So, you know,
everyone stood in their doorstep on Thursday evenings and clapped and it was lovely, you know,
great. And, and I do know from, you know, colleagues and friends of mine who work for health,
that it did give people a boost to know people cared, but very short, you know, very short time
after that, they're talking about not giving people in NHS pay rises. They're still talking
about having massive budget cuts and holes in budgets. And, you know, the heroic status was
terribly short-lived and actually not dissimilar to how I felt about how people responded to,
you know, London fire brigade after Grenfell, because for a while we were absolutely everyone's
heroes and everyone's darlings. And it wasn't till people wanted to start pointing fingers and
blaming that suddenly the media in particular and several media outlets suddenly saw we can absolutely
go from hero to zero and make these people into villains. Yeah. And I want to get into that. So
let's just kind of take the journey then. So lead me through your promotional journey, because
obviously you ended up at the pinnacle of the London fire service and then we'll transition to
Grenfell. Yeah. So kind of interesting. So I had no career aspiration when I joined. I just wanted
to be a good firefighter. And I thought people that served 10 years and were in charge of watches on
fire stations were like superheroes. So it was never in my mind. But seven years in, they were
running a new way of doing promotion to the first level of promotion. So what was called a leading
firefighter and it involved an outward bound course, which was a bit of me. So I thought,
oh, really fancy that. So I applied for the promotion thinking I can go on a great outward
bound course. And it was a fabulous course. It was a new course they tried. It was brilliant.
And my first level of promotion was it's a big step when you get off the back of the fire engine,
sit on the front and the watch I was on were not terribly supportive of having a woman as one of
their officers. And it was definitely one of my more trying times. But I stuck it out. And then
I moved from there to watch that actually had two other women on. I worked with two other women,
which was brilliant and made such a change on the watch the way it was just normal to come to work
and there's be another woman and and they were really well balanced grown up watches. I'll put
it. And I had a fabulous time there. I remember turning out to a very large fire and I had two
the two women on the back as firefighters and we had a driver, we were short of a driver and we had
a guy come in from the next station. In fact, we had tried to get a woman from another station to
come in and drive so we could have an all women crew, but she wasn't available. So this guy came
in, I knew him really well. And he got on the machine. He looked at me and said, oh, hi, how
are you? I'm fine. And he looked over one shoulder and you could see him thinking, oh, there's another
one. And then you could just see the pennies dropping and thinking if I look the other way,
there's going to be a third one, isn't there? And he looked over and he was just like, oh,
I said, you're all right. He said, yes. And I said, you're going to be in your best behavior
tonight, aren't you? He was like, yes. And you could just see him thinking, I'm the only guy on
a truck full of women. But we actually turned out to a very significant fire where very tragically
a woman lost her life and an older woman. But so I went in and breathing apparatus with one of the
firefighters and we located the casualty and the other woman firefighter was the one who'd supplied
the water to the incident. And when the fire investigation guy came along and he said to me,
I understand you were leading the crew that found the casualty. So I said, absolutely. And he said,
oh, and where's the other firefighter? I said, oh, firefighter so and so is over there. And he said,
oh, where is he? And I said, no, it's a she. He said, a she? Oh. And then he said to an officer
from another area. And then I said something about the other firefighter taking the jet up from the
scaffolding. And he's like, where's he? And I said, no, no, a she. And he said, three of you on one
fire engine. Are you allowed to do that? Oh, God. And I just remember looking at him and saying,
did you just say that? And he's, oh, and then he just walked off. And I thought, I cannot believe
you just said that. But so, you know, you just think that was still a view then the three of
you on one fire engine, it was just not acceptable, but we'd actually discovered the casualty and put
the fire out. So, yeah, so then I carried on kind of stepping up through promotion through various
different, different and those were on fire station promotions at the time. And then I decided to go
sort of take the jump and become senior officer. I had some fantastic times, I've got to say,
probably some of my best times were when I was running my own fire station with four watches on
the station. That was a brilliant job. And I've worked with some really amazing people and that
kind of feeling of you being in control of your own ship, as it were, and really good. But the
promotion thing, it was never, I never kept thinking, I never thought I want to be a
commissioner ever, ever, ever, ever. But I just kept progressing and seeing another job and
thinking, I quite fancy that or if I don't do that, someone else will do that and I'll work for
them and I don't like them. And it sort of ended up becoming a, obviously one of the senior management
team and thinking to myself, I'm not going to go any higher because I really don't like politics
and there's far too much politics at play here. But then, yes, unfortunately, well, fortunately,
well, fortunately, unfortunately, the previous commissioner decided to leave. And so I'd made it
really clear that it was not my intention to apply. I didn't want the job. I absolutely knew I didn't
want the job. But then several people, well, I was put under massive pressure from a lot of people
to apply for it. And actually, it was a good long chat with my father that sort of influenced me to
finally put the application in. That's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Well, so now you're a
commissioner, so you're in charge of the whole London Fire Brigade. I want to transition to
something you said about the women thing as well. So many, many conversations I've had with men and
women on this podcast. Most good firefighters just see the idiocracy behind prejudice because
if for nothing else, by the time we put our gear on, there's only one prejudice left.
Either that's a shitty firefighter or a good firefighter just based on how they're performing
on the fire ground. So what I have seen, for example, in the CrossFit space is it's really
empowered the female tactical athlete to be the best version of themselves and therefore become
a great police officer, firefighter, medic, corrections officer. What are some of the things
that you found successful as far as reaching out to certain communities or areas to find great
candidates? Because obviously the knee jerk for diversity is filling checking boxes and opening
a free range just based on skin color. And that's a disgrace to everyone that's of that background
that's already in the fire service. So how have you found an effective way of finding great
firefighter candidates of all walks of life? So learning from mistakes. So we definitely
made some massive mistakes early on where, you know, because in order to fill numbers very much,
as you said, tick boxes, London Fire Brigade reached out to anyone and basically told them
they could be a firefighter. And we employed some people who did not want to be firefighters and
should not been firefighters from the wrong places. I remember doing recruitment. So I used to
volunteer to go along to recruitment events to talk about being a firefighter. I remember once being
at a fashion show in London. So can you imagine lots of young girls turning up to a fashion show,
what they're thinking of being is a model. They want to be discovered. They don't want to be a
firefighter. They don't want to get their fingernails dirty. They don't want to not wear makeup. They
don't want their hair to be a mess. And we have this recruitment stand. And I do remember looking
around thinking, why are we here? And then because people weren't stopping to talk to us, the
organizers of the show decided that to highlight the fact London Fire Brigade were there, they
would make us go up onto the catwalk and do a modeling parade wearing our fire kit. I can
probably tell you I've never felt so humiliated in all my life because the idea of walking down
the catwalk pretending to be a model is so far away from me. It was unbelievable.
