Workers may
take their part in assembling information about the crash-down, during a
tense mid-morning hour of Monday’s gale, of three out of eight 375ft
concrete cooling towers at Ferrybridge ‘C’ Power Station. For
eyewitness accounts are being sought, meteorological and photographic
records, and other data on the fall of the 8,000 ton giants which cost
£290,000 each.
The disaster
has tended to dwarf other damage and dislocation in local areas, where
roof tiles were stripped and vehicles overturned by the wind. What people
encountered however may be of value in the final analysis such as a sound
"like a jet flying low" and a sight "like a shower of
pepper" - as or before the towers collapsed into their shells. They
might be the means of throwing light on the most spectacular disaster of
its kind that local districts have ever seen, yet most remarkable for its
absence of serious injury among the 2,500 workforce at the site.
Did some
peculiar force develop with the position of the towers (they were to the
leeward side of the five left standing) and the wind (96 miles per hour
was recorded at the station)?
Answers that
may be sought to such questions as this and others could have considerable
effect when big constructions are planned in the future. The towers were
the highest in Western Europe.
Though the
area of the towers was sealed to all except specialist staff, it was back
to work on Tuesday morning for those employed on the site. During the
night C.E.G.B. and police security patrols had been maintained. At 10.30
am on Monday, the first cooling tower crashed, and the others followed at
about half-hourly intervals. The first fell minutes after 200 men working
on adjacent towers (not the fallen ones) had been recalled because of the
weather conditions "not because it was thought that there was any
danger of a collapse" said Mr. Leydon.
The three
hurt but not seriously- and treated at Pontefract Infirmary, were Malcolm
Wayne of Moorthorpe, Trevor Dillon, Lane End, Skellow, and 17-year-old
Herbert Wilkinson, of Lander Street, Bentley, who was working at the
bottom of the first tower to fall. As he went through a door it swung and
knocked him out of the tower just seconds before the building fell, he
said.
Described as
the largest of its kind in Western Europe when work began on it four years
ago, the still incomplete £88,000,000 station has twin 680ft concrete
chimneys.
Yesterday it
was stated that a fact finding operation onsite would investigate the
condition of the existing towers and would also try to discover why the
other two towers fell. A thorough steeplejack survey of the remaining
towers seemed possible and would take about a fortnight. At headquarters a
parallel investigation was being made into cooling tower design, and would
make use of any findings of the investigating party operating on the site.
Earlier it had been said that means of utilising one of the remaining
towers so as not to delay bringing into operation the first generating
set, might be considered. The station was due to be fully operative by
1967.
