Former residents of Grenfell Tower have been returning to the burnt out building to collect personal possessions .
More than 50 survivors from the lower floors have been allowed to return to retrieve more than belongings over the past six weeks, said site manager Michael Lockwood , who has overseen work at the block.
He said survivors, accompanied by friends and relatives, collected personal possessions thought to have been lost when flames ripped through the building on June 15.
Mr Lockwood, who was drafted in from Harrow Council to head operations at the site, told the Press Association : “I’ve spent a lot of time with survivors.
Grenfell Tower news
“One of the things they said to me was, ‘We want to go back in to the tower. There are some very sentimental and precious items for us, whether it’s jewellery or photographs, and we only want to collect those’.
“We had 40 of the survivors, we stood in front of them and said, ‘You can go back in to the building’, and every one of them was in tears of joy and they said to me, ‘This is the first time we’ve ever been listened to’.”
So far, around 30,000 personal belongings have been removed, catalogued, cleaned and returned to survivors.
The remainder are being stored in a warehouse near Bracknell until families are able to take them back.
Kenyon International Emergency Services, a company involved in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena terror attack earlier this year, has been removing property from the tower’s upper floor on behalf of former residents who cannot yet return.
Referring to the site visits, Mr Lockwood said: “Most came out with big smiles on their faces, with a box of sentimental items they’d managed to get.
“You can’t underestimate that moment for them. Going into your home, seeing it for the last time, having that closure.
“To achieve that, we bent every rule possible. We didn’t break any rules, but we did something that was important to them, not what we thought was important.”
More than 3,500 supports are propping up bowed ceilings and floors in the tower, while scaffolding three times the normal density is reaching through to the building’s core to stabilise it.
Mr Lockwood hopes residents of the higher floors could be allowed to return to their former homes once investigators have finished scouring the site.
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