SHELTER DISASTER

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 March 1943, Page 5

SHELTER DISASTER

ARDUOUS RESCUE WORK . DEATH IN SEMI-DARKNESS LONDON, March 5. In connection with the tube station disaster, strangely enough, the woman who fell first was not killed, but the baby was found dead. The shelter is regarded as one of the safest in London. It is situated in the tunnels of an underground railway tube extension. It is fully equipped with a canteen and a first-aid post, and has been used since the heavy raids of 1940-41. The entrance, naturally dimly lit in the black-out, is gained from the street down 19 steps, with a turn, and six more steps leading to a large open landing where the booking offices and ticket machines will be eventually placed. This landing is capable of holding hundreds of people. Escalators at the far end of the landing lead down to the tunnels, in which trains in the near future will run. Crowds seeking safety shortly after the alert, sounded stumbled in semidarkness until at the foot of the lower steps was a mass of crushed bodies. Five hundred to 600 people were jammed in the stairway above those below, unable to regain the street to tell what had happened. Eventually rescue work began. It took at the start 15 minutes to recover each body, but some of the dead were jammed in for two hours. Some bodies are still unidentified, but it is known that about 60 children are among the dead. Rescuers worked from above and from below desperately sorting out the living from the dead. Those in the tunnels moved the victims to the hooking hall and those working from the street took the victims from the steps to ambulances and buses. The injured were hurried to hospital. Hours passed. Then a roll-call was taken of those usually using the shelter. Silence followed name after name, after which those not injured went to bunks for the remainder of the night. 'One rescuer said 178 dead and 60 injured were taken from a space that ordinarily would hold 100. Another rescuer said: “We had to stand on unconscious persons to get others out.” . One family named- Mead, consisting of father, mother, and three children, were all dead. An ambulance girl said: “This is not the first time there has been a crush in this shelter because of the smallness of the entrance and the large number using it.” The police to-day took measurements of the entrance and the interior.