Body is discovered at power station months after collapse
A BODY has been recovered from the collapsed boiler house at Didcot power station.
The families of three men missing since the disaster in February have been informed of the discovery yesterday, Thames Valley Police said.
The person has not yet been formally identified.
Demolition workers Ken Cresswell, 57, and John Shaw, 61, both from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, and Chris Huxtable, 34, from Swansea, have been missing since the building in Oxfordshire partially collapsed around six months ago.
A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said: “The safe recovery of the body will take place and the disaster victim identification process will commence.
“The person has not yet been formally identified and this will be a matter for the coroner.
“Our thoughts remain with the families of the missing men and we would ask that their privacy is respected during this incredibly difficult time.”
The body of Michael Collings, 53, who was also killed by the disaster, has previously been recovered from the wreckage.
The building was previously too unstable to be approached and a 50-metre exclusion zone was set up around the site.
Mr Collings, 53, from Brotton, Teesside, was known to friends as Whitby Mick.
A statement from his family at the time of the tragedy said: “Mike was a much loved husband, father, granddad, son, brother and friend.
“He had a huge enthusiasm for life and will be remembered for his kind and friendly nature.”
The company he worked for, Coleman and Co Demolition, tweeted: “Our MD Mark Coleman: ‘Mick Collings was our colleague and friend. We are devastated. Our hearts go out to his whole family’.”
Didcot A opened in 1970 as a coal-fired power station and was later converted so it could generate power from natural gas. Three of its six cooling towers were brought down in controlled explosions in 2014, a year after the station closed.
The remainder of the plant was demolished last month. The building had been too unstable to be approached and a 50-metre exclusion zone had been set up around the site.