A Grenfell Tower resident packed a bag of belongings just days before the deadly fire after deciding she would defy the standard stay-put advice in an emergency, an inquiry has heard.

Petra Doulova lived on the 20th floor with her husband for nearly two decades and managed to escape down the smoke-logged stairwell on June 14 2017.

In a moment of chilling foresight, she had recently read the fire evacuation advice on a sign in the tower and was prepared to run with a bag of her documents if disaster struck.

This was contrary to the building’s policy, which told residents to remain in their properties unless the fire affected them directly – a strategy it is feared led to many deaths.

Ms Doulova said in a statement to the Grenfell Tower inquiry that she discussed the issue with her husband after seeing the sign and “we both agreed we would not follow the stay-put advice”.

She told a hearing at Holborn Bars on Wednesday: “I think it was just an instinct, and just thinking about how the building is and how it is designed, thinking about the two lifts that obviously you shouldn’t use in event of fire and also thinking about the stairwell, it’s not the biggest and widest stairwell, it’s quite dark sometimes.

“I think the thinking was, ‘if there is a fire, as soon as we can get out, given all these circumstances, the better’.”

She added: “It was really a feeling we had that we would rather be out than in.”

Ms Doulova, whose first language is Czech, said they put a bag in their bedroom with documents such as passports and birth certificates within it.

She had packed the documents the weekend before the fire, the inquiry was told.

Explaining their thinking, she said: “You think what would happen if you suddenly have to run, you have to leave? And we said we didn’t have anything to take with us, anything ready, anything important.

“We had the case and my husband brought it and said: ‘Let’s just put some important things in it.’

“The weekend before the fire, I put some of my personal possessions and put our passports in there and I had some of my other documents, my birth certificate, we put it in there.

“It just so happened it actually proved quite useful at the time, because obviously they were the only documents we had left.

“It was just these things led to the night which was, in a way, strange, but that’s what happened.”

The couple were awoken by their smoke alarm going off on the night of the fire and made a break for a stairwell with wet towels covering their faces.

Ms Doulova said of the moment they reached the stairs: “The first thing that really struck me was that there was nobody there – I was expecting a lot of people leaving in the stairwell.

“There was nobody.”

Several of the couple’s neighbours on the 20th floor died that night, including Mary Mendy and her daughter Khadija Saye, and 12-year-old Jessica Urbano Ramirez.