Sam 7, p.12
SAM 7, page 12
‘All available men to rescue work now. Use cold cutting equipment only. Don’t use mobile lighting or any electrical gear unless you have to. Stand by the breathing apparatus tender.’
When his orders had been acknowledged, he left a divisional officer in charge and began to make his way round the outside to the main station concourse. As he stepped on to the pavement, a flashbulb exploded in his face. Even in the full daylight it dazzled him. He blinked, startled. Voices assailed him.
‘What’s going on in there, Chief?’
‘How many dead? Can you make a statement?’
Two reporters and a photographer barred his way.
‘How the hell did you . . .?’ Plowden controlled himself. ‘It’s bad situation in there. Yes, the aircraft came down smack on the platforms. No, gentlemen, I’m sorry, you cannot. There are problems enough as it is. Yes, later I will talk to you. Now would you please clear off out of the way.’
He thrust them aside and continued. Frightened guests clutching personal belongings were streaming out of the Grosvenor Hotel’s street entrance, guided by policemen, while firemen ran up the steps carrying equipment. Across the road in Grosvenor Gardens stood a group of vehicles, the blue police van, a white ambulance Land Rover, his own staff car. Beyond, a chain of policemen, their arms linked, were holding back a crowd of sightseers. Plowden dismissed all this from his mind and hurried round the corner to the forecourt.
While Thompson and Plowden were giving their respective orders, the ambulance bringing the mobile medical team from the Westminster Hospital had drawn up in Hudson’s Place. Out had tumbled four nurses in white tracksuits. Red cloth crosses were sewn on their backs and their armbands read ‘Site Medical Team’. With them was a young tousle-haired male registrar, identified by a white coat marked ‘Site Medical Officer’. He and the nurses, helped by an ambulanceman, had swiftly offloaded a series of boxes and chests – dressings, resuscitation equipment, a basic surgical kit for on-the-spot amputations, saline drips, blood transfusion packs. The doctor himself was a registrar in anaesthetics – the hospital would need all its surgeons in its own operating theatres. Aided by the other doctors already there, he started establishing a casualty clearing post in the eastern booking hall on the Chatham side.
The registrar and the nurses had all been on duty in the Westminster Hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department when the first warning from the ambulance control at Waterloo had reached the hospital switchboard down on the lower ground floor. It had come at 4.25 p.m. with a buzzer and a red light flashing on the special two lines kept free for major emergencies.
‘London Ambulance Service Headquarters,’ the call had run. ‘Major accident – aircraft crash Victoria Station. Request mobile medical team. You are the designated hospital.’
The supervisor, sitting at his desk watching the four operators who tend the switchboard’s fifty-eight lines and the bleep system for alerting staff, had leant back and pulled a white form off a shelf. Then, using two telephones, and somehow contriving to chainsmoke at the same time, he had started methodically calling different departments.
‘Major accident request mobile team.’ He had ticked off one space on his form.
‘Major accident. Report to the main hall, please.’ Another space ticked. While he did this, the bleep operator had been punching out numbers on a grey control box that would activate little plastic alarms which each doctor and nursing officer carried in a pocket. There were 155 of them in use at the hospital and the encoder could call six simultaneously. When the recipients answered, which meant going to a telephone, the standing orders were simple: housemen were to report to their wards, anaesthetists to the control centre, senior doctors to the control centre. The ‘surgical firm on take’ – that is, the team on duty – had been stood by. Meanwhile the other telephonists had interrupted ordinary conversations.
‘Please clear the line. There is a major accident.’
On the floors above the activity had heightened, nurses and doctors unashamedly running. By the time the younger registrar had assembled his team, opened the major accident cupboards in the A and E Department, and the nurses had wriggled awkwardly into their tracksuits, too stiffly laundered to fit easily, the ambulance was waiting outside for them. A demented rush to Victoria deposited them there fourteen minutes after the crash.
