‘Home is where you feel safe. And I don’t feel safe in my flat any more’

Thomassina Hessel used to love the view from her studio flat on the Lancaster West estate, of gardens set against the backdrop of Grenfell Tower. Now she sees only a blackened tomb, 24 storeys of burnt-out homes that stir up memories of the terrible fire – and fears for her three-year-old son’s future.

There is no hot water or gas on the estate more than a week after the blaze, and occasionally three loud whistles ring out – a warning for emergency services and residents who have ventured back to their flats to evacuate immediately, because the remains of the tower could shed debris, or even collapse. Non-residents are barred from the estate entirely.

The wind still carries ashes and burnt fragments down the hallway, guarded by police officers at each exit, some wearing hard hats. On some terraces there are larger chunks of debris. Residents fear that the air or water – which arrives piped under Grenfell – may be contaminated by asbestos from the tower and other pollutants released by the blaze.

Yet every time Hessel calls the helpline for locals affected by the fire about the possibility of extending her stay in the hotel where – after several days – she has now been housed, officials urge her to move back to Lancaster West. It’s safe, they tell her.

But the thought of returning to the flat terrifies Hessel, trying to shield her son from the trauma she and most adults from the area are battling. “When I’m talking about home now, I’m talking about the hotel room,” she says. “Home is a place where you feel safe, and I don’t feel safe here.”

They are luckier than some of their neighbours, though, who have been refused hotel rooms – including one who spent two nights in the aftermath of the tragedy sleeping in a park. “How come I’m out and he is still here?” Hessel asks as her neighbour stops to ask who to see about getting a hotel room.

The estate’s close-knit community, which linked those in the tower with those who lived around its base, was shattered by the tragedy. Residents fled their homes, then waited helpless in the streets for hours as friends, neighbours and children who went to school with their own burned to death.

Now they are worried about a lack of support for survivors and the bereaved from the tower itself, anxious about erratic help for the wider community haunted by memories and fearful of the future, and apprehensive about the physical and mental scars endured by those closest to them.

“I don’t know who is actually feeling sane right now,” said one friend who has been given antidepressants and sleeping tablets, but is most worried about the long-term impact on her 12-year-old daughter, who lost a close friend in the blaze.

“People were screaming at us, ‘Help me help me’. It was like a horror film, because the shouting got fainter then stopped. And in your head, you know what that means,” said the woman, who asked not to be named to protect her daughter.

The girl has been put on a waiting list for counselling, but officials cannot say when a therapist will be available, and she has even lost the comfort of familiar surroundings at school. Kensington Aldridge Academy, at the foot of Grenfell Tower, has been forced to scatter students into classrooms in other schools around the area.

For the adults there has been some counselling, but they say anger about how the tragedy has been handled, mistrust of the authorities and fear of retaliation are hampering their recovery. “I had my first set of therapy last night, but they don’t have answers to our questions,” said the mother of the 12-year-old.

Perhaps the most pressing of those questions for many locals is the scale of deaths. Most in the area believe the toll of 79 dead given by the police is far too low, because the tower was known to be densely populated, and they saw whole families engulfed in flames.

Council leader Nick Paget-Brown, who would have access to internal documents, and toured the block after its remodelling last year, said he would have expected “several hundred” people to be at home at the time of the blaze.

“The police have admitted that the exact toll of the fire may never be known, both because of the shifting population of the block and because the intensity of the fire means that they cannot simply count the bodies.”

Locals accept that there is no clear list of who was in the tower. “It’s not like a plane or bus crash, where you have a passenger manifest,” said one. But they are frustrated that the government appears not be doing enough to assure survivors and relatives that they can come forward safely and anonymously to report concerns.

Nor has there been any information on possible efforts to narrow down how many people are unaccounted for, perhaps by looking at mobile phone records or council data.

At present there is not even a toll of survivors, which would not clarify the number of missing, but added to the dead might at least give a sense of how many people had been accounted for.

“There are many in this community who believe that an estimate of the total number who have died has not been made for political reasons,” said Jennifer Nader, a local activist and Green party candidate for the borough.

“They believe numbers are being dribbled out so once the total is known, it will no longer have the impact it would have if released earlier.”

It will be hard to get an accurate estimate of either dead or survivors in need of help until the government gives much stronger guarantees of protection for those who escaped or who fear for friends or loved ones, she said.

And while there has been a focus on residents with irregular immigration status, British nationals may also have reasons to fear coming forward, relating to breaches of housing or benefits status. Even the Red Cross has expressed concern that they may not be reaching all survivors, or relatives of potential victims of the fire.

“We do have concerns that people are not coming forward for a number of reasons – it could be due to fears about their immigration status, or people who may be wary of the authorities for other reasons,” said Simon Lewis, head of crisis response for the Red Cross.

“People need clear assurances that they can report people missing, or safe, anonymously if they need to.”