LITTLE HOPE OF RESCUE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 2, 30 November 1944, Page 6

LITTLE HOPE OF RESCUE

MEN BURIED. IN R.A.F. DEPOT. (Rec. 9.30 a.m.) LONDON, Nov 29. According to the latest estimates it is feared that the death roll in the Burton-on-Trent disaster will exceed 160, including about 130 believed to be still buried. A doctor who has been working on tlie scene since Monday said the

authorities probably recognise the hopelessness of continuing rescue work and will order it to cease. He added that the men buried in the dump were covered by thousands of tons of earth. It would take weeks of hard work by 100 men to reach some of the galleries in the dump. All yesterday gangs of men and A.R.P. workers and pit rescue squads strived to " reach the underground storage galleries. All day they staggered out exhausted and defeated.

The centre of this blasted land, where every building is levelled or roofless, every wall is flattened and every field a colander of craters, is sealed off from rescue by a wall of deadly gases. The full death roll may not be known for a week. .

I Time ,v.er time the rescuers who tried to penetrate the underground galleries running hundreds of yards into the hillside f'oird them filled with fumes and carbon monoxide gas. The rescuers wore pit-masks, but sometimes they were forced to stagger out after onlv two minutes in the galleries The complete devastation of this sector of the ■ storage _ area, as well as the wall of gas, held them off.