This was the registrar’s first experience of a major incident and he would never forget the first half-hour. Barely had he begun to attend to his first casualty, telling a nurse how to bind a terrible gash in a railway porter’s leg and scribbling details on the card that would accompany the man to hospital, when a fireman, sweating in his heavy tunic, yellow oil-skin trousers bloodied, tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Can you come, sir? We’ve a man near cut in half. He’s alive and conscious. He needs a shot while we cut him free.’
‘Would you come with me?’ the registrar asked one of the nurses. ‘Bring morphine and a drip.’ Hastily gathering up morphine and dressings they followed the fireman into the station. Thick canvas fire hoses lay limp and flat across the concourse. A procession of ambulancemen, firemen and police were carrying away the injured. The registrar reached platform 13. The barrier had now been cut away. Station Officer Melville was leading a team here, slowly penetrating deeper into the one part of the aircraft where it seemed certain there must still be survivors. Heavy jacks and lifting gear were gradually raising up spars and wreckage so that Melville’s men could reach the passengers in the crushed railway carriages. Melville did not bother with introductions.
‘Here, doc,’ he said.
The registrar noticed Melville’s taut, handsome face, grimy, streaked with sweat, then followed his gaze. The nurse gave a little gasp. Ahead of them, embedded in the roof of a carriage, was a piece of steel girder. It rose at an angle out of the carriage and then disappeared in a buckled section of aluminium, obviously part of the aircraft’s body. Caught between the two was a man. Or rather the remains of a man, bent double across the edge of the sharp metal, which cut deep into his abdomen. The man’s face, white and contorted, was almost level with the registrar’s, though several feet away. He looked about forty years old and had dark hair.
‘It’s going to take ten minutes to cut that aluminium away and God knows what it isn’t holding up,’ said Melville. ‘If we lift you forward you could reach him.’
The registrar felt sick. He could see the man’s stomach was fearfully wounded, gouged out by the jagged aluminium. Trying to steady his voice he turned to the nurse.
‘Morphine, please.’
She handed him the hypodermic capsule. Two firemen hoisted him forward, his shoes slipping on the debris below, until he could reach the man.
‘They’ll get you out in a tick,’ he said, trying to sound confident, searching for an arm. ‘They’ll have you out of this in no time. You’ll be okay.’
He found one of the man’s hands, managed to grasp the wrist and slid the needle into a vein. It was impossible to fix the drip.
The man murmured. ‘Helluva bang . . . everything shaking . . . she came down.’
His whisper died as the morphine took him away.
They helped the registrar back. Once on his feet he looked straight at Melville and shook his head. Melville’s answer was curt. ‘While he’s alive, we go on. Did he say something?’
The registrar repeated it.
‘Better remember that. Could be evidence. Write it down, doc, before you forget.’
‘I must get on to someone else. I’ll send an ambulanceman.’
As the registrar and the nurse returned across the concourse, they were stopped by a man in a suit, holding a notebook and a bulky camera.
‘Excuse me, doctor,’ said the man. ‘Are there any airline survivors in there?’
Sudden indignation overcame the registrar, the shock of what he had just seen finding a release of anger. ‘You flaming reporters,’ he shouted. ‘Why don’t you get out of the way!’
The man stared at him coldly, then pointed to a red arm-band on his right sleeve.
‘Donaldson is the name. AIB. Accidents Investigation Branch, Department of Trade, and I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head. There’s enough trouble here as it is without lost tempers.’
‘Sorry, sir. I thought . . .’ The registrar caught Donaldson’s eye, mumbled further apologies and recounted the few words of the dying passenger.
‘If there are going to be survivors, they would be back there,’ remarked Donaldson, almost to himself, repeating, ‘ “A helluva bang” ’ with puzzlement. Leaving the registrar and the nurse without a word, he walked determinedly across to the senior divisional fire officer, whose insignia he had just spotted, explained himself and then asked, ‘If it’s humanly possible, I need to see what’s left of the flight deck.’
‘That’s right up front in the aircraft?’
Donaldson nodded.
‘There’s not much left, I should think,’ said the fire officer. ‘And there’ll be less still if it burns.’