Just the look of amazement on all these young women's faces. It's so what are they doing up
there? So yeah, we made mistakes. We learned from those. We then did pitch far more about
the attributes of the firefighter and why women should be attracted to that. So we did a lot of
work around sports teams, rugby teams, football teams, where women had the attributes of fitness,
teamwork, communication skills. And that reached some really good rewards. And then now actually
focusing on younger people. So the cadet element, so getting our fire cadets in and reaching out to
those people, 12, 13, 14 year olds, when people start forming ideas about careers and actually
getting them to be involved with the fire service and to understand and to feel part of that family.
And that's been really useful because that has attracted a different group of young people who
I think if we'd left it till they were 18 or 19 would not be thinking about the fire service as
a career. But if you get in early and link in with them and make them feel part of that family.
And you know, I'm so proud turning out to pass out parades for our cadets in the last three or
four years and looking at groups of cadets of 15, 16 young people. And one of them I remember going
to vividly and just standing there grinning because I think out of the 16 only two of them
were young men. And out of the 16, I think only three of them were white kids. And all the rest
of them were properly a mixture of people from that local community and girls who you would look
at and not think in a million years would be interested in the fire service, you know, with
beautiful hair and long nails were in their fire kit rolling up hose with a grin from ear to ear
and feeling that part of community. It was amazing. Yeah. Well, that's what I've seen. I've got a
friend, Chris Hickman, who's done an incredible mentor program here. And one of the only departments
I've seen has actually managed to play well with the neighboring department. We get a lot of that
kind of, you know, ego bashing going on. But yeah, reaching out and having a free program.
So in these areas where for whatever reason, you know, the kids may not have the as many positive
role models in other areas and having the opportunity to do a police cadet, a fire cadet,
whatever it looks like, and be around mentors, see people that maybe were from their communities
that already are firefighters now and inspire them. I don't have to go and do, you know, the
less desirable jobs or even, you know, turn to crime because I can become a firefighter. But I
think that's what's so great when you talked about the fashion, you know, the model event
is creating mentorship programs within these areas that you want to reach out to, to give these young
men and women the tools and find some incredible talent in that pool and then bring them into this
career that we love. Yeah. And we have definitely seen, you know, young men and women who would
never have been given the opportunity to think about applying to join London Fire Brigade through
the cadet program, their confidence gaining, they had a skill they could put on their CV,
and they had the ability to talk with passion about why they wanted to help their local
communities that they would never have had without the opportunity of being in cadets.
You know, kids that turned up with barely able to speak and make eye contact, they're so shy and so
anxious, you know, at the end of it, standing there, you know, taking part in a drill in front
of their loved ones, you know, and I've had so many, you know, parents and carers and people come
say to me, you know, you've changed their life, they were going down the wrong path, they were
involved with the wrong kind of people. And now all they talk about is cadets and how much they
want to be a firefighter. And the other really positive effect it's had is that it's enabled us
to make links in with communities where we were having tensions between firefighters and,
you know, the local community. And then suddenly you've got champions. So these people who've been
cadets and they've worked with us, when they've got their, you know, they're out in their groups
of friends and someone says, Oh, let's put a, you know, Mickey fire call in, or let's set fire to
this, you've actually got champions, these young kids saying, no, no, firefighters are our friends,
don't do that. And that's been brilliant. Yeah, absolutely. I got a friend, Steve O.
Michelle, who grew up in, I mean, an absolutely horrendous estate where I used to work. And he
ended up through a mentor, high school football coach, getting into college, and then he came back,
became a fireman, and now he serves the community he used to live in. So now these young boys and
girls get to see him wearing the gear, walking the walk. And, you know, he does a lot of stuff,
community outreach stuff too, but it shows them, I can do that. And you put, you know, a woman in fire
gear or someone, you know, of a certain skin color from a certain area, it just empowers them. Like
we talked about at the very beginning, you know, you have to have people that say, you can do it.
And I believe, I believe you can do it. But also here are the tools to get there, because if they
don't have the roadmap to becoming a firefighter, they're going to be lost. Yeah, very much so.
And a lot of it for me is about, especially with young women, it's about confidence. And it's about
not understanding, because quite often what happens is a young woman will turn up to do the firefighter
selection test. And, you know, it is a lot of it is operationally focused, which is great. But because
they've never, you know, had the opportunity to pick up a ladder, or to do various things, they
their own mental barriers stop them. And they're physically capable, but they stop themselves,
because they're unfamiliar with it. And they're anxious. And quite often, they're just there in a
full of guys, and then they feel like they're the only one. Whereas if they've been through the
cadet program, or they've been through some of our mentoring programs, then they've had those
opportunities, and it's no longer something alien to them. So they can turn up and feel confident
before they start. And that's made a huge difference. Yeah. So if they have big kids
shouting, don't come here at shit, they actually know to ignore them this time. Indeed. If I had that, I could have gone to a sports school.
All right, well, then let's lead into Grenfell then. So June 14 2017. What did that day look like through your eyes?
So the obviously it was early as the morning. So the day before, I've been a perfectly normal day at work.
I was the on call. So we used to share the on call between three principal offices. So one of us would
always be on call. So it was my on call week. And I got a call from my staff officer in the early
hours of the morning to say there is a significant fire, large scale building. It's a high rise building.
There are people involved. And as she was on the phone to me, they asked for additional resources.
So she said, we need to get going. So I said, right, I'll get my car. And at that point, you know,
my car was outside. I drove myself to calls. So, you know, I didn't get a massive amount of
information because I just wanted to get there. I understood the significance of what was going on.
So I wrote down bare bits of information on my piece of paper, took it with me programmed into
a sat nav. And it was quite a considerable distance from where I live across London.
And I had my radio on all the way there listening to the messages between the fire ground and our
control room and just focusing on getting there. And it was really difficult. It's quite, you know,
London traffic is busy 24 seven is never a quiet point. So even the fact I was driving there
in the middle of the night, you know, right through London was busy. And I remember getting to and I
hadn't seen on the approach the way my route went in. I hadn't seen Grenfell at all. I was unfamiliar
with the area. It wasn't an area of London I've worked in. And it wasn't till I went to stop that
I saw the building at the time I was actually on the phone to one of my deputies who was on holiday.
And he was abroad. And he had seen and he'd phoned me to speak to me. And I was actually talking to
him as I pulled up and said lots of terrible things when I saw the building first off. And I
just said, look, I've got to go and I parked up and it was it was very congested in the area and
lots of roads were blocked. So I'd parked a little way away. So I just remember putting my fire get
on. I actually took a photograph of the tower from where I stood just because I was so incredulous
as what I could see in front of me and I couldn't believe it. So I thought I will just take this
photograph so I can remember what it looked like when I turned up. And I remember running down
these streets, getting to the instant ground and getting to the base of the tower and just looking
up and thinking this cannot be happening. This cannot possibly be happening in a building in
London in 2017. It's an impossibility that a building should be so significantly ablaze.
