Add Category
Updated
London-based Australian Jody Martin has detailed horrific scenes at the Grenfell Tower in West London, which is still smouldering more than 24 hours after firefighters arrived at the scene.
He recalls seeing "one family after another" perish in the inferno.
Mr Martin lives in an apartment block right next to the Grenfell Tower, and went outside when he heard sirens coming from the streets below.
"I could see the fire brigade was struggling to get into the building," he said.
He grabbed an axe and tried to make his way into the burning tower through the ground floor, but he encountered impassable steel doors and said there was no obvious fire exit.
Then he had an idea.
"There was a bridge connecting that building [the Grenfell Tower] to another building on the second floor, so I went up the stairs [of the other building] and gained entry through an apartment with the axe."
Before he knew it, Mr Martin was making his way through the smoky corridors of the Grenfell Tower.
"I could see maybe three of four metres in front of me," he told ABC News Radio.
He also said he could not hear any fire alarms.
"No sprinklers, no alarms, nothing. It was quiet," he said.
"There was an old couple coming down [the stairs], so I helped direct them towards the fire exit."
But there was little more Mr Martin could do; the smoke was just too thick and he was forced to evacuate.
"I stayed on the outside of the building for probably another hour … I was screaming at residents in the building, saying, 'Get out, get out of the apartment. It's all going up'," he said.
"And they were shouting, 'But we can't, it's too smoky. We can't get out into the corridor'."
They were trapped.
"I could hear the people screaming 'help me', and nothing could be done. The building was too big," Mr Martin told BBC Radio 5.
On the streets below, Mr Martin recalls seeing large sheets of metal disintegrating, "dripping like plastic" down the side of the building.
With no way to help, he went back to his apartment to watch it all unfold.
"I saw families on the top floor just perish," he said.
"I saw multiple families hanging out the windows, and then slowly the flames just engulfed [the other side of the building].
"All those apartments are now up in smoke".
Mr Martin said he sustained minor injuries when he was inside the tower.
"A hot bit of metal hit my shin, but nothing serious. Not like what's going on in there," he said.
Mr Martin said based on what he saw, the death toll number was likely to rise significantly.
"It's just that they haven't gone in there to recover dead bodies," he said.
"I just can't see how people could have gotten out. I couldn't even navigate [the building] on level two, let alone the higher levels."
He said he only saw approximately seven people exit the complex for the entire time he was outside.
Topics: fires, disasters-and-accidents, united-kingdom
First posted