What I’ll never forget is he agony on the faces’
IGH praise for civilian volunteers who were soon at the scene came from one ockport’s police inspectors, Mr Ruston. heir behaviour was tanding and exemplary. People ked without stopping. They aved like trained rescue kers, carrying away belongings e victims which were salvaged the rubble,” he said. e himself had the task to sort those belongings – there were s, bathing tackle lipsticks, ographs and money – all that left. ere was too a plaque ‘fasten seat belts please’ and an ge coloured seat belt. otor patrol Pc William Davies, ockport Constabulary, who among the first at the site, ribed the scene. e said: “I’ll never forget what I When I arrived some people e half out, half in the plane, aming with pain. ne of my colleagues, some of civilians and I dragged them with their clothes burning. ut what I will never forget is shouts for help and the agony he faces of other passengers, who screamed from behind the planes windows. We could not get near them because of the intense heat. Both from the plane and the building on Waterloo Road which caught fire when the tail of the plane demolished it.”
Rescue operations after the plane crash were a swiftly combined operation by the public services of Manchester, Stockport and Cheshire. Many local residents took part.
A considerable number of police, fire and ambulance men who were off duty either went straight to the scene of the disaster or reported to their headquarters, where their offers of help were readily accepted.
And, despite the large numbers involved, the rescue work proceeded in an orderly manner and with a minimum of fuss.
Some police officers who were alerted by telephone at first thought that their Sunday was being disturbed by a civil defence exercise, only to find that what was normally a routine drill had become a tragic fact.
The rescue workers were in and out of the wreckage, despite explosions and leaping flames, said an eyewitness. Their faces and hands blackened by smoke, some of them wearing blood stained shirts, they paused only to accept mugs of tea from Salvation Army women and W.R.V.S members who had set up an emergency canteen.
Altogether, 30 ambulances from Stockport, Manchester, Altrincham and Cheshire ran a shuttle service between the crash scene and hospital and the two temporary mortuaries hurriedly set up.
Fire brigades from Stockport, Manchester and Cheshire provided 35 appliances, three of them relief machines standing by for fire calls. At King Street West fire station about 125 firemen took part in the operation.
Civil defence volunteers came from all over Stockport.
There were about 30 of them, representing the whole staff of volunteers in the town, while a further corps stood by in Stalybridge in case they were needed.
Building site workers, emergency employees of a nearby garage, Salvation Army bandsmen, and local residents all played their part.
The local Salvation Army set up a liaison officer with Stockport Police to help the relatives of the passengers who streamed anxiously into Stockport police headquarters all afternoon. They provided relatives with accommodation.
Police came from Manchester, Stockport and Cheshire, many of them off duty, and while some helped search the wreckage, others kept at bay the hundreds of people who swarmed round the area, trying to catch a glimpse of the scene of the crash.
The same people kept other police busy on traffic duty when the approach roads became thick with sightseers cars.
But their behaviour was praised by a senior police official, who said that the sightseers had not impeded the rescue work and had done as they were asked by police who were controlling the crowd.
He added that it was amazing how the rescuers first on the scene had worked quietly and efficiently without supervision.
He said: “Everyone seemed to know what to do without being told. In fact, in the early stages there was no one in command of the rescue operation.”