And I knew how many people were in there because I had been listening to the information being
relayed between our control room and the fire ground. So I'd heard all the fire survival
guidance calls and I knew that there were still significant numbers of people in the building.
And I just looked up and I felt a moment of absolute despair of thinking,
right, it wasn't happening. And I just remember running to our command unit and meeting up with
Andy Rowe, who was the guy who was in charge, who was the assistant commissioner.
And from that moment on, we worked as a very good team. We clicked together. And I know very well
and it was just a case of, right, what are we going to do to absolutely work our socks off here
and do our best? And I remember he was doing a briefing and I said, right, I'm going to go into
the tower. And he said, right, let's go and have a look. I said, I need to get better situational
awareness to understand what's happening. So we walked into the base of the tower.
And I do remember as I walked in and I looked up from the doorway, I was about to go in.
And I genuinely remember thinking if I was a firefighter, I would be terrified going into
this building now. I would be absolutely terrified because I'm going into an inferno. And I just
remember thinking I have got to be as supportive and positive as I can to these firefighters
because they are going to absolutely risk their lives and do a terrible thing.
So I remember running in and there was this debris raining down the outside of the building.
You know, never seen anything like it. Just these sheets of flaming material dropping
down. And there was a guy standing in the doorway doing spotting and he was just shouting run
at a moment where because he was trying to look up and see when it was fairly clear and we were
just running in. And I just remember getting in there and just seeing what was a very calm
situation in such a terrible, terrible situation. The calm and professionalism of those firefighters,
the absolute determination and the steel in their eyes was something, you know, to behold.
The fact that they were all waiting, they were lined up, they were ready to go. They knew what
they were going into, but they were absolutely there to do a job and to 100% give everything
they could. So I didn't stay in there long. I had a chat with a few people. I just remember
saying to people stick together and look after each other. Make sure you look after each other.
And I remember, and you know, this is a really kind of, I don't know, I suppose very difficult
thing for me. I remember, so lots of these firefighters were from Northwest London. I didn't
know Northwest London firefighters have never served there. So lots of firefighters I wasn't
familiar with, you know, the 6,000 firefighters in London. I don't know all of them. And I remember
touching this guy's arm and saying to him, you know, you'll be fine. You're brilliant. You're
doing really well. Stick with your crew. Remember, go on, you know, give it your all type thing.
And I remember thinking this guy might die, but at least if he does, I hope he remembers that someone
was being really nice to him just before then. And that was actually what was in my head, which is a
incredibly difficult thing to be thinking that you're sending somebody to their potential death
to save other people. And I remember walking back and Andy and I had a conversation on the command
unit where we talked about the right to life and the fact that we believe the people in the tower
had a right to life and that we were prepared to risk the lives of our firefighters to save the
people in the tower and that we made a documented decision that we would carry on even though
everything about all of our policies and procedures said we shouldn't keep committing
firefighters into that situation. We made an absolute decision that we would carry on
committing them and carry on commissioning to save the people in there. And honestly, I, you know,
I felt physically sick for a very long time with the anxiety of believing that I would be
responsible for the deaths, multiple deaths of firefighters, because I was going to keep
committing into that building to save lives no matter what.
Well, one of the things I know that was, you know, highlighted and criticized was a shelter in place.
Now, as again, a career fireman myself, having responded to nothing crazy, but, you know,
single room hotel fires and things like that, there's an understanding that most high rises are
structurally non-combustible with, you know, the room and contents are the things that are going to
burn. So a shelter in place is a great tactic for, you know, a 25, 28-story building where
initially one or two units might be on fire. So talk about the initial decision and then, you know,
what you saw and then why the change was made then, because to me, that takes everything you've known
about firefighting, you apply it to that building, but then something out of the ordinary happens
that changes everything.
So obviously, you know, the advice to people to stay in their, you know, individual compartments is
the right advice when a building is built correctly and behaves in the manner it should, because you
are safer. The, you know, places like Grenfell Tower are not designed for massive evacuation.
They have a single, very narrow staircase. And to give people an idea of the concept, the staircase
of Grenfell Tower was a single staircase. If two people stood side by side on the staircase,
they blocked the staircase. So two people standing side by side is the width of the staircase.
It is not designed for massive evacuation. It's not designed for massive evacuation under
conditions of extreme heat, extreme smoke, and with members of the public who are vulnerable,
who are elderly, who are frail, who have young children, who are naturally distressed and
panicking. That's the context. So the idea is that stay put should work because the building
should never behave like that. The decision to revoke stay put and to tell everyone to get out
happened about 10, 15 minutes before I arrived. Andy made the decision to tell everyone just as
best they could to get out. But my, you know, my absolute view is that whatever happened that night
where the people, you know, my, you know, and we can't turn back time and we can never ever
predict what would happen if you change things. But my true belief is that if people have been
told to mass evacuate very early on, that there'd be a lot more people who would have died on the
staircase because they would have panicked. And all we have to do is look at, you know,
situations where people are told to evacuate and people do get crushed and get killed in the panic.
You know, we can't ever predict what would have happened, but I know what the staircase looked
like. I know how narrow it was. And I know how many people were in that building. And we can,
you know, that from the moment that fire started and developed, you know, those people were put in
an untenable situation. And I absolutely know the other thing is that London firefighters were going
into that building time after time without firefighting equipment into the most horrific
conditions of heat and smoke to do their very best time and time again to rescue people.
And they rescued so many people. There were so many people who, you know, got brought out the
building safely because of the heroic actions of London firefighters. And none of us can ever
predict what would have happened if things were done at a different time. But, you know, what we
do know is that no building should ever behave like that. You know, no building should ever either be
allowed to be covered in flammable material or have so many faults in compartmentation that a fire
can spread so readily through the building. Yeah. Well, I want to get to the construction in a
moment, but you said about without equipment. Was that you literally didn't have any breathing
apparatus left? So they just went in wearing their bunker gear just to facilitate rescues in areas
that were tenable. So they had breathing apparatus, but, you know, you know how long breathing
apparatus in the last and if you're under duress and stress and you're climbing up 24 stairs,
you know, your breathing apparatus will not last that. So a lot of them were not going under air
until they were in really smokey environments. They were going without firefighting equipment.
So they had no hoses, no water because, you know, the facility that provides water, the dry rising
main is only ever supposed to provide water for three or four main jets. We needed two on every
floor that was on fire. So there wasn't a facility for them to have water to tackle the fire with.
