When does local news become local history?  It is nearly 40 years since the Kegworth Air Disaster, when a British Midland passenger plane missed its approach to East Midlands Airport and crashed onto the M1.  That is surely long enough to give a historical perspective and at our October meeting we were taken through the event and its aftermath by Alan Parker, who was the Chief Ambulance Officer in charge of the operation.

Sunday night is usually a quiet time for the Ambulance Service but on 8^th January 1989 Alan received a call that a plane was approaching the airport with an engine on fire.  He made his way to the Service’s control room at Narborough and it quickly became clear that this was a major incident.  It seems that, based on wrong information, the captain of the aircraft had shut down the wrong engine so that when he attempted his emergency landing, the plane lost all power.  It caught the near embankment with its tail before running up the far embankment and breaking into three pieces.  Though a fuel tank ruptured, amazingly it did not catch fire, nor was anyone hurt on the motorway.

A plan was in place for the possibility of a crash at East Midlands Airport but it assumed the damaged plane would be on the airfield and casualties would be taken to the terminal for assessment.  Instead, with good road access to the crash site via the A453 at the top of the embankment and the M1 below, Alan made the decision to evacuate casualties directly to hospitals in Nottingham and Derby.  The first of the 75 ambulances reached Derby Royal Infirmary only 40 minutes after the crash.  The RAF also sent three helicopters, which were used to ferry other casualties to Leicester Royal Infirmary.  Firefighters and medics entered the wrecked plane at great personal risk to extract the injured passengers, and chains of police and motorists conveyed them on stretchers to the ground.  Further organizations arrived to offer their services: the mines rescue teams provided lighting, AA patrol men dug steps in the embankment and the Salvation Army gave support to victims.  Alan showed us video recorded at the noisy and crowded scene but at the time his only communication with the site was via telephone.

39 people sadly died in the crash but remarkably 82 survived, albeit with injuries of varying severity.  Analysis of the many fractures resulted in a better brace position being adopted to avoid damage to flailing limbs in the event of a crash.  If a similar event were to occur today, there would be improved sensors on the aircraft, better medical equipment to treat survivors at the scene and better communications with the control room.  On the other hand, passenger planes are now much larger and hospitals have much less spare capacity to deal with emergencies.

The talk stirred many memories of the disaster among our members and visitors, whether they just remember hearing all the sirens or were more directly involved through their work with medical or social services or with local councils.