Bridge area cleared after movement report

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32430, 17 October 1970, Page 1

Bridge area cleared after movement report

(From, the Melbourne correspondent of “The Press” and N.Z.P.A.) MELBOURNE, October 16. The West Gate bridge disaster area was cleared today after a new alarm was sounded by six rescue workers. They said they had detected movement in the 1800-ton span next to the one which crashed to the earth yesterday.

Police quickly ordered the suspect area to be cleared and a team of six engineers went on top of the span to inspect it.

After about 90 minutes they reported that tests had shown the bridge was quite safe and rescud work resumed. The site project manager, Mr Trevor Nixon, said that it was believed the movement was caused by the bridge heating up and expanding, causing the rollers on which the span was mounted to move as they had been designed to. “Another possibility is that a mobile crane touched a guy wire which leads up to the span in question,” he said. It will be days before the final death roll is known—it now stands at 31 with at least 14 men unaccounted

for. Another 19 men are in hospital, many of them badly injured. Ninety minutes after today’s alarm recovery teams resumed their bizarre task—tunnelling for bodies in the twisted rubble. Red - eyed construction workers using oxy-acetylene torches worked from dawn in a bid to free the bodies of men still trapped in the wreckage. No hope held No hope is held that any of the men still trapped under the avalanche are alive. Tens of thousands of dollars poured into a disaster fund hours after it was opened by a Melbourne newspaper group. The State Government is speeding social service benefits and compensation to the bereaved. The Royal Commission into the West Gate disaster is expected to be appointed on Tuesday. It will have a judge as chairman and two technical experts will be appointed to help him. The disaster has stunned Melbourne. It dominated the : city’s three daily newspapers ] and television and radio i stations have set up immense

live programming from the disaster site. Work to go on But there is no question of the bridge project being cancelled. Work will continue as soon as possible. The West Gate project was covered by insurance against such a calamity. It was learned today that falling debris smashed the time clock which held the key to the men who had reported for work at the disaster site yesterday morning. The Civil Defence coordinator, Mr George Wharfe, said this was hampering police trying to work out just who was on the bridge when the span fell. If 66-year-old Edgar Upsdell, of Altona, a bayside suburb,’ had not insisted on working after retiring last year he would still be alive today. His wife said today: “He retired after 25 years with the Department of

Supply and went down to the bridge to see if he could get a job. “He got one handing out tools and his office was under the bridge. I don’t suppose he had a chance.” Workmen cutting at debris late today could see several bodies in a construction hut under a pile of tangled steel. The men were eating their lunch in the hut when the span crashed on them. Near the bodies, workmen reported, lie a blue lunch box and two sandwiches. Two experts Freeman, Fox and Partners, the consultant engineers to the Lower Yarra Bridge Authority, will fly two of their experts to Melbourne to help in the investigation of the disaster. The engineering firm was also the consultant engineer to the Milford Haven bridge which collapsed in June this year.