You know, that's one of our basic premises. When you go into a fire, you take water to put the
fire out and protect yourself and protect people you're rescuing. They couldn't do that because
there wasn't a facility to do that. And yet not one of them stood there and said, well, I'm not
going because I haven't got the right equipment or I'm not putting my life on the line. We actually
had to struggle more to stop people from keeping going in there. And we had firefighters who were
coming out and collapsing because they're suffering heat exhaustion and because of the stress they put
their body through. And yet they still wanted to go back in. Yeah. Well, there's that one iconic
picture that I've shared a few times now of them all sitting kind of in like a parking area off to
the side and just taking whatever version of rest they can get before they went back in again. But
anyone who is honest with themselves, when we think about throwing gear on and climbing 24 stories
with equipment on us, one time is exhausting. That's without the stress of thinking that you
might die. That's without, you know, like poor Ricky and his partner having to make a decision
not being able to save someone. You know, I mean, there's so many elements of this that just
that everyone that responded that day has my admiration. That's why I found it so heartbreaking
that some people were perceiving the actions as not enough because I think those men and women did
more than most firefighters have ever been asked to do in their career. Absolutely. And 100%, you
know, each and every one of them, whatever role they played that night, you know, there was not
one person I saw on the fire ground who was not 100% fully committed and dedicated to saving as
many lives. And, you know, I had officers coming up to me saying, please, please don't make us,
don't stop us going in there. And I was never going to do that. You know, people genuinely
worried that we would make a decision to, you know, protect our firefighters and to stop them
committing in there. And we carried on doing that. So we had situations where we lost crews, we lost
contact with them. We didn't know if they were alive or not, you know, but firefighters carried
on going in. I mean, normally at that point, you know, the focus is absolutely on rescuing
each other. But we just kept hoping that they'd come back out again. And because we didn't have
the resources to commit to going look for everybody, you know, it was a terrible situation. But
I know, you know, the absolute priority and each and every one of those firefighters was just to
keep going in there and keep going in there. And even the points where, you know, they were going
in through walls and walls of flames and, you know, absolutely into untenable circumstances,
they weren't going to give up ever. Yeah. Well, and it reminds me a lot of 9-11, you know,
those brave and it was all men in that one that we lost in the fire service. But, you know,
the buildings collapsed. And even though they rescued thousands of people, not only the fire
service, but other uniformed personnel, other incredibly brave civilians, some of whom then
perished trying to make other rescues. But there was never a blame on the fire service when the
buildings collapsed. That's what I find so strange with some of the, you know, the agencies, the
politicians, the groups aiming at that. Because what I saw you guys do was nothing short of heroic.
And yet the underlying issue was the construction. That's what caused the incredible death and injury
on that day. So tell me about Grenfell's history as a building and then what you enlightened me
the other day, why it was even clad that way in the first place. So, you know, Grenfell was
not dissimilar to a large number of high-rise buildings in London that were built in order to
facilitate, you know, large numbers of people living in them in quite often deprived areas.
So they were not beautiful buildings, you know, they were concrete structures. They were drafty,
they were, you know, deemed to be not safe. They were in areas that, you know, and I think the,
you know, you can look anywhere across London and have seen a number of those types of buildings.
The issue, of course, with Grenfell is that the Kensington area has the biggest disparity
of the very, very richest and the very poorest of communities rubbing shoulders, living street by
street, side by side. You know, you've got the people who are definitely in the wealthiest bracket
of people in the UK living half a mile from people who haven't got two pennies to rub together and
who are desperate. And, you know, I knew nothing about Grenfell before the fire. It wasn't an area
I was familiar with, but obviously subsequently you, you know, you become very familiar with,
you know, what happened and how the building got refurbished. And absolutely part of the refurbishment
was to do with the fact that Grenfell Tower was fundamentally quite an ugly building.
It was a concrete building. It wasn't beautiful. And part of the refurbishment was to make it
look prettier in the area it was in in London so that, you know, when people looked out their
windows, they saw a prettier building. The local community and the people of Grenfell wanted the
money spent on improving the inside and the facilities of their building and the safety of
their area. You know, they didn't want their building to look pretty. They wanted their
building to be watertight and windproof and weatherproof and warm and secure and safe and have,
you know, the right facilities inside. But that wasn't the major consideration for the people
doing the refurbishment. And, you know, the tragedy is the people in Grenfell raised concern time and
time again about the refurbishment. And, you know, you've got people act as though communities that
live in those towers are, you know, fundamentally lesser or stupid people. There were some incredibly
intelligent, articulate people there who could see what was happening, who voiced their concerns,
and they just weren't listened to. And they were viewed as being difficult and rabble rousers and
argumentative people. And, you know, some of the terrible stuff that's come out as part of phase two
of what the people doing the refurbishment forced the local community. They were difficult. They
were just being argumentative for the sake of it. Now, these were people who had a genuine and
rightful concern about the building they lived in and what was happening to it. And they just
weren't listened to. Yeah, well, just I watched, I think it was the Voices of Grenfell documentary.
And, you know, they talked about the lift not working about the plugs shorting out, they would
get, you know, sparks coming out of their outlets. So those seem like very fundamental things that,
you know, in themselves need to be addressed, even not even if you're, you're going to draft
proof or waterproof, but just just the fundamental safety element. Yeah, and those weren't being
addressed because, you know, people, they weren't a high priority for the people who were dealing
with it, you know, it wasn't and it didn't affect them, you know, all these people living in terrible
circumstances, the people at the other end of the, you know, the budgets and things, it doesn't
affect them. And it's not what they focus on. And that's the, you know, it's a tragedy that plays out
across the country all of the time about how budgets are set and how buildings are refurbished. But,
you know, in this circumstance, when you look at and you look now, and you understand how many
buildings were refurbished with the same type of cladding and how very dangerous it was. And but
even when you take the cladding aspect, a lot of the buildings that, you know, London Fire Brigade
subsequently inspected the standard, the building underneath the cladding was so poor and so, you
know, full of fire safety risks that the loss those buildings we found should have been condemned,
even without the cladding. I mean, I very much remember on my colleagues in fire safety describing
one of the buildings, a Swiss cheese clad with a petrol overcoat. The building had so many holes
and so many points of failure where fire could spread and then they put a petrol overcoat or
cladding on it, you know, that's the risk level. Yeah. So that's just to kind of paint the picture
then. So when they clad Grenfell, you had vent spaces. So you had air and then you had a petroleum
base cladding that was put in that turned what should have been a one flat fire, kitchen fire,
into literally a towering inferno. Yeah. And that's, you know, and that should never happen. So
no building should be able to, you know, and I know that during the inquiry, they raised all these
other buildings where they had external facade fires. And yes, there have been other buildings
that have had external facade fires, but they haven't entered the premises. They haven't gone
into the individual compartments and then spread because that should never be allowed to happen.
And you can't fire to fire and go into every building and assume the building is the worst
case scenario, because then you just assume every building is going to fall down and you'd never go
in there. So, you know, the unreasonable list of the inquiry in the cold light of day saying,
you should have known this, you should have known that. Firefighters need to be able to depend on
building regulations to actually build and, you know, refurbish buildings to a satisfactory
standard. That means they aren't going to behave like that in the fire. Yeah. And we have an issue
here with more and more with our smaller buildings, but with lightweight construction, you know,
everything's made as cheaply as possible. And so building collapse is a big danger for us.
