Grenfell Tower fire survivor, 16, sat GCSE just hours after fleeing the building with her chemistry notes
'It’s my strongest science so I thought it was worth doing it, rather than not doing it'
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Your support makes all the difference.A 16-year-old girl who survived the Grenfell Tower fire has told how she sat a chemistry exam just hours later.
Ines Alves, speaking on ITV’s This Morning programme, said she was asleep when her father Miguel burst into her room and told her they had to evacuate the building in London’s Kensington area.
He had taken the lift to the fourth floor, where the fire began, he then ran back upstairs to their flat on the 13th floor to warn his children.
Ms Alves said she had grabbed her jeans, a jumper, her phone and “my chemistry notes” and then fled downstairs.
On the ground, she said initially the fire appeared to be contained to one flat but she said within minutes it spread to six other flats above.
Explaining her decision to sit a GCSE just a few hours later, she said: “I want to take chemistry for A-level and I needed good grades in science GCSE to be able to go ahead with chemistry.
“It’s my strongest science so I thought it was worth doing it, rather than not doing it.”
Asked if she had been able to concentrate on the exam given the horror of the fire, Ms Alves said: “It was always there in my mind but it was like a way of escaping it and nothing thinking about it.”
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