Military to help recover Didcot bodies

The military is being drafted in to help with efforts to recover the bodies of three men killed in the Didcot power station collapse more than three months ago.

Demolition workers Ken Cresswell, 57, and John Shaw, 61, both from Rotherham, and Chris Huxtable, 34, from Swansea, have been missing since the disaster in Oxfordshire on February 23.

Work on the recovery was halted two weeks ago when contractors reached a 50-metre exclusion zone and site owner RWE npower said it had come to a point where it was too dangerous to continue searching.

It had been suggested a controlled explosion may be used to bring the rest of the building down before a renewed recovery operation.

Thames Valley Police said the Home Office and Ministry of Defence have approved the deployment of military aid “following a request by the multi-agency strategic coordination group in line with military aid to civil authority principles”.

The provision of military equipment as well as soldiers will help speed up the process of recovery, police said.