Yeah, massive. And, you know, we've seen several fires since Gwenfell in other types of building
where we've, you know, it's been uncovering more and more the poor quality of building construction
and the poor regime of inspection and maintenance that has led to, you know, one of the real risk
moments when we did inspections just immediately after Gwenfell, where there are a number of high
rise buildings that, you know, could potentially have needed to be completely evacuated because
they weren't safe to live in. But the risk was there was nowhere else to house these poor people
because the rest of the housing stock available was of such poor quality that we were probably
putting them at greater risk taking them out of their Swiss cheese, petrol overcoat building and
putting them somewhere else. Yeah. Well, again, another thing that's discussed in the documentary,
tell me about the community response, not the residents, but the government agencies that
should have been there to help these men and women, you know, with housing, with food, with
all that. What we would do is the Red Cross here in the US, but the people that are responsible
for those residents, where were they the 24 hours after this happened? I think even, you know,
even on the night during the night when we were asking for building plans and we were asking for
support and we were asking, you know, to identify people who could help, it just wasn't there. The
level of response was not there. You know, we had a few individuals from the local borough who came
out who were, you know, completely bemused by the level and the scale and the response that, you know,
I'm one of the things I found really shocking was I was walking around the incident ground and I
came across a member of the public who had come out of Grenfell Tower and was walking around in
complete daze and I stopped and spoke to them and I said, you're okay, what's the matter? And they
said, I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing. So these are people who've come out of a
terrible situation and there's no focus and no one's looking after them and nobody is directing
them to a rest centre or to, you know, to actually even do take names and addresses down so we know
who's coming out of the building and that was a responsibility of the local authority and it just
wasn't happening and I just felt, you know, these people have come through this hellish trauma,
they've actually got out there on the lucky ones but then there's nobody taking care of them and,
you know, the level of response was really poor and, you know, it's been an ongoing battle for
people for this whole time to actually, you know, get looked after in a decent way.
Yeah, well the other thing that I discussed with Ricky that I saw from the documentary was the
other side of the coin. So while the people that were paid to respond seemingly didn't show up,
tell me about what you saw with that Grenfell community banding together those first couple of
days. Honestly, what I would say is that the local community were fantastic. They were an amazing
group of caring, proactive, you know, dedicated individuals who just pulled together, you know,
to support the local community but also to support the Blue Light family who were there. So, you know,
we had people, local people, cooking up big pots of food and bringing it to the fire ground to help
feed all the responders who were there for days and days to actually, they wanted to do something
and they didn't know what to do so they put their heart into cooking and love and coming out to take
care of people there and that extended, you know, not only to the people from the surrounding area
but to all the Blue Light family who were there and, you know, the absolute love and support they
showed and then just the people who just brought donations and goods because they wanted to do
something. These were people who have no money, who have nothing, but they were prepared to bring
whatever they could to try and help the people who'd lost everything and it was, you know, it's,
I think in situations like this you see the very worst of certain aspects but you see the very
best of people too. Yeah and I saw, you know, men and women of all walks of life, all religions,
opening mosques, temples, churches, you know, and all banding together just being humans and I wish
that we could encapsulate what I saw in that documentary and apply it to what we're seeing
now where instead of that division people see the commonalities not the differences.
Absolutely and the religious thing was very interesting. We had, you know, huge amounts of
different religious leaders of absolutely every faith come down to Grenfell Town, the instant
ground and they were just walking around supporting people and I know a lot of people are quite sort
of skeptical but I think their presence there was a real help and support to a lot of people
and even, you know, so we have, so the Salvation Army helped, they support Firefighters to the
instant ground, they have a van, a canteen van that comes out but actually, you know, from speaking
to a couple of our Salvation Army team who are brilliant, absolutely brilliant, you know, it
wasn't cups of tea that people wanted, it was they just wanted to talk to somebody about what
terrible things were happening and they were just there to provide a listening ear and, you know,
literally from every single background of every faith it was amazing. Beautiful. Well, you talked
about, you know, mental health and wanted to talk, that was one thing that I remember very, very
shortly after is that you took the bull by the horns when it came to the mental health, you know,
of everyone but, you know, including your responders so tell me what you saw with your men and women
and how you were able to steer that conversation towards the mental health after the tragedies
that they've seen. So the one of the interesting things and that people, you know, that get played
out to me as a bad point but, you know, so when you do a media briefing in the height of a
incident like that there's very clear instructions from the police that you don't discuss casualties
and numbers because you don't want to either unduly concern or give people hope so you have
to be very general about what you can talk about in lines of, you know, casualties and numbers very
early on in an incident because that's the absolute rules of how media briefings work. So the police
deal with that aspect of it, you know, as the lead for the fire service I'm responsible for talking
about the incident and the fire. So the first statement you give is always relatively bland and
just an information piece but the next time, you know, people want something else they want to know
and some of the things that struck me so I'd walked around the fire ground not long before I
gave the media briefing and I had seen firefighters, you know, big rough-to-tough-to-London
firefighter in tears and I had people that I ended up hugging who I didn't know, firefighters were
strangers to me, hugging them and they were destroyed and I've never seen that, you know,
in my at that point 30-year career I'd never ever seen that before. I've seen people fall
apart afterwards when they think that but never on the fire ground because we don't do that, you know,
we control our emotions and we're whatever and it just struck me that this was so different to
anything I'd ever experienced before and I knew from the feeling of responsibility that I had and
I had the biggest weight of responsibility in my head and in my heart from my firefighters
and I knew that this was so different and one of the things I was so concerned about was what was
going to be the short and long-term impact on firefighters for what they had seen that night
and what they had to do and it was one of the things I spoke about early on my briefings and
one of the things I did was call them my firefighters because I felt the absolute responsibility and
connection like I had never felt before and after some of the firefighters said to me no one's ever
sort of owned us before, no one's ever made us feel that loved and cared for and just by saying
that you showed us that that's how you feel but I did, I just felt the absolute connection so,
you know, I did talk very early on and I remember having conversation with, you know, people back
in City Hall about the fact that I would need additional resources very early on to be able to
support mental health and one of the things that we set up and I did before anyone left the fire
ground was to do a debrief and actually for each and every person to see a counsellor before they
went home that day and that was no mean feat because the numbers of staff on the fire ground
obviously but it was so important to me that we made that first connection and we got people to
understand that we were going to support them and that we understood that they were going to need a
lot of help. Yeah, I mean, like you said, the only time I think I've ever seen tears on a fire ground