‘Can you spare someone to help me? The reason for this crash must be up there.’
‘I reckon we’ve three hundred firemen or more here. Even so we’ve none to spare.’ The fire officer saw the determination in Donaldson’s expression and relented. ‘It’s unusual. Rescue comes first.’
‘It’s an unusual crash. It’s the one we all pretended couldn’t happen. Every busybody from the Prime Minister downwards is going to want to know why it did. If it’s humanly possible we have to fish the pilot out for a post mortem. He could have had heart failure. The instrument panel should tell me a lot too. Not that there’ll be much left of that. But I have to see it.’
‘I’ll give you Melville. He was first on the scene.’
He called to another fireman.
‘Fetch Mick Melville, will you. Quick.’
Melville was not pleased. Under his leadership twelve people had been cut free, eleven of them miraculously alive. The American from the aircraft had died before they could release him, as the registrar predicted. But Melville’s blood was up. He was emotionally committed to the rescue, tense, toiling with the strength of two men. He cursed at being stopped.
‘Snap out of it, Mick,’ said the divisional officer. ‘This is important.’ Melville’s discipline reasserted itself. A few seconds later he was considering how to reach the flight deck, while Donaldson calmly photographed more wreckage and made sketches in his notebook. By the time the firemen had completed searching for survivors much would inevitably have been moved, while a fire would be catastrophic. What was observed now would be irreplaceable evidence.
When the DC-10 crashed Donaldson had been in his office in Shellmex House, up on the fourth floor with a magnificent view across the Thames to the Festival Hall. He had been scribbling amendments to his report on the Round Hill accident near Washington. Had he been standing at the window he might actually have seen the Atlantic Airlines DC-10 shot down. As it was, a notification of the accident came to the Branch’s information officer: initially from the police and immediately afterwards from the London Air Traffic Control Centre. The news was relayed automatically to the principal inspector on duty – Jim Donaldson. Ironically he had asked to be on today, despite only just being back from America, in order to clear his desk and be certain of having a free weekend. Now, while members of the staff arranged the back-up resources for him, he had simply gone to his cupboard, taken the briefcase that held his basic necessities – yellow overalls for outdoor work, red armband, notebooks, Polaroid camera – told his secretary to inform the Principal Inspector Engineering, bolted to the lift and hailed a taxi on the Embankment. Later he kicked himself for not requesting a police car. Inevitably the taxi was caught in the traffic and he had to run the last hundred yards, wasting more time identifying himself to the constables outside Victoria.
The mix-up of wreckage, of roof girders and train carriages, coupled with the dust, made it difficult to identify the aircraft. It could be a Tristar or it could be a DC-10. That the plane was American-registered he could tell from lettering on part of the underside of the wing. He noticed parts of a green and gold livery scheme, mere touches of paint on fragments of metal. A first shiver of apprehension assailed him. Wasn’t the ‘Blue Riband’ due back through London today? Was it only yesterday that he stepped off it at Heathrow? The row last night with Jane made it seem longer ago. Melville interrupted his speculations.
‘I reckon the only way to it is through the hotel,’ said Melville, pointing up. Amidst the confusion of wreckage it seemed the nose had impacted on the first floor, where a part of the hotel had been built out underneath the station roof, close to the women’s lavatories. Donaldson agreed. Together they forced a way through fallen plaster and bricks up the steps of the hotel access from the concourse and into the reception area of the hotel itself. It was in shattering disorder. Parts of the ceiling had fallen, the air was a fog of dust. Policemen were guiding out the last of the residents. An old lady swathed in blankets, was being carried in a fireman’s arms, like an outsized baby. The manager, dishevelled, his black jacket white with particles of plaster, stood to one side watching.
‘Where did it hit?’ Donaldson demanded.
‘The end of the gallery lounge,’ he replied in a dazed, unreal tone. ‘Thank God no one was there.’
‘Show us.’
