'I feel a part of me has been ripped out': Heartbroken mother pays tribute to 'treasured' daughter as Grenfell inquiry continues

The mother of a Grenfell Tower victim told today how she feels “a part of me has been ripped out”, after losing her daughter without being able to say goodbye.

Miriam Lamprell, 79, received a late-night text message from Debbie, 45, hours before the fire started, telling her: “I’ve got in Mum, all’s well, goodnight, God bless.”

Mrs Lamprell told the second day of the Grenfell Inquiry hearings : “I thought, ‘That’s ok, she is safe’. I went to bed and got up in the morning and I didn’t have a daughter. I am bereft without her. If she had died a normal death I would have been able to hold her, comfort her, and say goodbye.

“I feel a part of me has been ripped out, and nothing seems worth it anymore.” Debbie, who lived on the 16th floor of the tower, was a popular member of Opera Holland Park where she worked every year as the safety officer and Michael Volpe, the opera’s director, fought back tears as he read out Miriam Lamprell’s tribute this morning.

“I’m an old woman who has nothing else left,” she said. “Maybe it has taken the loss of Debbie to realise we weren’t normal. Debbie was an exceptional, extraordinary person and I was completely blessed to have her as my daughter.”

The inquiry heard how Mrs Lamprell had encouraged her daughter to seek social housing after she moved out of the family home in Highams Park in Waltham Forest.

“I was always worried about her living in the bedsits or the studio flats, as she called it,” she said. “It really was not appropriate for someone in her thirties who worked so hard. The conditions were not good and I used to badger her to put her name down with the council to get somewhere proper to live — somewhere safe and decent. Of course, it feels terrible to have done that now.”

Mrs Lamprell, whose husband Reg died eight years ago, said their daughter was “his treasure” and revealed that she had been buried next to him.

A family of three generations who died in the blaze on June 14 last year and a woman who live-streamed her plight while stranded on the top floor were among the 12 victims due to be commemorated today.

Tributes were set to be paid to the Choucair family, including Nadia, 33, her husband Bassem Choukair, 40, their three children Mierna, 13, Fatima, 11, and Zainab, three, and their grandmother Sirria, 60. They were all found on the 22nd floor where they lived.

Rania Ibrahim and her two little girls will also be remembered at the hearings at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel in South Kensington. The 30-year-old uploaded a harrowing Facebook Live video while stranded at the top of the tower. She was found with her children Hania Hassan, three, and Fethia Hassan, four. Loved ones of Hesham Rahman, 57, who was found dead in the flat where he lived alone, will also pay tribute.

Survivor Nicholas Burton, who escaped the tower, was also set to speak about his wife, Maria del Pilar Burton, 74, who died in January after suffering trauma in the blaze, becoming the 72nd victim of the tragedy.

Clarrie Mendy, a co-founder of the Humanity For Grenfell campaign group for the bereaved, was also due to pay tribute to her cousin Mary Mendy, 54, and Mary’s artist daughter Khadija Saye, 24.