is when we've lost a firefighter and from a leadership point of view just to kind of put
everything into perspective, what we saw the fact that you didn't lose a single firefighter and
obviously you made as many rescues as you possibly could but there were people that were just doomed
the moment that, you know, that took off but that speaks volumes too that you were able to keep your
men and women healthy and safe to the point where they were able to keep rescuing rather than have
to rescue one of their own. Yeah and you know that and as you know and I know Ricky made reference
to it but had we lost a firefighter then it would have changed the dynamic completely and
you know coincidentally and ironically at one point apparently and luckily I don't remember
this because I have some very big gaps in my memory, I nearly got struck by a large block of falling
debris and it was a very close event which I generally don't remember but was witnessed by
several of my firefighters and officers and one of the officers I spoke to afterwards said that
that completely and utterly it really played with his mind because he thought he was going to watch
me die and he said the impact that had on him just the thought that was going to happen, the fact it
didn't you know great but actually the worry then he said if that had happened it would have just
screwed everything up on the fire ground because how would they cope knowing that you know someone
had been killed and I'll say the fortunate thing is that I don't recollect it, I know it happened
but I don't have any knowledge of it happening as it were I'm in memory but you know it would have
completely and utterly changed the dynamic have we had a firefighter fatality or seriously injured
so you know the fact that we didn't and the fact that everyone just concentrated their efforts on
saving people in there it was so important. Yeah well the weight of the inability to save too
something I've talked about a lot I mean I've had in multiple occasions where we just haven't
everything's gone right and they've still died and when Ricky talks about his story about making
it all the way up there and then realizing that they only have enough air to get back down I mean
it's untenable the hallway would have killed the person anyway had they even been alive behind the
door they didn't even have the air to force the door that I mean it doesn't matter what you saw
if you saw some grotesque macabre images I think that is something that weighs so heavily I'm sure
that was probably behind what was crushing most of the people on scene. Yeah the what ifs and we
couldn't and I you know and I vividly remember having a conversation with one of my officers
and I was talking about how far up the building we were still able to progress
and he said he just kept looking me now and saying I've got to get to the 18th floor we've
got to get to the 18th floor and I didn't ask him what piece of information he had or what was
making that link but there was something there that was driving him to keep committing crews to
try and get to the 18th floor for a rescue and we couldn't get past the 15th at that point because
the level of fire and I know that's played on his mind ever since that he never got up to the 18th
floor and you know I'm not I remember standing outside the building at one point and I don't
know what time it was daylight and thinking are you ever going to go out looking at this fire
thinking are you ever going to give us a break because it was just so relentless and just so
awful and I just kept thinking hour after hour we can't we're never going to be able to carry on
and not have something terrible to happen to one of us because the risk was getting so much higher
and and I genuinely you know I've been far-fetched a very long time and I genuinely thought the
building would come down I could not understand how a building would burn with such ferocity for
so long and not have some form of collapse. Yeah well that's the irony is you know like we're
saying the structural members were not combustible so had it been you know refurbished the way it
should have been the same way as they attribute the collapse of the world trade to be lack of
fire protection on some of their structural members so you know that it's just awful and
when I was talking to Ricky as a fireman with very little high-rise fire experience you look at that
like there is no putting it out I remember watching it live and them criticizing oh why aren't the
ladders tall enough I'm like because ladders only go a certain far you know after that you're hanging
from helicopters or rappelling off roofs or or you know whatever but that it was an unwinnable fire
and as he said basically you had to protect exposures and wait till it burned itself out.
Yeah I mean it was there was no putting it out you know and it was and you know for anyone who
had seen you know 9-11 and seen the building on fire come down you know that was in a lot
of people's minds because you know buildings so that building should never behave in that way
Grenfell Tower should never have burnt in that way so how did we know that it wasn't then going
to stay structurally stable you know that was in people's minds but you know absolutely that was
in the minds of those firefighters that went in there but they still went in there knowing that
building might come down and kill them. Exactly well so you put the initial counseling in what
did mental health look like mental health counseling look like after that and was that
a change of what they were doing with the mental health element before?
Yeah unfortunately not I suppose a couple of years before that our counseling as it was counseling
well-being team had been cut by about half as part of budget savings so we had a reduced number of
counselors which was very difficult so immediately after that we I managed to put in place doubling
the amount of counselors we had but obviously you can't just go and buy them off a shelf.
Luckily some previous counselors that worked for London Fire Brigade volunteered to come back and
support us and we also had some phenomenal support from other agencies to use their counselors
because we needed for the initial we went back and did a 28-day intervention and we needed huge
vast quantities of counselors to do one-to-one interventions. Some of them weren't as good as
they could have been you know and that's an everlasting problem when you suddenly get that
number of people who need an intervention thrust on you but what we did was make the steps to let
everyone know that we were going to support them we understood and that you know that we were trying
to do our very best in terrible circumstances to highlight mental health and and past the reason
you know that I was so vocal about it was because you know it worried me so much of thinking and it
wasn't just thinking about the then and there it was looking forward and thinking some of these
people are going to struggle for life with what they've done and seen and it wasn't just our
firefighters on the scene it was our emergency call handlers that had a terrible time you know
dealing with some of those interventions and you just think to yourself I just wanted everyone to
know that I understood and I cared and that I'd been there and I got it and that we would keep
looking after them and keep doing everything we could to talk about mental health and for me it
was very much about me carrying on talking about it and carrying on making it a topic of conversation
continuously because the more normal it became to talk about it the more people were going to seek
help and one of my officers very probably two or three months later came in to see me and was in
a really bad place and he just said and I just looked at him I said you need help you absolutely
need help and he did go and get help and he said to me some months after that had you not kept
talking about it I would never have done it I'd have bottled it up and been really ill later but
because you as the leader of the organization kept talking about our mental health and my own
mental health and how much I was struggling then he said it just gave me the courage to do it.
Yeah and that's what needs to be done I've heard sadly stories of the polar opposite where
you know people in chief positions have given the speech of you know rub some dirt and that you
signed up for this you know all that kind of rubbish and that to me is a direct link to
alcoholism, depression, you know suicide that we see in our profession so we need our true leaders
not people that you know got voted to to some position that isn't a leader at all but our true
leaders in all these professions to stand up and be vulnerable and tell their story and
and tell the you know paint the picture that it's okay not only is it okay to talk about it but if
you overcome your post-traumatic stress you become a better firefighter you get post-traumatic growth
and you become more resilient and I think by telling that story it really then motivates
people to want to want to heal and want to be a better version of themselves.
