Helicopter removed from site where nine people died, as families voice anger at lack of official disclosure after accident
Families of some of those feared dead in the Glasgow helicopter crash have reacted angrily to the slow pace of the recovery and identification of their loved ones.
Resuce services recovered the last two victims of the accident yesterday, escorting the remains through an informal guard of honour, after removing the wreckage of the nearly intact helicopter clear of the Clutha pub. But there was criticism of the recovery operation from two families who complained about the lack of official disclosure.
Police Scotland on Monday named the fifth of the nine fatalities as Samuel McGhee, 56, of Glasgow and sought to reassure relatives they were trying to identify bodies as carefully and as sensitively as possible. However, the son of a man missing in the crash, John McGarrigle, 59, who was thought to have been sitting next to McGhee, and relatives of another missing man, Mark O'Prey, were furious at the speed of the recovery operation and identification of the dead.
McGarrigle's son, also John, visited the site on Monday for the second time to again press home his demands for help from the police. He had been angry about the lack of disclosure on Saturday, displaying a smartphone snapshot of him and his father, who was a poet and writer, sitting at the Clutha's bar to the media.
"I know he was in there, there's eyewitness accounts from people in there," McGarrigle said. "I want my dad out of there, it's like a piece of machinery is more important than the people underneath there."
Ian O'Prey, whose son Mark is feared dead, said he also believed the recovery of the helicopter was taking precedence over removing bodies.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme, O'Prey said: "I thought if they had made a better attempt on the Saturday night, I thought they perhaps could have got them out a lot earlier than they did, but I think they were more concerned about this helicopter.
"I feel it could have been done better. Communication was dreadful. I'm sure they could have got the bodies out quicker."
The four others officially confirmed dead are Gary Arthur, 48, a Clutha customer from Paisley, Renfrewshire, and the three occupants of the helicopter: civilian pilot David Traill, 51, and police constables Kirsty Nelis, 36, and Tony Collins, 43, both of whom had previously received commendations for bravery. Two further remaining two victims have still not been named officially or informally.
There were also 12 people remaining in hospital, several still critically ill, with three under specialist care at a spinal unit at the Southern General hospital.
Deputy Chief Constable Rose Fitzpatrick said that the search through the dense rubble and debris was "a difficult and complex operation". The emergency services needed time to do their work, to preserve the scene and evidence for investigators, but also to preserve the dignity of the dead.
"The uncertainty for the families of those who have died is at the front of our minds," she said. "It remains our absolute priority to give clarity to those affected as soon as we are able. The loss of so many people has been deeply felt."
It also emerged that the helicopter had fallen so suddenly on Friday night the pilot was unable to broadcast a mayday call. David Miller, deputy chief inspector of the Air Accident Investigation Branch, said the aircraft had made "a vertical descent" before it crashed, with nothing falling off it before it punched a hole in the Clutha's roof.
"I can confirm that the helicopter does not have a flight data recorder. However, it does have a significant number of modern electronic systems on board and it may be possible to recover recorded data from those systems," Miller said. There were no emergency transmissions from the pilot before this accident."
David Goodhew, the Scottish fire and rescue service operation commander, said the recovery operation had been very complex because of the age and structure of the building. The Clutha, taken from the Gaelic name for the Clyde, was the ground floor of a Victorian former tenement building partly demolished in the 1960s.
It had thick sandstone walls up to a metre thick, very solid cellars and a roof with three layers: an outer level of timber and felt, the original floorboards of the first floor and a third thick ceiling which included substantial soundproofing.
Standing close to hundreds of bouquets of flowers laid on a nearby wall as the public's tribute to the dead, Goodhew, assistant chief fire officer, said the operation had been "very moving and very tragic" for the emergency service workers involved. "It has been a very, very stressful situation," he said.
As Pope Francis sent a message of condolence to the victims and "the entire community of Glasgow in these moments of distress and sadness", the owner of the Clutha, Alan Crossan, said he planned to rebuild the bar.
He had had numerous offers of help, including a pledge from Tennent Caledonian, who supply his beer, to pay the wages of 12 staff and help the costs of rebuilding.
"It wouldn't be accepted if I didn't do that. It has to be rebuilt, the same way it was before," Crossan said. The rebuilt pub would include a memorial to the victims and survivors, he said. A benefit concert is being arranged for January by the Scots actor Colin McCredie, who plays Detective Constable Stuart Fraser in the Glasgow-set police drama Taggart.
After watching the remains of the helicopter lifted from the building on Monday morning, Crossan said : "It's a strange and terrible thing to see a helicopter lifted out of your pub. I still can't believe that it took place.