Melville had to take the manager’s arm to steady him as they climbed the wide staircase. Ahead of them the room’s double doors had swung open, half off their hinges. They found themselves in a seventy-foot-long-room, whose windows overlooked the concourse. Or rather, had done so. They were now barricaded with a jumble of metal and the wall they were set in was collapsing. To the right the room scarcely existed. The crumbled front section of the DC-10 completely filled it, like a monster in a dream. The tip of the nose, squashed by the impact, was buried in the inner wall of the room, clearly originally the solid outside wall of the hotel before this extension was constructed. The floor had collapsed so that the huge bulk of the plane, far higher than the room itself, was sunk among the joists. Although what remained of the body was buckled, where it had not fractured and burst open, yet some windows and its general shape were distinguishable.
‘Jesus,’ said Melville. ‘It’s unbelievable.’
Donaldson stood silent. He had a fair idea of what it was that had supported the inside of the fuselage so that it had retained a semblance of its shape. His attention was not focused on that. His eyes were on the thick horizontal green and gold line that ran, irregularly now, along what had been the cabin’s side.
Though deformed the nose retained unmistakably the stubby shape that Douglas have given their designs since Donald Douglas built the prototype DC-1 in 1933 and the modern airliner was born. Donaldson knew exactly what, and who, they would find inside. He also knew, in the same shocked instant, that this was the worst accident he would ever have to investigate, both publicly and personally. The pressure on him to find a reason for it was going to be many-sided and intense.
‘This was the front cabin,’ he said calmly. ‘When the wings caught the roof girders, everything inside must have been thrown forward.’
He remembered the first-class cabin, and its tiny bar where the pretty stewardess served drinks. Somewhere in front of him was the very seat he had sat in, somewhere among the compressed pile of men and women and hand luggage were the stewardess and her bar counter and the pretentious maître d’hôtel in his tailcoat. Somewhere there, but for the grace of God, could have been his own corpse. Donaldson shuddered and turned his attention to the practical question of reaching the wreck. Immediately in front of him the floor had vanished, leaving a gaping hole through which parts of the rooms below were visible.
‘Can you put ladders across to it?’ he asked Melville.
‘We can try, sir. I’ll fetch some more of the boys to help.’
The skin of an aircraft is thin; the structural strength lies in the spars and formers to which it is riveted. Melville was able to cut through the aluminium easily with his axe, relatively unworried by the possibility of a spark, since there are no fuel pipes in the nose, and there was no trace of kerosene around. Nerving himself to the horror, feeling that somehow he owed it to Curtis and to Atlantic’s owner to be the first to see how the crew had died, Donaldson motioned Melville aside and squeezed his head and shoulders in through the gap that the fireman had hewn. Although he knew what he would find it still caught him like a punch in the belly. The co-pilot and Curtis were crushed in their seats, sandwiched between a dislodged bulkhead and the instrument panel. He could recognize neither. Their white shirts and dark grey trousers were soaked in bloody pulp. Donaldson had to presume that Curtis was flying in the left-hand seat, while any possible doubt about their identity was eliminated by the dark grey clothing. Only one airline dressed its crews in that grey.
‘Poor bastards,’ Donaldson thought.
Resolutely he turned his attention to the controls. The simplest to find were the throttle levers, protected slightly by their position between the pilots’ seats. He saw that one throttle was closed while the other two were fully open. In the flattened instrument panel, such as was visible beyond Walther’s corpse, the instrument needles had been pressed into the dials indicating temperatures, pressures, speed, everything as it was at impact. Because the engine instruments were also centred between the two pilots, Donaldson could see that the rear engine had been far above normal heat limits, yet was showing very low turbine revs. In his mind he heard again those words, ‘a helluva bang . . . everything shaking’. It could all be consistent with a turbine blade fracture, followed rapidly by the disintegration of the engine: the number two engine, in the rear. He remembered a recent explosion inside a RB211 engine on a Japanese-owned Tristar. One hundred and two of the turbine blades had been damaged; parts of the turbine had been forced through the engine casing. The Tristar had flown on safely. Could this be something similar? He backed out of the rough hole, clutching at a ladder.