Yeah absolutely and you know and I've been very open I've talked to people about the
you know the counseling I've had the interventions I've had and you know how much that you know I've
benefited from those but we'll carry on accessing them because you know it's not something that goes
away and it's not something you can fix overnight and it's something that's a very you know long term
but the more you keep talking about it and the more you're open and honest about it and the more
you can be honest about having bad days you know I have bad days I have days when things don't go
well I have days when I sit on my floor and sob because I just can't control my emotions
but by not hiding that and by telling people that you know it just lets other people know
that's normal it's okay and it's okay to have you know relapses and you know to need to go back and
get more support. Absolutely well one area I want to transition to and then we'll go to some closing
questions after that but is another kind of elephant in the room when it comes to mental health
and you know is also disgusting is the organizational stress piece and that can be as
you talked about some of your earlier times in the career in a station where people are being
unpleasant because you're a woman because you're black because you're gay because you know whatever
or just they just don't like you which has been attributed to the kind of bullying element that's
behind some of the suicides that we've seen as well but the other side is you know we don't talk
about so much is at the very top now one of my fire chiefs in my very first apartment chief Otto
Droads was also my fire chief in my third one so he actually retired from one and then came to be
the chief in Orange County was incredible was behind all these great initiatives you know changed
the academy where the standard was set high again they were churning out some great men and women
and then one day he literally went to work and they told him he was fired and again there's
no doubt in my mind there was ego behind it there was jealousy there was all these other elements
and the fact that he was empowering as many women and some people didn't like that and luckily he's
now not luckily but he is now a chief of very a county right next to where he used to work
and is thriving there but I see a parallel with your story so you left from the front you know
the firefighters made all those rescues none of the firefighters were killed you know you stood
up for the the mental health element so tell me about the following weeks and you know what the
the pushback was for the fire brigade and then ultimately for you specifically
so for quite a long time the hero status stayed you know without a shadow of a doubt it was
uh we couldn't you know we couldn't have been better you know people thought we were brilliant
and you know that for a long time you know in the media we were you know hailed as heroes and given
awards and all that kind of stuff and you know you just felt the tide term when you know the
the inquiry was set up and to most people's view back to front because they looked at the
events of the night and the fire service response first without looking at how the building came to
be in such a terrible state so you know the main focus initially was then on London Fire Brigade
and on you know public inquiry is there to do a job it's there to you know find out what happened
and to try and stop it happening again we all wish that but it wasn't that it was effectively
almost a witch hunt in a lot of ways and it gave the media some stories so if you look now the
stories that are coming out of the phase two of the inquiry about the terrible emissions in building
instruction about the backhanders and the corrupt thing that's not making headline news in the local
media it's not all over the national media London firefighters were we were all of us were up in the
dock we were on the front page of the media all the time about our supposed failings and actually
I think it suited people because it deflected away from the real cause and problems so then
suddenly you know and I did some work with a company a media company about preparing you know
about me giving media statements and stuff and the guy who was very high from the media he said to me
he was very very interesting and he said something that I'd never realized he said you need to
understand they are out to make a villain of you you've been the media darling first woman
commissioner of the London Fire Brigade you've achieved all this you've done this they said now
they want you to be a villain and they are going to turn you into a villain no matter what you do
so you need to have that in your head before you start and I was really shocked I was thinking what
why does everyone want to hate me why is that and it and it became a real obsession of the media you
know to as much as possible to smear my name and to blame me for things you know I had media camped
outside my door at home harassing my neighbors I couldn't go home for days on end you know because
they just wanted at any point to make a story where I was the villain and it was it was you know for
someone who started as a firefighter went through the ranks and only ever wanted to you know look
after London look after my firefighters to have that happen was truly shocking to me and then to
you know not be supported I was you know it was an amazing thing to happen in a bad way but and the
only the solace I took from it from a really bad set of events was that at the very end of my career
something happened that's never happened you know for another chief before and on the day one of my
last days in the office two and a half thousand people turned out and lined the streets outside
my headquarters to say goodbye to me and say thank you to me and these are firefighters from all around
the country and actually firefighters from all around the world because firefighters flew in
from everywhere retired firefighters you know all different people stood to line the streets and
clapped me and say thank you now that was the only praise I needed you know the fact that I didn't
get support elsewhere didn't matter at that point because I'd obviously done something okay because
you know that many firefighters wanted to turn out and show their appreciation and say how sorry I
was leaving which you know it was a truly humbling and amazing experience at the time I was so ill
from everything that had gone on I didn't really fully appreciate it and and even now eight nine
months on I still find it really hard to look at some of the stuff from that day and to read
people signed books me and stuff because it's so raw still the emotion of how that was for me
yeah let's expand on that and so you know you you gave your you know the best part of your life to
the London Fire Brigade you clearly were appreciated by the men and women that you served alongside
and you know and led but again that organizational piece you know there's that betrayal from the
people that you do it for I mean these are the people above us the politicians how was that
mental health wise for you because that must have been crushing oh traumatic crushing destroyed me
for quite a long time I couldn't understand how I'd gone in from them talking about me as a hero to
them undermining me in such a way but then you just take a step back and look and you understand
it's politics and it is all about them needing to demonstrate what they're doing and their power and
you know and it's all about the politics around that that they want to be able to go out to the
wider community and say you know London Fire Brigade was terrible we're changing it and you know
here's her head on a plate and and at the time you know very just terrible for me you know the
personal toll for me was huge because I didn't expect it and I didn't see it coming and I was
completely blindsided by it eight months on nine months on you know it'll take a very long time
for me to feel the same way about certain things but you know that my basic and fundamental premise
that I set out to you know do the best job I could and to change London Fire Brigade and make it more
people focus and to talk more about mental health and and you know I started that journey I hope it
continues because it was something that's so very dear to my heart and so important to me.
Yeah and again I think it just it parallels what we talked about at the beginning which is
that greed and corruption element that we see is destroying so many parts of our countries at the
moment you know and here you have these men and women on the ground that are serving that literally
risk their lives to save people and the people that were responsible which are you know the in
this particular case the politicians and and the the contractors that were used for that particular
job they're they're nowhere to be seen and that's what I see over and over again these are the people
that are cutting fire stations cutting budget deciding that the firefighters get you know a
shitty salary these are the people that put in drug policy these are people that you know throw
fuel on the fire of racism that choose to fill our prisons full of men and women rather than address
the way that we do prisons the way that we do you know addiction always other areas and it's always
the same thing you reverse engineer it the people who are risking their lives and the people that
they serve are are all at the end of those puppet strings and the hands turning and this isn't some
conspiracy theory this just is there's never any repercussions for those people and and you know
so many people lost their lives in Grenfell on that one particular incident and you dishonor
their memory if we don't get to the root cause and actually address what really happened that night.