"Two of my staff are still in hospital, one with a broken arm, one with a broken leg, but we're also worried about how many other bodies of customers they might find. It is awful."
The site was handed over to air accident investigators and council building safety officers late on Monday, as the nearly intact Eurocopter EC135 was driven off for its journey to the AAIB's headquarters at Farnborough in Hampshire for an exhaustive, detailed forensic investigation.
The AAIB confirmed the three tonne aircraft did not carry a black box flight recorder. But he said it was laden with sophisticated police tracking and recording equipment which could help investigators piece together its final moments and the cause of its catastrophic crash.
One eyewitness, Craig Russell, told the Guardian on Sunday that he saw a "shower of sparks" like an exploding firework as the helicopter flew westwards over the Saltmarket road only a few hundred metres from the Clutha.
It was making an odd noise as if the engine was misfiring, with the rotor blades sounding fine for several beats before an odd metallic grating noise could be heard, and that sequence of sounds continued, he said, as it flew. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.
Families of some of those feared dead in the Glasgow helicopter crash have reacted angrily to the slow pace of the recovery and identification of their loved ones.
Resuce services recovered the last two victims of the accident yesterday, escorting the remains through an informal guard of honour, after removing the wreckage of the nearly intact helicopter clear of the Clutha pub. But there was criticism of the recovery operation from two families who complained about the lack of official disclosure.
Police Scotland on Monday named the fifth of the nine fatalities as Samuel McGhee, 56, of Glasgow and sought to reassure relatives they were trying to identify bodies as carefully and as sensitively as possible. However, the son of a man missing in the crash, John McGarrigle, 59, who was thought to have been sitting next to McGhee, and relatives of another missing man, Mark O'Prey, were furious at the speed of the recovery operation and identification of the dead.
McGarrigle's son, also John, visited the site on Monday for the second time to again press home his demands for help from the police. He had been angry about the lack of disclosure on Saturday, displaying a smartphone snapshot of him and his father, who was a poet and writer, sitting at the Clutha's bar to the media.
"I know he was in there, there's eyewitness accounts from people in there," McGarrigle said. "I want my dad out of there, it's like a piece of machinery is more important than the people underneath there."
Ian O'Prey, whose son Mark is feared dead, said he also believed the recovery of the helicopter was taking precedence over removing bodies.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme, O'Prey said: "I thought if they had made a better attempt on the Saturday night, I thought they perhaps could have got them out a lot earlier than they did, but I think they were more concerned about this helicopter.
"I feel it could have been done better. Communication was dreadful. I'm sure they could have got the bodies out quicker."
The four others officially confirmed dead are Gary Arthur, 48, a Clutha customer from Paisley, Renfrewshire, and the three occupants of the helicopter: civilian pilot David Traill, 51, and police constables Kirsty Nelis, 36, and Tony Collins, 43, both of whom had previously received commendations for bravery. Two further remaining two victims have still not been named officially or informally.
There were also 12 people remaining in hospital, several still critically ill, with three under specialist care at a spinal unit at the Southern General hospital.
Deputy Chief Constable Rose Fitzpatrick said that the search through the dense rubble and debris was "a difficult and complex operation". The emergency services needed time to do their work, to preserve the scene and evidence for investigators, but also to preserve the dignity of the dead.
"The uncertainty for the families of those who have died is at the front of our minds," she said. "It remains our absolute priority to give clarity to those affected as soon as we are able. The loss of so many people has been deeply felt."
It also emerged that the helicopter had fallen so suddenly on Friday night the pilot was unable to broadcast a mayday call. David Miller, deputy chief inspector of the Air Accident Investigation Branch, said the aircraft had made "a vertical descent" before it crashed, with nothing falling off it before it punched a hole in the Clutha's roof.
"I can confirm that the helicopter does not have a flight data recorder. However, it does have a significant number of modern electronic systems on board and it may be possible to recover recorded data from those systems," Miller said. There were no emergency transmissions from the pilot before this accident."
David Goodhew, the Scottish fire and rescue service operation commander, said the recovery operation had been very complex because of the age and structure of the building. The Clutha, taken from the Gaelic name for the Clyde, was the ground floor of a Victorian former tenement building partly demolished in the 1960s.
It had thick sandstone walls up to a metre thick, very solid cellars and a roof with three layers: an outer level of timber and felt, the original floorboards of the first floor and a third thick ceiling which included substantial soundproofing.
Standing close to hundreds of bouquets of flowers laid on a nearby wall as the public's tribute to the dead, Goodhew, assistant chief fire officer, said the operation had been "very moving and very tragic" for the emergency service workers involved. "It has been a very, very stressful situation," he said.
As Pope Francis sent a message of condolence to the victims and "the entire community of Glasgow in these moments of distress and sadness", the owner of the Clutha, Alan Crossan, said he planned to rebuild the bar.
He had had numerous offers of help, including a pledge from Tennent Caledonian, who supply his beer, to pay the wages of 12 staff and help the costs of rebuilding.
"It wouldn't be accepted if I didn't do that. It has to be rebuilt, the same way it was before," Crossan said. The rebuilt pub would include a memorial to the victims and survivors, he said. A benefit concert is being arranged for January by the Scots actor Colin McCredie, who plays Detective Constable Stuart Fraser in the Glasgow-set police drama Taggart.
After watching the remains of the helicopter lifted from the building on Monday morning, Crossan said : "It's a strange and terrible thing to see a helicopter lifted out of your pub. I still can't believe that it took place.
"Two of my staff are still in hospital, one with a broken arm, one with a broken leg, but we're also worried about how many other bodies of customers they might find. It is awful."
The site was handed over to air accident investigators and council building safety officers late on Monday, as the nearly intact Eurocopter EC135 was driven off for its journey to the AAIB's headquarters at Farnborough in Hampshire for an exhaustive, detailed forensic investigation.
The AAIB confirmed the three tonne aircraft did not carry a black box flight recorder. But he said it was laden with sophisticated police tracking and recording equipment which could help investigators piece together its final moments and the cause of its catastrophic crash.
One eyewitness, Craig Russell, told the Guardian on Sunday that he saw a "shower of sparks" like an exploding firework as the helicopter flew westwards over the Saltmarket road only a few hundred metres from the Clutha.
It was making an odd noise as if the engine was misfiring, with the rotor blades sounding fine for several beats before an odd metallic grating noise could be heard, and that sequence of sounds continued, he said, as it flew. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.
This is Staffordshire --
This is Cornwall --
This is Hull and East Riding -- POLICE want to speak to the driver of a large truck as a "matter of urgency" after a fatal crash near Wetwang claimed the lives of three people.
This is Grimsby -- The A16 is currently blocked after a crash on the Southbound carriage near North Thoresby. The crash happened at around 3.30pm this afternoon and it is understood it involves several vehicles. There are reports of delays of around 10 minutes for motorists and some are being diverted through villages off the A16. More to follow
Reported by This is 11 hours ago.
This is North Devon -- A man was taken to hospital following a crash between a van and a lorry near Witheridge this afternoon. Police said the driver of the van suffered whiplash injuries in the collision, which occurred at Millbarn Cross at around 3.50pm. One fire engine from Witheridge was called to the scene but both drivers had managed to free themselves from their vehicles by the time firefighters arrived. The driver of the van, which is believed to be a delivery van, was taken to hospital as a precaution. Police said the driver of the lorry escaped the crash unharmed. The road was blocked for a short period of time while the vehicles were recovered but the incident has since been cleared.
Reported by This is 14 hours ago.
This is Grimsby -- A MOTORIST suffered spinal injuries in a three-car collision on the A16 at North Thoresby.
This is Plymouth -- POLICE are dealing with a multi-vehicle crash on the A386 Tavistock Road at the Manadon roundabout this evening rush hour. There are long delays on the A38 and tailbacks in both directions as a result of the crash. Drivers are being warned to expect delays of around 35 to 40 minutes. Congestion is now all the way back to Marsh Mills roundabout. Details about the number of cars involved or any injuries are unknown. More to follow.
Reported by This is 14 hours ago.
This is Leicestershire -- A motorcyclist who died after a crash in Leicester on Tuesday has been named as Beaumont Leys man Paul Millis. The collision happened just after 10pm in Troon Way, Rushey Mead. The city's coroner is trying to trace the 55-year-old's next of kin, and has isued an appeal for them to come forward. The coroner's office said it understood Mr Millis was divorced, and that his ex-wife is called Julie. They are thought to have had two children, who will now be grown up and in their 30s, namely Anthony and Rebecca. The crash involved two cars, a red Peugeot 406 and a Silver Peugeot 206, and the blue Kawasaki motorcycle Mr Millis was riding. He was travelling towards Melton Road when the collision happened. Mr Millis was taken to Queen's Medical Centre, in Nottingham, where he later died. If anyone knows of the whereabouts of Mr Millis's next of kin, they are asked to contact the coroner's office on 0116 454 1030.
Reported by This is 23 hours ago.