Hugely and for me I you know I'm you know I watch the whole of the phase two which is unfolding in
front of us now and I think it's a travesty because the people are truly responsible you know we'll
wait and see what comes at the end of the inquiry I'll be interested to see what the conclusions are
but the main purpose of this is to stop it ever happening again and I don't see that at the
moment I don't see that you know the interventions are being put in place to prevent it happening
again and my worry is that another community will suffer the same terrible tragedy because nobody
cares enough because it isn't important enough and now it's off people's radars because obviously
we've had the horror of coronavirus but actually you know we need to focus back and keep remembering
what happened and why it happened to prevent it ever happening again. Yeah well again Corona is a
great example so I've talked about this for five months now. Corona is a mirror to a nation's health
and in the US here we have such a sick population you know so much obesity and diabetes, cancer,
as right for all these things and that my thing is yes Corona is real but we have to take this time
now we've got this captive audience to educate the masses on health to change the way that we farm,
to support PE and you know clean food in schools all these areas that we can improve the nation's
health and I don't know how it is in the UK but none of that has happened it's just been hand
sanitizer, masks and social distancing so it's the same with Grenfell. Oh we need to change the way
the fire department respond rather than we need to look at the way we're building these buildings
so these fires don't happen in the first place. Yeah absolutely and I'm in here you know it's very
similar there are some sort of light touch bits around public sort of health and dietary stuff
but nowhere near enough and you know we are going the same way you see a lot of people who are
extremely unhealthy who are definitely more vulnerable at risk and the highlight isn't
being put on that and it needs to be because people need some help and support. Yeah exactly
and even with that they want villains you're either all the way one way or all the other and
then those two villains start arguing with each other and then the middle ground which is most
of us are looking around going what the fuck is going on? Why are you not focusing on the main part?
Horrendous. All right well I want to transition to some closing questions we're already almost at two
hours now but yeah the story needed to be told the way it was told so thank you so much for
leading us through. The first question I love to ask is there a book that you love to recommend?
It can be attributed to what we've discussed today or something completely different?
Oh crikey I do love reading a good book but there's I'm not great one for reading
sort of theory type books I suppose I don't read a lot of not because I don't have found it
interesting just because I suppose I deal more with the practicalities of people and I prefer
to talk to a person and to learn that way so weirdly no not really off the top of my head.
I mean it could be a book can be about anything at all though so is there any
psychology books or fiction or anything that you love?
I spend most of my time reading recipe books. There we go who's your favorite
who's your favorite author? Oh crikey no it's more about genre Thai food yeah so I love reading
yeah I love reading recipes to get ideas because I absolutely adore cooking and it is one of my
mental health therapies so I very rarely cook a recipe for Zali. I read recipes to get ideas
and to understand what people put in food to then cook myself so I suppose probably Thai food but
seafood as well really fond of Rick Steins seafood and you can't beat Delia Smith. Go back to basics
for anything you want to make and Delia Smith's always there. Yeah she's a staple it's funny I
want to get Jamie Oliver on one day and you talk about but trying to buck the system what he tried
to do with school food I think was amazing and he did it over here and it lasted I think a few
weeks and then they just went back to the way it was before but he's fabulous. I've met him on a
couple of occasions and he is an amazing guy and very down-to-earth and real and yeah I have all
his books too they're fabulous reads but yeah if you can get hold of him he is a brilliant guy with
some real care and passion. Absolutely all right what about films any films that you love?
Oh I can't help it I love Notting Hill, I love Four Weddings and a Funeral,
Love Actually, yeah I do like good romance can't do horror films just get scared.
We have an annual well more than annual usually but Christmas Love Actually every year that's
one of the funniest films ever. Love it perfect film. All right what about a guest is there a
person you recommend to come on this podcast and speak to the first responders military and
medical professionals of the world? So if you could understand him I'd really recommend the
chief of Tyne and Wear who is a good friend of mine called Chris Lowther who is a proper
northerner so getting through that bit he has got a really interesting background and he's a very
real so he's a boxer as well and he very much understands his local community and he says it
as it is he's an absolutely amazing guy and a brilliant chief. Brilliant I'd love to make the
connection if you're able to help me. Yeah absolutely. Fantastic all right well then the
last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you what do you do to decompress?
So I love outdoors, I love walking, I like just yeah I find I can so one of the issues after
Grenfell with my PTSD was I couldn't breathe properly I felt my the analogy I had was there
was an elephant on my chest and the only place I could go to properly breathe was either in the
countryside or standing by the sea I absolutely adore the sea it's my happy place I can sit on
the beach and listen to the waves breaking and that just completely and utterly puts me in a
safe zone and makes me feel completely chilled. Beautiful now are there any elements of counseling
that you've found have worked for you? Yeah so EMDR amazingly powerful very strange very curious
situation but definitely has helped me hugely I'm having still having ongoing counseling now but
I'm also combining it with acupuncture and reiki. Oh brilliant. Which I really enjoy and I find very
powerful. Yeah EMDR comes up over and over again canine therapy is obviously another one that's very
ah yes definitely always always always you cannot beat yes some canine therapy and that was one of
the one of my battles which is going to happen which sadly I never got to see out was we're
getting therapy dogs into London Fire Brigade. I love that I just had a navy seal who was a canine
with the seals and his canine was shot he ended up recovering and then they were both called back
to action to go to the Osama bin Laden raid so the dog was there but he ended up getting TBI from
from his whole career but there was one grenade specifically and his canine ended up becoming
his therapy and vice versa I mean the dog had PTSD too so so they were each other's therapy
you know dog slash person which was pretty cool. Yeah I've got to say dog therapy is an amazing
and terribly powerful thing and never to be underestimated. Absolutely all right well then
the last question that people want to reach out to you where can they find you online?
So Twitter is probably the best way to reach me so it's the only one that's kind of public
facing the rest of my media stuff is predominantly private because I've had so many problems and
I've had so many issues with bad people so Twitter obviously if people want to message me
on Twitter and then I can follow them back and they can DM me. Beautiful well Danny I just want
to say thank you so much I mean your your length of service for example you're being one of the
first women in the fire service responding to the the rail crash early in your career I mean there's
so many layers to this story but you know Grenfell was such a horrific night obviously for the
residents for the responders but then to see how the fire brigade and especially you were treated
at the end I think is is a story it needs to be underlined because it should have been medals not
you know being fired and I think that really really illustrates the corruption that's in so
many of these governmental agencies and you know something that needs to be addressed you know and
the people need to understand that these people at the streets that are serving are the ones that
are the backbone in this country and there are some leaders in in government that are great but
there are some horrendous ones and when that affects our profession and just individuals like
yourself I think that's disgusting and it's something that we need to rise up and change.
Yeah thank you and one of my everlastingly sad things is the fact that nobody has yet been
recognised for action at Grenfell and so many of my firefighters deserve so much recognition
for putting their lives on the line for strangers and I remember talking to one of my officers who
said to me that some months later when all this kicked off and when we were suddenly the baddies
he had a really big row with his wife who said you walked in there you were prepared to die and
make me a widow and make your children fatherless for complete strangers and this is how you're
getting treated I'm disgusted and it caused a big problem between them because he was prepared to
die that was the absolute commitment so people need reward they need recognition and you know
those heroes walk amongst us every day and they carry the scars of what we all saw that night
and they need to be supported for that forever.